PublicPrivate
by Keryl Raist
Summary: This is the third book in the Tao-of-The-Force-verse series. If you haven't read Tension/Balance or Rumors/Gossip, it's not going to make a lick of sense. If you have... We're starting off right where we left off. The First Year parties are ending, the Order is coming into it's own, and Rey and Kylo...
1. Chapter 1

The Order of the Maji : The Players

1/1/2

01:00 _The Supremacy_

"Did it go well?" Kinear asks Ellie as they stroll, slowly, toward the tram that will take them to the deck their suite is on.

She nods, also slowly. "I think so. They're rough, but rough in a way people seem to respond well to."

He arches an eyebrow, hoping she'll expand on that. "From what I could see, about half of them are convinced they'll be easily manipulated—"

"And they'll be in for an interesting surprise in the not wildly distant future," Kinear says.

She laughs, gently, at that. People are going to try, and she's going to enjoy watching them fail. "Yes. And the rest seem to have an almost protective gut reaction to the two of them."

Kinear knows better than to say, _Are you sure?_ After almost seventy years with Ellie, he knows she's the sharpest reader of people to ever draw breath, Force skills or no. That said, _protective_ is not generally an emotion felt or expressed by the pirates that pilot these skies. So, instead of questioning her, he says, "Will of the Force in action?"

She nods. And she's got a sense, that just possibly, the two of them emoting around, their own Force bright and sharp, may be working a spell, conscious or not. Actually, watching those two, definitely unconscious. Ellie's still got thoughts, and plans, for what could be done if this were to be done consciously. And she's not about to say anything about that to Pat, not here, not now. That's a conversation for when they're on their own, on her, personal, ship, fully alone.

They're steps away from the tram, and know not to talk about anything of any real matter when they can be easily overheard. They step in, and sink onto one of the benches. Kinear wraps his arm around his wife, and she rests her head against his shoulder.

He kisses the top of her head and smirks a bit. "So, that retirement I was planning for us didn't exactly work the way I was expecting."

She sniggers back. "We'd have been bored." They'd always joked about the little cottage, far off the beaten track, where they could just be Pat and Ellie, the old couple down the road. They'd putter around their garden, and occasionally the kids, grandkids, and great-grandkids would come and visit them.

"Yes, we would have." He strokes the back of her neck. "But, maybe… Vacation? Take a few days off. After this gets settled down?"

They both know he's not exactly talking about what most of the rest of the galaxy would call a vacation.

She smiles a bit. "Maybe go visit Naboo?"

"You had some friends there, if I remember?"

"You do remember." They share a look. Neither of them has to say it. If they can dig up enough proof for the future Baby Girl Ren to make a decent claim on Naboo, they're _going_ to find it, and take custody of it. Information you control is information that can't sneak up and bite you in the ass. "It's been a while, but it's good to visit old friends."

Kinear smiles at that. Old friends indeed.

"Might be a good plan to see New Alderaan."

Pat nods. "I've heard good things about it. They're working on rebuilding Alderaan, or as close as they can get. What are they up to, now? Eight, ten million people?"

"Something like that. Might want to get there sooner rather than later," Ellie says. They both heard Kylo tell Long who his mother was. It's only a matter of time before Prince Ben comes into play.

Pat nods. "They're supposed to be a lovely community. Very fair-minded, egalitarian. Cosmopolitan in their attitudes but still attached to the soil."

"We could certainly do worse on vacation," Ellie says, not watching the other people on the tram, but aware of them.

"We could."

They sway with the ride as it moves across the deck. People get on and off with each stop, and the Kinears sit, holding each other, patient. Any other night, and two old people in formal wear, this late at night would get a lot of questioning looks, but tonight… People have been leaving the party for hours. Some people look twice, but they don't stare.

Eventually, they get to their stop, and to the lift, where they get the lift to themselves.

"What's the next play?" Pat asks his wife.

"You remember the stories we used to read the children? And how many of them ended with the handsome prince marrying the beautiful lady, and they go onto rule and live happily ever after?"

Pat smiles. He does. "Some of my better memories of the little ones are sitting on the bed with them snuggled around, reading to them."

"I bet a lot of people have memories like that. And a lot of them have that story, or versions of it, in their mind."

Pat smirks. "And we've got a literal handsome prince, so we might as well work it within a centimeter of it's life?"

"We said it earlier, people like the idea of an anointed ruler, touched by the hand of God or the Force. They need the idea of _destiny_ and a universe that spins with purpose and design. They clean up nicely. Look good in pictures. Are clumsy in social situations in a cute and vulnerable sort of way that seems to encourage people to like them. Have… an easily swallowed policy that just about anyone can get behind. Assuming we can get them to go along with it… Why conquer with guns and ships when we can just shine them up, stick them in front of cameras, hopefully get them to smile, and ask everyone to join us in the fairy story?"

Pat smiles. "Is it ever that easy?"

She smiles back at him. "No. But we're closer to it than anyone has ever gotten before, so we might as well use it."

"He talks some about building palaces. That might be Jon's idea originally." Kinear kisses his lady's hand. "And what's a palace without a prince and princess to stick inside of it?"

She gently pats his cheek. "And a Grand Vizier behind the scenes."

Pat smiles and kisses her palm this time. "As long as this body consents to draw breath."

The few people waiting for the lift when it opens on the F deck see a very old couple, in very fine formal wear, laughing gently with each other, slowly ambling toward their rooms.

* * *

06:30 Lirium

"Oh, fuck NO!" Finn says as Rose explains what Mirina was hoping they'd do for the Order.

Last night had been good. Rey had brought Rose home, Finn had stared at her like he'd never seen her before for a good minute, just about tripping over his tongue, and then they had a _very_ good few hours, before Magiit brought Paige back. But now, the next morning, as they're feeding Paige, and themselves, breakfast, and she's telling him more about what happened… "No! Just… NO!"

"I'm not saying we're doing it."

He eyes her. "But you're thinking about it. I can feel that. The idea of… changing things… You like that." After all, she might have joined the Resistance for revenge, but she didn't _stay_ for it.

Rose sighs. "I do. And she needs someone watching her back."

"She needs to get out of this."

Rose shrugs at that.

"We need to not get dragged into this."

She half-inclines her head.

"Stop that. You don't want to argue with me, but you don't want to agree with me, so you're just… nodding."

Rose sighs. "You didn't see her, Finn."

"She dropped you off. I saw her." In the sense that he was aware that Rey was in the room, but his eyes were glued to Rose, her hair softly waved, and some sort of makeup on, and she'd brought her date night clothing and slipped into that, so he didn't really _see_ Rey. No, he was staring at his wife, all dolled up, and looking like sex on legs, and was intending to enjoy the absolute hell out of that.

"Not there, not on the ship. Not… as a queen. Not as _his_ queen." Watching Ren go mute at the sight of Rey, and then go beaming love and adoration at her, his Force bright and strong enough that everyone in the room got hit with it, looking at her like she's his sun, and if he's very lucky he'll get to spend the rest of his life orbiting around her, went quite a way to helping Rose feel better about this _Order_ thing. Anyone who can feel like that about another person is someone Rose is sure she can find some common ground with. "If he wasn't part of it, you'd be all over getting behind her as some sort of leader."

"He's part of it, Rose. And _he's_ not… He's not like mushrooms, something I can eat around and ignore because I don't like the way they taste. I'll tolerate him being around, here, because I pretty much have to, but I'm not going out of my way to make life easier for him."

"She needs help."

"And I'm more than comfortable helping _here_. I'll bring stuff here. I'll help kids learn to use batons or whatever. But I'm _not_ getting back on that ship. And honestly, I'm surprised you were willing to do it."

Rose shrugs again. "It's different now."

"Different doesn't mean better."

She cedes that point, but at least compared to how she remembers the _Supremacy_ she thinks it's better, too.

* * *

14:30 _The Supremacy_

Jon can feel eyes on him. Not a lot of them. But the ones he's sensing… matter.

He's not sure how much of it is that keeping under the radar when you're part of the inner ruling circle is difficult, even under the best of circumstances, and how much of it is his Mum and sister are in the back, with a circle of other well-connected, _important_ people, and she's happily off bragging about what he does and how he's doing it.

A lot of things are true about Mirina Frakes, subtlety isn't one of them.

Either way, the days of him being able to just blend in are fading.

But for right now, and at least a while longer, he's not attracting _too much_ attention.

Then Kylo steps up to his podium, hands gripping the edges of the top, and he starts to speak, and no one is paying attention to Jon any longer.

 _Good._

Jon's listening, and it's good. Kylo's staying on script, doing what he's there to do, make people feel good about joining up, and getting more of them interested in doing it.

He's seen better. But, of course, he would have. He's been to a million weddings, and weddings, especially the sort he used to go to, could afford to have people who did nothing but give speeches run them. He's seen some of the finest orators in the galaxy get up and weave together a line of words that could keep the listeners practically in tears at their beauty, going on about love and life and the preciousness of binding two or three or however many people together in a meeting of… blah, blah, blah.

Even the best orators tended to lose Jon by that point. When he was going to weddings regularly, he was too young and inexperienced to really _get_ what they were talking about.

And by the time he had been in that sort of love, he didn't want a seventeen hour long speech-fest for his own wedding. Lane didn't, either, so their vows were short, and heartfelt, and witnessed by three dozen people, and that was that.

He listens to Kylo, and it's clear that he's pushing a lot of Force into his voice. Jon can feel it. And… that's interesting, when he's paying attention, aware of the fact that it's there, he can sense what Kylo's doing. It's not compulsion level Force work, but… He's making the crowd go along with him, filling them with his passion for this. Jon's not sure if he's doing it intentionally, but he also doesn't much care. It's working.

Even Jon can feel the shift around him, the way the soldiers near him are leaning forward, lapping this sense of destiny and purpose up.

The last time he felt _this_ he was… well, here actually. Here looked a lot different. Almost everyone around him was in white armor. His husband was two ranks ahead, six men to the left, in his own perfect uniform, standing at attention, as they watched the broadcast of Hux on the Starkiller base, rallying the First Order to greatness.

He felt the shiver through his spine, and the stirring in his soul, the electric sensation of something massive, important, galaxy shifting about to happen, and… Though he prefers not to think too hard about it, like everyone around him, when he saw Starkiller fire, he cheered.

He looks around him, at naked faces, expressions intense and pleased, and then, as Ren sweeps Rey into his arms for a long and passionate kiss, expressions bursting out into laughing and cheering, he knows that there's power in this. Power in the crowd. In the sense of belonging, of… brotherhood, or whatever they'll call it.

The power of the Order, of them, together, here and now, and…

All they have to do is find something to aim it at.

Something _good._

* * *

14:45: The Supremacy

Rey has never, ever felt anything like this.

She's never imagined feeling anything like this.

She's never had the ability to even begin to imagine feeling anything like this.

Kylo's kissing her, dipping her down low, his body supporting hers, as his lips play against hers, and there's the feel of them, of his Force and hers, bright and happy.

But it's not just them. There are more than four million people right here, right now, watching them, hollering and cheering, and this massive, immense, bigger than any big she's ever even thought to contemplate, bigger than any big her vocabulary has ever thought to describe, wave of euphoria and cheering and happiness and giddiness and CHEERING and voices are clattering over them as people clap and it's just…

 _Keep breathing, love._ Kylo's voice in her mind, and right now he's got her standing up, on her own feet, and using his body to block her from the view of the crowds.

She makes herself inhale, and exhale, and inhale again. Makes the jangling jitter of her own nerves and the nerves of everyone around her smooth out.

 _I see why you wanted me here for this._

He smiles at that. Right now, he's… calm. Happy, playful, very pleased with himself and the universe in general, but calm.

And she knows he isn't always calm at these things, and wanted her own calm nearby.

He strokes her face, still keeping his broad shoulders between the view of her and everyone else. She can feel he's aware of what he's doing, and how he's intentionally trying to make it look like they're just petting.

He strokes her face. _I love you._

 _I know._

She sees him smirk, and then roll his eyes a bit, and _I never told you that story, did I?_

 _Kylo?_

 _When we get a free moment. You ready?_

She takes another deep breath. The cheering and hollering is getting softer, but it's not done, yet. _They're going to yell more when you step away._

He's grinning. _Yep. And you're damn well worth it!_

She reaches up, onto her toes, and gently kisses him, and then back to her feet, holding his hand, stepping to his side, as he also turns to face the crowd.

The wave swells again. They… like this. They like what Kylo stands for. They like seeing him up here, with her. They like the show and the party and the festivities. They like the idea that there's a purpose and a meaning and…

And if she had to guess, there are fewer than ten Force sensitives on this ship. Likely fewer than five. Possibly just her, Kylo, and whatever Force Mirina Frakes can bring to the surface. But with this many people, this close, all together, all on one subject, you don't need to be Force sensitive. Just putting this many people near each other magnifies the feelings, spreads them around, makes everyone that much _more._

And right now, all of that _more_ is aimed at her, and him, and the future they're out to build.

And it feels… intense and amazing and terrifying and good and nerve wracking, and she doesn't think she's ever tried to deal with this many emotions at once, and she doesn't know what to do with herself, or… actually Kylo doesn't know what either of them is supposed to be doing now, because the speech is done, and they're just sort of standing there, and he's starting to get nervous now, too, and…

Great…

Jon… There's Jon. Thank the Force.

Jon comes over, linking arms with both of them, quietly saying, "Give them a bow or something, and then off the stage we go, okay?"

So, Kylo turns to the crowd and gives them a bow, and another roar hits them, and Rey smiles at them and waves, and that gets more cheering, and then Jon escorts them to the side exit, with Kinear and Schiff following.

"Now what?" Kylo says as Jon leads them to the same chamber they'd been waiting in before the speech.

"Meet and mingle," Kinear says. "Roam around, go see the ship, talk to people."

"Be nice, chat, but don't linger too long," Schiff adds. "People get nervous when the Boss is lingering. Kills the party. So spend more time on the on-duty areas."

"Don't people get nervous when the Boss is watching them work?" Kylo asks. He certainly never enjoyed Snoke or Luke hovering over him.

"They do," Jon says, "but they're significantly more likely to be sober when they're working than at the party, so… Go, ask questions, talk to people. Be nice. Introduce Rey." Jon turns to her. "How are you doing?"

She blinks, mouth opening and closing, and blinks again. "That was intense."

Jon nods. "Yeah. Anytime you get a crowd like that and rile them up, it'll be intense. I can't imagine what it's like when you can feel them all, like you two do." He grins. "That said, both of you looked great. They loved the last bit with the kiss."

"You think?" Kinear asks, voice dry, smile in his eyes.

Jon rolls his eyes at Kinear. "I'm in too damn good of a mood to deal with sarcasm right now. Anyway, off you two go, too. Come back with reports from the party."

"And what are you doing, Jon?" Kylo asks.

"Sticking with you and Rey. Making sure someone who knows the layout of the ship is with you. Don't want you getting lost."

Kylo smirks at that, but… Well, given how much of the ship he's seen, he likely would. Not that he can't fix that readily, just port back to their rooms, but… "Okay. Let's go wander."

* * *

15:00 Space, En Route to Lirium

On his ship, returning from Driculam with a load of food for the Faviers, three more shipstones, a regulation roulette table, and a suit, a _good_ suit, hand-tailored specifically for him, Poe decides to settle in and watch Ren's year end… year beginning, speech.

It's… decent. He's good with the content, amused by the kiss at the end, and all in all, it's a solid 'come join me' sort of thing. He's seen better. He's seen worse. (He's _done_ worse. Done better, too, but that was a long time ago, and given how giddy everyone was at just being alive, as long as he didn't trip over his feet and face plant, they would have cheered at that speech.) It's clear that rallying people and working a crowd are not Ren's strong suits, but, not only could he be a lot worse at it, Poe was expecting him to be a lot worse at it.

He's staring at the frozen holo, thinking that Ren's likely trainable. He could probably learn to be really good at this. His mother was, after all. Rey could probably learn to be better than good, she's got the sort of bright, genuine smile people like. He's thinking about that, those pearly whites flashing in her wide, easy smile, when the hair on the back of his neck rise, which has him reaching for the blaster he's not wearing because he's alone on his ship streaking through space.

Then he sees why his body's fear sensors fired off. His mouth drops. He's heard the Force-sensitive Maji talk about this, but… He never expected it to happen, not to him.

"Leia," slips out of his mouth.

"Hey, Poe," she sits next to him, looking him over, seeing the Maji token, and the ship, and the newsfeed, paused on her son kissing his wife in front of the entire galaxy. She smirks a little at the image. "Looks like he's got at least some flare for it."

"Some. That's probably the best part of it."

Leia nods a bit at that. "They'll learn." She looks at Poe, eyes searching his. "They're going to need help."

"I know."

"I'd appreciate it if you'd offered some."

He looks a little insulted at that. "You have to ask?"

"When I asked you to leave the Republic, you remember what I said?"

"That we needed passionate, rash people, people who still remembered what it meant to _feel_ to get off their asses and change the path of the galaxy."

"Yeah." She nods to the newsfeed. "I think they've got rash and passion covered. But they're going to need someone older, wiser—"

Poe rolls his eyes extravagantly. "You are _not_ talking about me. Someone who fucked the whole bloody war sideways and got three quarters of his command killed in one move? That is _not_ older or wiser."

"Someone who knows how badly failure can hurt, yes. That's a big part of getting to older and wiser. You remember _why_ the Death Star was right near Yavin for us to blow it up?"

He thinks for a moment… That part of the story is always pretty hazy. In fact, as best he knows, no one has ever actually told him that part of the story. Leia, Han, Luke and the droids land. They hand off the intel. Then the Death Star pops up.

Leia shakes her head. There's a reason why that part of the story is pretty much never told. "I led them straight to us. I knew they let us get away, but somehow I didn't put that together with they were following, and within hours of getting to the base, there they were. Luck and the Force means we lived to see another day, but…" Left unspoken is the fact that more than three quarters of the Rebellion's fighter pilots died in that attack. "Surviving something like that is _how_ you get older and wiser." She's got that _look_ aimed at him. The one he thinks of as the _mom_ look, and he briefly wonders if Ren ever saw this aimed at him. "You haven't made a command decision since the battle of Crait."

"I think it's abundantly clear that I'm not the man for it. It's not like I only made _one_ bad decision that day."

She shakes her head at that. "And I think it's abundantly clear that it's time you got off your ass, stopped wallowing, show off what you've learned from your failures, and help my son and daughter make this fucking galaxy work." She glances around at the ship. "They've been playing around for a year, getting things sorted out, and that probably had to happen, but playtime is over."

He snorts.

"Or maybe it's just starting. The board is set, and it's time you pick up the dice and get in on the game."

"How?"

She touches the token on his chest, or, at least, her finger hovers over it. "Time to claim who and what you are, Master Poe of the Maji."

"What does that mean?"

Leia smirks. "Honestly, I'm not sure, yet, but we'll know, soon. Things are going to be moving, and it's time for you to get in on them."

Poe sighs. "Yes, Ma'am."

"Do not give me that Ma'am stuff. You know better than that."

Poe laughs at that, and Leia smiles at him before vanishing.

* * *

15:30 _The Supremacy_

"You think he knows what he just did?" Schiff asks Kinear as they meander toward the F-deck after Ren's speech.

Kinear shrugs. "I honestly don't know. I'm not sure if my 'economic warfare will hurt us just as badly if not worse than bombardments' lesson sunk in. And on top of that, I don't know if he realizes he just declared economic warfare on every system in the galaxy that depends on chattel slavery."

"And yet you didn't stop him, Pat."

Kinear shrugs. "Should I have, Josh?"

Schiff tilts his head to the side. He's not adverse to the move they're planning, but… Timing… "Maybe until we were a _tad_ more secure…"

Pat shakes his head. "After last night… I think a bold statement was the way to go."

Schiff catches the look in Pat's eyes. "You've got more under your vest than you're letting on."

Kinear inclines his head, as if to say, _and you don't?_ "How many governors and provisional consuls did you chat with last night?"

"At least a hundred," Schiff replies.

"And were many of them getting interested in taking advantage of our 'eventual emancipation' program."

"They were."

Kinear smiles and nods. "If we're moving into the emancipation, security, neutral meeting space, and contract enforcement business, an unstable galaxy is of value to us. Makes what we can offer of more value to the people around us. His statement is going to make a lot of systems clench hard in on themselves. Trying to keep colonies and people from coming to us and the like. That'll start rebellions. Rebels need safe places to talk, plan, and buy goods." And they can both envision a future where there will be Order places, very _free_ markets, perhaps, where said Rebels can do that. And Kinear can envision a future where those very free markets take note of who buys and uses what, and then uses that information to further the future financial flourishing of the Order. "Those rebellions will eventually come to terms." Because all rebellions die, eventually. "And here we'll be, sitting pretty, strong and stable, ready and waiting to offer our services as mediators and enforcers."

Schiff shakes his head a bit. "The over-world overreacts. That build sympathy for the new system. They fight among themselves for a while, burning off their best and brightest..."

" _Then_ they come to us, and we've got a _much_ easier time enforcing the situation because they're weaker, and more of the people on the ground are happy to see us. We'll swoop in as liberators and protectors, instead of one set of overlords made a deal with a different set. And, once we're there, well-trained, talented, _good_ people might decide that we can offer them a better deal than their home world can."

Schiff smirks. "Is there any situation where you haven't already gamed it ten moves out?"

"Ellie would tell you that there are a _lot_ of them."

Schiff sniggers at that. "If that's our play, though, we're going to need more ships."

Kinear sighs. "More everything. If he's even close to right about how fast we're going to grow, even this monstrosity will be overrun in a matter of years." He sighs again. Credits, they need more credits just to stay put, growing will take even more of them, and… He prays that getting where the Order is trying to be is lucrative.

"I think the first order of business for Frakes' diplomacy department is getting in bed with as many systems with functional ship-building space-docks as will have us, and seeing if any of them are willing to shift alliance."

Kinear nods at that. "What do you know about his new friend?"

Schiff raises an eyebrow. "The droid?" Schiff's fairly sure that Kinear means Threepio, and not the three attractive people Frakes wandered off to entertain privately over the course of last night's party. He's still not sure if seducing people aiming for The Master is a good move or not, but he does know _that's_ not a situation he needs to stick his nose in.

"The droid."

"What do _you_ know about the droid?" Schiff asks, which tells Kinear all he needs to know about what Schiff knows about him.

"Did you see he told Long who his mother is?" Kinear asks, confirming to Schiff that he knows all there is to know about the droid, without either of them, specifically, mentioning that he appears to be Leia Organa's personal protocol droid.

"I heard. Leia Organa's boy." Schiff sighs at that. A lot of the direction they're moving in is starting to make more sense. The thing he can't tell is if Organa just played the ultimate long game and won, or if her son was giving her the biggest fuck you in the history of fuck-yous. But, of course, he's still her son, and her ideals still rubbed off on him. Schiff's leaning toward fuck you, but only because Organa hasn't been seen in more than a year. "And I notice that that was _not_ a surprise to you." There's a bit of annoyance in Schiff's voice at being kept out of that.

Pat checks, they are, for the moment, alone in the hallway. "I wasn't breathing a word of that until he did. That said, he and his lady were silly enough to almost introduce her as Rey Amidala."

Schiff winces. He knows the name. He doesn't know the connection. But he knows how that name could be trouble. "His name or hers originally?"

"His. Even Vader couldn't conjure babies from nothing."

Schiff's wince intensifies. "That would have been a fire in the O2 processors."

"Yes. We averted that."

"They are married, then?" Schiff says.

"Ish… There's a records trail from Ben Solo to Ben Amidala to Rey Amidala, and, of course, you can trace his finger prints and iris to Ben Organa Solo, who was properly registered by his parents as a toddler, but…"

Schiff smirks. "But that's not a wedding. And that's not the chance to open this thing up and…" There are screens showing images of the speech around them for people who didn't get to see it live. And there he is, Master of the Order, kissing the hell out of his bride. They pause to watch. "They're extremely photogenic."

Kinear's nodding. "And there's not a single system in the galaxy that was worse for the wear because it had young, pretty people with a glorious love story and a huge fucking wedding."

"Join the Order, we're prettier than the rest?"

"Well, not me and you. Not for a few decades at least," Kinear chuckles. "But we've got it, so we might as well flaunt it. Beautiful, popular people have an easy time making alliances. People will want to be near them just to bask in their shine, so… we might as well use it."

Schiff nods. "Might as well." They stroll a few steps further, out of the eyes and ears of the crowd. "Do you think she's still out there?"

"Organa?" Kinear asks.

"Organa. That's her droid, right?"

Pat nods. "I think so. I never met her, or Threepio, in person, but I did see videos. And there was only one golden droid at her side with a little R2 hovering in the background."

Schiff keeps looking at Kinear, making it clear he hasn't answered the question.

"He told Long that both of his parents were no longer physically capable of attending things like parties."

"So, dead, or so incapacitated as to be useless," Schiff says.

"So incapacitated she gave up her Threepio." They both know that no leader, no good leader, and no matter what else was true about Leia Organa, she was _good,_ gives up the electronic mind that knows all of their secrets, not unless they don't need those secrets any longer.

"The Threepio who likely knows where they got their ships." _The Admiral_ says, getting them back to why he thinks Kinear brought up Threepio in the first place. "It was always rumored that the Rebellion had dry docks hidden across the galaxy. Small ones. Nothing that could handle anything bigger than a destroyer. Even if they're in terrible shape, we can fix them up. It's easier to start with a broken down base, than it is to build from new, especially given the state of our finances."

"Shall we float it by him gently? See if we've actually wooed him to our side? Pass the message to Frakes, let him know that's the alliances we want, see if the droid bites, and if he does, splendid, and if not… Well, there are slicers who specialize in that sort of thing. He wouldn't even know anything had happened." Kinear thinks about it, and both he and Schiff know that gently or not, that's exactly what's going to happen.

One day, in the not wildly distant future, Threepio, and the little R2 will have a visit, they'll be turned off, their memory banks copied, and then turned back on with new memory overlays in place.

The beauty of an electronic mind is that, made of metal and silicon, it's malleable in a way organic minds aren't.

That thought triggers another one, and the Grand Marshall and Grand Admiral share it. It's beyond time that C8 got a few upgrades, among others, some sort of system in play so that he _can't_ be turned off.

Or at least, not turned off with his memory banks in place.

* * *

19:30: _The Supremacy_

"And that's what a Rear Gunner First Class does, Sirs… my Lady," The gunner says, wrapping up, slightly nervously, his answer to Kylo's "So, what do you do?" question.

Rey smiles at him, and that eases a lot of the nervous. "Do you like it?" she asks.

And that jolts nervous back up.

Both she and Kylo can feel she asked a wrong question, but neither of them know why.

"It's good work, My Lady," he answers diplomatically, and everyone relaxes again.

"Good. Thank you," she says, and Jon leads them further down the hallway.

He quietly says to them, "Jobs are assigned. Testing finds aptitude. For that sort of job, he needs exceptional eyesight, very steady hands, and extremely fast reflexes. Liking it isn't part of the equation."

"Oh." Rey replies. "Does… liking things come in at all?"

"If you're an officer, sometimes. If you've got a wide enough array of skills. If you, like me, hired on to fill a specific position."

Rey thinks about that, looks at Jon, looks at Kylo, and then says, "Could liking it come into play?"

Kylo shrugs and then looks at Jon. It's clear he doesn't know either.

"Maybe. Probably more than it does now. We've got a system in play right now, where you get in, get tested, get trained according to your strengths, get tested again, and then get shoved into the job that most closely matches your testing results. Depending on how well you tested, and what sort of job, you'll get more training on the job or after, and keep moving around. That's how the enlisted track works.

"If you test well on command decisions, planning, or like me, certain sorts of specialized skills…"

"Sewing?" Rey asks.

Jon scoffs at that. Yes, he's _good at sewing,_ but _good at sewing_ does not an officer make. "Putting a production line in place. Anything with fingers can learn to sew. Not anyone can learn to turn 500 million credits into 2.5 million sets of armor designed for two branches, fourteen specialties, three camo terrains, twelve standard ranks, and twenty standard sizes. Assuming you've got something like that, you'll get moved into the Officer track or directly into a rank."

"Where does like come into play with that?" Kylo asks.

"Enlisted jobs can be very tight. The gunner just guns. An officer has a much wider to-do list, so said officer gets a bit more say about where they go. Say you've got top-class abstract math skills, you can go for the Navi Department or Logistics or Quantum Field Engineering or…"

Rey and Kylo both nod at that. They're in the hallway now, which is, given the fact that most everyone has the day off, fairly empty.

Two Stormtroopers round the corner, see the three of them, snap into perfect attention and salutes, nervous vibrating off of them. Rey does her best not to laugh when she catches one of them thinking, _It's her. Thank Iuna someone signed up to fuck that man! He's been so much calmer, since._

Kylo caught it, too, and looks somewhat irked as he says, "At ease," and then waves them on their way, and they go scurrying away.

Once they're out of sight, Jon says, "What was that? They annoy you?"

Rey sniggers and Kylo rolls his eyes. "The girl was thinking 'Thank Iuna someone signed up to fuck that man."

Jon laughs at that. "Thank Iuna indeed."

"Who or what is Iuna?" Kylo asks.

"A luck goddess. Popular with First Order troopers from the inner rim." Jon checks the hallway, and then says. "Okay, so, how are you doing? It's a good time for a break if you want one."

Rey, noticing they're alone, slouches for the first time in an hour. It feels good. "I could do with a break."

Kylo nods. "Me, too." He takes her hand and Jon's and a moment later they're in his rooms.

Jon's gasping and blinking and finally gets out, "HOLY FUCK! Warn a guy! KYLO, shit…" he's turning around looking at Kylo's rooms. "You do not just grab someone and do that without asking. FUCK!"

Kylo winces, and flops onto their bed. "Sorry. I… It's like walking for me. I'm so used to it, now."

Jon takes a deep, steadying breath. His heart is galloping and his hands are shaking. He can see Rey holding a hand up, probably about to touch him and do Force alone knows what. He holds his hands up, steps back, a clear _No_ in his posture, and then says, "Okay, ground rules. For me, and for anyone else you want to interact with as a human: fucking _ask_ before doing shit like this! No… what the hell was that?"

"Teleporting," Rey adds.

"No teleporting, no mind reading, no… magic stuff, without permission. If you've got to use the Force to do it, _ask first_!"

Kylo nods. "Okay." He winces again. "I'll forget some. Kick me if I do. Using the Force… some of it takes effort, and some of it really is like walking or breathing. I just _do it._ I can't… not feel your emotional state. I can sometimes be so distracted I don't notice it, but if I'm paying attention to you, I can't not feel it."

Jon sits down at the table, and Rey pulls off her shoes, and hunts down the manicure/pedicure box. They've got a million more hours of walking and standing around today, and her new shoes are a bit stiff and tight still.

Jon sees her do that. A good foot rub would probably help get his heart rate back down. "Good plan."

As he's saying that, and as he's getting ready to talk more about Kylo and the Force, and the Force and other people, C8 comes in. "I thought I heard you." He's got a tray covered in sandwiches, fruits, a pitcher of something, cups, and bowls of soup. "I took the liberty of ordering dinner. If there's anything else you want, let me know."

"Thank you, C8. How are things going in here?" Kylo asks as the droid sets the food on the table.

"Very well, Sir. I have a collection of reports ready for you for tomorrow."

Kylo nods at that. "Of course you do. The day after tomorrow. We're off tomorrow."

"I'll have your coffee and reports ready, sir."

"Thanks, C8."

Once C8 is out, Jon looks over to Kylo. "Okay, basic rules of polite human interactions." Rey's pulling a sandwich to her hand. "And this goes for you, too. It looks like you don't use it as much as he does, but I know you can, so… First and foremost, if you wouldn't want someone to just do it to you, bloody well _ask_ before you do it to someone else. I can promise that neither of you would appreciate suddenly getting yanked out of reality without a hint of warning and plopped somewhere else."

Rey shrugs a bit. "Ask me how I got off Jakku."

Jon glares at her. "Did you _enjoy_ it?"

"No."

"Then just because it happened to you before is no reason to do it to someone else. Especially if you know it feels like shit.

"Rule number two," he pauses, "Actually, there is no rule number two. If it'd bug you to have it done to you, if you can imagine it bugging you if it happened to you…" He stares at the two of them for a moment, and decides that based on what he knows about Kylo, he might need a different track here, "Okay scratch that, if it would bug you if someone did it to Rey," then he looks from Kylo to Rey, "or if someone did it to Kylo, don't do it to someone else without asking permission."

Rey inclines her head, and then nods. Kylo does, too, pulling himself up to seated, and says to Jon, "I'm sorry. Next time I will ask first."

"Good."

Kylo gets up and joins them at the table, fixing up a plate of supper for himself. The three of them take a moment chewing on the sandwiches and sipping drinks. Eventually Rey says, "What if it's important?"

Jon looks at her. "You need to do something, you asked, they said no, but you think it's got to happen anyway?"

"Yes."

He raises an eyebrow, not as a question, but as a wry expression. "Sometimes, it's good to be the king. Just do it sparingly, and make sure you're bloody well right about it being necessary. I'm sure our boy over there has a few stories about people who did things to him thinking they were necessary, and they were _wrong._ "

Rey and Kylo both wince at that, and Jon looks fairly satisfied at having gotten the idea across. He takes a bite of the sandwich. "So, next up, time at the party?"

Kylo slumps back into his chair. "If I say, no, what happens?"

"Nothing. You stay here. People don't see you. They don't develop positive associations with spending time with you. They don't chat with their friends about how they got to meet you and your lady. They don't—"

He sits back up. "Got it."

Rey takes a sip of her drink, and then says, "Lead us to the party."

* * *

20:00 _The Supremacy_

"General."

Threepio's back is turned, and for a… not heartbeat, because, of course, he does not have a heart that beats, but for a moment, he can't remember that the young man in gray with an Order badge is talking to _him,_ but Artoo beeps at him, reminding him that he's the General in question, so…

He turns to face the soldier in front of him. One of Frakes' Stormtroopers who cleaned up nicely and had enough manners to be put in charge of keeping visitors amused. Given the fact that he's still a non-com, it's clear that whomever he's entertaining isn't _that_ high of a level. Still, it wouldn't do to annoy any of their guests. "Squad Leader TU-9987?"

"Sir, we have another guest who would like to chat about using the _Supremacy_ for a meeting."

"Excellent, Squad Leader. I have a moment, is now convenient for…"

"Lord and Lady T'Quelleth of the Pnia System."

"…the Lord and Lady to chat?"

"Yes, sir. They were hoping to talk sooner rather than later."

"Good, bring them by."

And five minutes later, he has two very… posh… people sitting in front of him in his office.

His _office._ Because he's a _General._ And Generals have things like offices, and _staff,_ (He hasn't hired anyone, yet, though Jon tells him that having at least ten people reporting directly to him is common at his rank. And those people will have people who report to them, and… It's amazing to him what's happening with this.) and people who do nothing but keep track of his meetings and calendar and…

It's a shift.

He's not used to being the person people want to meet. He's used to being the person they meet while waiting to get to the person they want to meet.

But the T'Quelleths are here to talk to _him._

He bows to them before seating himself, and Artoo consents to fetch some drinks and offer them around. (He does make a snide comment about how he _is not_ part of Threepio's staff, and he bloody well needs to hire someone to do this because it's not his job. Threepio ignores it.)

"I've been told you're interested in the Order's services?"

"We are," Lord T'Quelleth says. "In the next year, our oldest son will come of age. As such he will be expected to marry. We have three potential spouses in line, but… negotiations can be… tricky."

Lady T'Quelleth takes over. "What my husband means is, we have two 'safe' options. And a third, which is a bit of a long shot. If we can come to a settlement, things would be… advantageous, for both our societies."

"And who is your long shot?" Threepio asks.

"Isolda D'Muir," Lord T'Quelleth replies.

Threepio nods. "Of the Lranian system?"

"Yes," Lady T'Quelleth says.

"And your system and hers has been at war for the last twenty-six years. With, if you'll forgive the indelicacy, disastrous results all around."

"That would be an accurate read on the subject," Lord T'Quelleth says. "Put plainly, both our royal house and theirs is on the verge of collapse. If we keep fighting much longer, neither of our houses will survive."

"So you wish to try the traditional marriage pact to put things to rest." Off the top of his head, Threepio can think of 76,049,847 times this has happened in the past, and 42,458,908 times where it worked. It's not a guaranteed win, but probably as good if not better than any of their other options.

"Exactly. That said, as of this point, feelings are still… running high…" That's a delicate way of saying that the last battle ended less than seven days ago, and cost both houses multiple thousands of casualties. "And should our son set foot on their home world, or Isolda set foot on ours…"

Lady T'Quelleth doesn't need to finish that thought. Threepio does for her, to just to make sure they understand that he knows how the game is played. "You expect an assassination attempt within minutes at the least, hours at the longest, a successful one within a month, and after that, no chance of things ever coming to peace."

"Exactly," Lord T'Quelleth responds. "So, in an effort to actually smooth things over, we'd like to see about having you host the peace negotiations, a wedding if things go well, a place for both of them to live for at least five years, let those high feeling start to fade, and to guarantee security for all of it."

Threepio can't smile, but he is pleased. This sounds like _exactly_ what they'll be good at. "I have a feeling we can arrange that. Granted, Order security is _thorough._ So, before we get things into play, I'm going to need guarantees from everyone involved that you'll allow us to do our job."

"And what would that involve?" Lord T'Quelleth asks.

"At the very least, your ships won't come within a lightyear of the _Supremacy._ We will send our people to you, pick up you and your things, search everything more carefully than you can possibly imagine. If we're escrowing goods or credits, we will assess them to make sure they are what you say they are. No weapons will be allowed on your persons, or in your goods. We do not care if whatever it is is a ceremonial weapon of great sentimental worth, it will not come with you to our ship. We will bring you and your goods here, allow you to take care of business with as much security as we deem necessary, and then we'll return you and whatever goods are going with you to your home. If your son is the kind of person who enjoys his privacy, he will likely not enjoy living here. We can make sure that his personal security is discreet, but we cannot guarantee it, especially if Lady D'Muir is one of those with high feelings, without keeping someone near him at all times unless he's in a secure room, alone. Likewise, she would have her own personal security, too. If everyone agrees to those basic terms, we can see about setting the rest of it up."

The T'Quelleth's nod. Lady T'Quelleth adds, "The home for our son and possible daughter-in-law… In addition to secure, it would have to be… nice."

"Are your own rooms not adequate in regards to niceness?" Threepio adds, knowing they have to be good enough, or they wouldn't be asking about this.

"They're fine. Very comfortable, for a visit. Somewhat small for a home…" Lady T'Quelleth says.

"Very small for an embassy," Lord T'Quelleth adds.

Now, _that_ interests Threepio. There would certainly be value to offering formal diplomatic space, secure, open, diplomatic space, where, should something slip through the security the blowback wouldn't immediately hit the home world. A place where it'd be easy to have off the books meetings as well as on the books. He'd smile if he could.

"If all parties are interested, we can, for the correct considerations, make sure that they have a suite in keeping with their status. And if said status were to become some level of embassy for the newly united T'Quelleth-D'Muir house, accommodations can certainly be arranged."

For a moment, Threepio's almost nervous about saying that. Almost. They made him a General, so he's going to command, and if Jon or Ben doesn't like it, well… He doesn't have to be here. It's a remarkably freeing feeling. Artoo hasn't said anything. He knows enough to not interrupt now, but later he's going to tease him about it.

Lord T'Quelleth nods. "Considerations… And… what might those be?"

Threepio would smile if he could. He knows he's got them. If the D'Muirs can be talked into this… "We offer an array of potential payment options. Credits are, of course, always welcome, but we can make do with almost anything. For example, if you and the D'Muir were to be not fighting, neither of your societies would need nearly as many battleships. We of course, being in the security business, can always use battleships."

"And being in the security business, you may also have an interest in… hand weapons?" Lady T'Quelleth says.

"I'm certain we could find a use for them. Or perhaps, for the manufacturing plants that make them?"

That gets both T'Quelleths nodding. "Interesting. You've given us much to think about."

"I'm glad to hear that, My Lord and Lady. In fact, if you like, our diplomatic department could handle arranging the first meeting with the D'Muirs, taking care of everything. All you'd need to do make sure your negotiators are where we ask they be so we can pick them up on time."

The T'Quelleths smile.

Lord T'Quelleth says, "General, I thank you for this meeting. I have a feeling this is the start of a profitable relationship."

"Excellent, My Lord. And I too look forward to seeing you again."

* * *

00:30 1/2/2 _The Supremacy_

It's a quiet chunk of hallway. And the reason it's quiet is that this is a part of the ship that isn't doing much today. "Everyone" is off, which means pretty much no one is in the training sims today.

That makes a certain amount of sense to Yakkon Keth. Everyone's at the parties, or maybe on duty if duty is something that _has_ to happen, but… No one _has_ to be on the training sims. Not today.

That said, if no one is using the training sims today, then why does he have to be in here overseeing four droids, making sure they get into each simulator and clean them out?

Someone didn't think that through.

Or maybe Lt. KT-5928 just has it in for him, and made him stay on duty just to bust his stones. He's always pretty snotty about the trainees that actually joined. Treats them as hard as he can get away with, sniffing at them like they leave a bad stink in the air.

Though, rumor has it, that's just the way the Numbers are. Poor bastards had the souls ripped clean out of 'em and all that's left is hate and spite.

Either way, Yakkon will not be distraught to see the last of the Lieutenant. Five more months on this rotation, and then he's onto deep-space non-atmo flight training. He can't _wait._

He's grousing, to himself, and the droids maybe, though these little guys don't talk, barely even beep, about how the Numbers wouldn't know a good time if it walked up and sucked their shafts, when he hears footsteps and quiet voices.

Great, someone else to deal with. He tries to look like he's actually doing something vaguely useful. The bloody droids can do the damn job themselves, they don't actually need any sort of person with them, but… Keep an eye on the droids is the job, so he's fucking doing it, instead of being up on the E deck doing some fucking.

(Resh, his bunkmate, said the Specs are on sale today, patriotism or something. He doesn't care why, 10% off tuffing and sucking is his idea of a grand day, and fuck if he's gonna miss that! He just hopes the sale is still going when he gets off duty, at 02:00.)

He's behind one of the training sim pods, and hears, "What do you think they do down here?" Woman's voice, quiet, an accent he's not familiar with, pleasant though.

"You know, I don't actually know."

His eyes go wide. _That_ voice he knows. That one's been broadcast all over the _Supremacy_ all day.

The footsteps are getting closer, and he can hear one of the pods being opened.

He peeks around to see the Master and his… lady friend… no one's entirely sure who she is, though that snog they shared earlier certainly made some things clear, are looking at the inside of one of the sim pods.

A frisson of fear starts, and then stops; it's one of the clean ones. _Fucking hell and thank you Iuna for that!_

Supposedly, since the rally, The Master's been wandering around the ship all day. Meeting people. Asking what they do and how. He's heard that TR-9908 saw him, talked to him, said he's a lot taller in person than he seems from further away, but he's almost doubtful of that. 08's a good guy, for a Number, but he does like to pretend he's higher up than he actually is. He'd be the sort to say he saw the Master whether he did or not. (Plus, how the fuck could the Master be bigger in person? The man looks like a Wookie on holovids, and there's no way he's actually three meters tall.)

"The setup is a lot like one of our fighters." The Master slides in. He's big for it. (Yakkon smirks, he's the size he's supposed to be. 08's full of shit.) These are for first year fliers, and they're normally half his age, and maybe four-fifths his size.

They're quiet for a moment, while the Master does something, flips the sim on apparently. "Oh… Flight training simulation."

"This isn't how you learned to fly?" the lady asks.

He hadn't known the Master was a pilot.

"No. I started on the standard TIE/INSSS, and moved onto a TIE/FO, and finished with my TIE Silencer. I've never used a sim."

 _What freaking maniac taught him to fly on a live ship? Holy Force that's bleedingly stupid!_

The girl crawls in with him, settling herself on his lap. The Master's hands come to her waist, and his lips touch her shoulder. Yakkon's attention sharpens… Shit… Maybe… He takes a quarter step to the side, so he's got a better view. Catch the Master and his pet in action… Shit, that'd be a show! The girl's kind of light on tits but she's got an ass for days, and if he got the angle right… Shit _that'd_ be a view!

The Master does kiss her. And she makes some sort of comment about keeping a steady hand on his shaft while reaching behind her and wriggling her hips a bit. The Master smirks, and kisses her again. And for a second, his hand is moving toward her breast and then stops dead.

He kisses her cheek and then gives her a little boost, out of the sim.

Yakkon's certain of two things: he's been caught watching, and there's no possible way the Master could have seen him. He's got line of sight on the Master, but the Master would have to turn his head to have line of sight on him. His Lady doesn't have line of sight on him. And there are no reflective surfaces inside the sim.

His heart is racing, because he's half expecting the Master to march up and eviscerate him here, now, on the spot for peeking. But the Master just takes his Lady's hand, and they walk off the deck, silent, though… Yakkon could swear they're talking, but… He just can't hear anything.

* * *

01:00 1/2/2 _The Supremacy_

"Mum!"

Mirina Frakes is waiting in her son's rooms when he finally comes home at the end of the parties.

"Jon." She gives him a gentle smile, and pats the sofa next to her. That's making him feel nervous. Gentle smiles generally go along with bad news. He sits next to her. "You look tired."

"I am. I'm off for the next three days though, so that'll help."

She nods. "You like him, don't you."

He doesn't need to ask which _him_ is in play here. Certainly not either of the two he charmed into a blind corner yesterday. (Though he rather liked both of them, too. And if he's ever in the Xquelxior or Brannath systems, he'll look them up.) "Yeah, I do." She's really looking at him. And he knows what she's asking but not willing to say. "Not that much. He's a good boss, and I think friend, but… Nothing like that. He's the most married man in the galaxy from what I can see. There's no room for me, or anyone else, in there."

She nods. That meets her assessment of the Master and his Lady, but it wouldn't be the first time someone got an inappropriate crush. "Good." She's quiet for another moment. "I noticed you were in and out throughout the party."

"What party planner isn't?"

That gets a mild glare. "Uh huh… Yes, you were… vigorously… attending to the details… With… several… guests?"

"Yeah." He rolls his eyes. Once it became clear his Mom wasn't going to get him bound to some well-connected Lady through an 'oops' of a pregnancy, she decided his 'promiscuous' ways were inappropriate. They likely always were, at least by Imperial sexual mores, but she was willing to look the other way if it got him married to a high-born lady. "I'm all about the details."

Two men, one woman, yes, he'd _thoroughly_ tended to his _details._ He does make a mental note to head to the medbay tomorrow or the next day. He wasn't as careful as he should have been with one of the men, but he was so damn pretty, and it'd been a million years since he'd done it without a slick, and… Better get checked out sooner than later. If he caught something, it'd be better to get the shots before it became symptomatic.

Normally, his Mom would have given him a little smack for the comment, or maybe the details he tended, but she doesn't. Her face and voice are sad and quiet as she says, "When you were out, he told Amelda Long he's Leia Organa's boy." It's clear from her voice that she expects this to be a bomb. And it's even clearer from her next sentence, "We're expanding the business, the brand… If you want… I know Coruscant won't be a going concern, not for you, but… I'm setting up Omara and Helene in their own branches, Tasha and Junni are staying with me. I can set you up, too, any world you like. You don't… have to feel like you're stuck here, okay?"

Jon sighs. He supposes he could have been a tad more specific when he told Kylo not to mention who his parents were to his Mum, and spelled out that he needed to not mention it to anyone, but… It was going to get out sooner or later. "I know, Mom. Have for a while."

"Jon," it eases out of her in a shocked breath. "How…" He's never seen her look more hurt. "He killed your father."

"He wasn't even conceived when dad died."

"His mother—"

"Yeah, I know. But Dad got his own back. Or got his own first. Took out Organa's entire planet. Killed her mom and dad, cousins, family, entire royal line, the whole damn planet, right?"

"They were Rebels!"

"And we were Imperials, and there was a huge fucking war on, and a shit ton of people died, Dad and three of Kylo's grandparents among them, and if we keep score for things like that against people who weren't even born, like Kylo and I, all we're going to get is eternal heartache, so stuff it! He didn't kill anyone, not in that war. Dad's not on him. And it's not my fault he doesn't have any grandparents, so just... Leave it!"

"Jon… We lost… Everything…"

His eyes narrow. " _We_ bloody well didn't. And I, personally, didn't lose shit, because I never had it. He was onboard when I was born. We _never_ even saw each other. Yes, I know he was your husband, and if anyone can you look you in the eye and say, _I understand,_ it's me. None of the girls know, but _I do_ , so don't just sit there and look depressed at me. _I get it_. _I know._ And I am telling you, as someone who has chosen to work this closely with this man, that he is worth our respect and alliance. And beyond that, if we're going to have the sort of galaxy where your grandkids and my nephews and nieces don't have to commiserate with us about how bad losing a spouse in some fucking pointless act of intergalactic violence hurts, then you'll throw in behind him, too, and help us to build a functional Empire."

"He's not an Emperor."

"And both of us know that's shit. That's how he's putting it in his mind so he can deal with it, and I don't care if he calls himself The Master or the Lord High Poo-bah of the Order or whatever the else fuck he likes. He's The Emperor, and he's building an Empire, and I'm in. You can be in or not as you see fit, but if you can't bury your hate for his parents, then I can't help you. If you can't bury it, you never get to move forward."

She looks so hurt. "Jon… He's not… They weren't just some random Rebels. His parents, personally, with their own two hands, killed your father."

Jon shakes his head, gets up, pours himself a double shot of vodka, and slams it back. He's much to sober for this conversation. When the burn fades from his throat, he says, "If we're going that route, Lando Calrissian killed him. That's what the history vids showed. Lando's the one who got the shot off that took out the Death Star, and last I checked, he's dead, so everything's all wrapped up neat and tidy."

"Jon…" She sounds so hurt by all of this.

"Mom…" He sighs. "It's not on him. There's a ton of stuff you can put on him, like the entire Hosnian system, but if you're going to do that, it's as much on me as it is on him." He slumps back onto the sofa. "Force, there's so much blood on all of our hands. Hundreds of billions of lives, snuffed out in a heartbeat. And I fucking cheered. Got so wrapped up in it when it was happening. The Force bloody well slapped all of us who did. Starkiller and the _Supremacy_ were wrecked a week later, and most of us died for it.

"We can't… It doesn't erase, or even out, not really. But if we're keeping vendettas going forever, we never get to peace. It never gets better, and… I'm in the better business. You going to join me?"

Her teeth grit.

Jon's almost tempted to mention that Kylo killed his father, and broke his mom's heart by joining the First Order, but… He can just feel that's dirty laundry that doesn't need airing right now, and if that's coming out, it's not coming out of him. Also, more importantly, if this is going to work, his mother's got to get behind Kylo's now, who he is and what he's doing, not the man who burned Leia Organa.

She doesn't say anything, but stands up, ready to go to her own rooms.

"Mom…"

She shakes her head. "We're tired. We'll talk again."

He's fairly sure that means she's going to try and get him out of here again. But, maybe he'll nudge her in the direction he wants, too.

* * *

1/2/2 10:00 Lirium

"You found it?" Jacen asks Magiit as she fiddles with the holo vid system in the cottage he shares with Critt.

"Just about." She waves him off, not being a big fan of people hovering over her while she's doing tech stuff.

It shouldn't be that hard to get recordings of the First Day speeches and news of the Last Night party, especially since Jacen was part of the Order and knows what channels to watch, but… Someone, and Jacen's thinking it might have been Critt's parents, since technically, it's their holo vid comm, put in some sort of blocker, so it doesn't get certain channels, and…

Magiit's been jiggering it for a while.

"They're home, right?"

Jacen clears his mind and gets a feel for the cottage about a half klick down the only road that makes up their settlement on Lirium. "Yeah. Sleeping now."

"Must have been a long day if they're still in bed," Savarah says.

"Maybe they're just celebrating," Elias adds. "You told us they like to _celebrate_ right, Critt?"

Critt holds up his hands. "Not going there. Besides, he said sleeping, not fucking."

"Okay, first off, if I even let my mind get near them and something like that's going on, Ren's going to skin me alive. I am _not_ going there. Second of all, eeewww!" Jacen says.

His four friends all laugh at that. Critt starts shoving some of the stuff off his bed, so they'll all have room to sit and watch. He can feel that Magiit's getting close to done.

"Got it. Force, Critt, your parents were paranoid. They had two thirds of the channels locked down," Magiit says.

"Yeah… Well…" Critt says, flaring angry, sad, and embarrassed. They all pull back from that. Talking about Critt's parents is still something of a sore spot. Savarah lays a hand on his shoulder, and he tilts his hand, rubbing his cheek against it.

Jacen _does not glare._ He does take a deep breath and forces his emotions to behave. Last thing any of them need right now is him getting stupid and jealous.

He, along with the rest of them, crowd onto Critt's bed, and if he's _right next_ to Critt, well, it's a tiny screen. Fairly small bed, too. Right now, it's just a standard news feed. Day to day Order stuff, fairly boring. But eventually it loops around and…

"See, I told you she was beautiful!" Magiit says.

It's footage of Rey and Kylo in a receiving line, greeting people.

"Good Gods," Savarah's got her hand over her mouth, hiding her grin. "He looks like he's expecting someone to pull a knife on her." Protective is just radiating off of Kylo, his arm around Rey, as he nods and she clasps hands.

"No, he does not. Trust me, none of us want to see what he'd actually look like if he thought she was in danger," Jacen says.

"Yeah. I think that's what he thinks a polite smile looks like," Elias says, watching Kylo greet whomever is next in line.

"Okay, to me, that looks like he's baring his teeth," Savarah says.

They see Jon move up, but none of them know who Jon is, so there's rising tension as they see him keep moving closer, and Critt says, "Oh, shit, he's gonna flat out smack that bitch into next week if he doesn't stop crowding in."

But Kylo doesn't. Actually, he relaxes as this strange guy kisses Rey's cheek, and then he lets go of her, taking her hand instead of keeping her pulled to his body.

"Okay, who is that?" Jacen says. "He's got to know that guy."

The other four are nodding. "Well… He's got to know that guy _well._ No way he lets some stranger slobber on Rey," Magiit says.

"Maybe they're friends?" Elias says.

"Do you think he has friends?" Savarah replies.

Jacen nods. "I don't think he's got a lot of them. But he's got Rey, so he's probably got some friends, too."

"Just because you want to be his friend doesn't mean he's got other ones," Critt shoots back at him.

"He got on well enough with you and Ostrae. The man made cookies with you. I think he can do friends," Jacen says back.

They stop bickering as the footage shifts, to the throne room, and the guests mingling. It's a propaganda puff piece. Mostly blathering about how fancy and wonderful everything was. Eventually it heads to the dinner, and they see Rey and Kylo enter. Kylo pulling the chair with his Force. ("Show off," Jacen mutters, planning on whipping that trick out as soon as he can use it properly.) They watch as he waits for Rey to sit, and then sits with her.

"They're so pretty," Savarah says.

Magiit's got a soft look in her eyes, too. "They really are." She looks at the others. "You think they'll let us go along for some of these things?"

That's an idea that's never occurred to any of them, but… "You know," Jacen says. "I mean, we're young, but… not stupidly so. There are probably other young people at these things, and… It's always good to have people who listen, right?"

Elias's eyes light up. "And, maybe… keep people in the right frame of mind. Properly respectful and all."

"Or maybe not. Remember what Poe said about some of his missions, where he'd try to get people riled up to see what they really think. We'd be _so_ good at that," Critt says, looking at Jacen.

"I'm better at talking than listening," Jacen says.

"You're good at both," Magiit replies. "Still… Even I'm good at listening. Even without the Force, you just, pay attention, and… People talk."

"They do," Savarah says. "Back when I was waiting tables, they talked about everything. People like me were just… invisible."

"We get all dressed up; we're not going to be invisible," Elias says.

"Well, some of us might," Critt adds. "Even all dressed up." He smiles a little at that, fairly sure that he can do invisible, or, at least learn how to.

The news shifts, and now it's footage of Ren's First Day Speech. Not the whole thing, just the highlights, which, apparently include him snogging the hell out of Rey at the end.

All five of them are giggling at that.

"Gods, he's like a big, horny puppy!" Savarah says, shaking her head. "So, this is the man that kept half the galaxy petrified?"

"That's _not_ how Finn sees him," Jacen says. He knows Finn avoids him, because, of course, he likes Ren, and Finn doesn't, and he's gotten a good feel for the images/terrors in Finn's mind, so he doesn't blame him for not being Ren's biggest fan, but… It's annoying the man won't get within ten meters of him right now, afraid his affection for Ren will rub off or something.

"I know," Savarah says. "I mean… We watched the Qualee footage, too. So… I know, but…" But they're showing Ren sweeping Rey back into a kiss, again, the voice on the news feed sounding amused and pleased to see that apparent the Master has found a _beloved companion_ and very little is known about Mistress of the Maji Rey, but as they know more, they'll share it.

Loud knocking sounds on Critt's door. Finn's voice. "If you all are done hiding out in here, we've still got the midday meal to get cooked, and greens picked, and the new teaching droid, MX-68, is ready to go, so there are lessons this afternoon…"

And with that, the viewing party breaks up, and the Maji teens head off for their daily chores.

* * *

1/3/2

"Mum…" Orlac Calrissian doesn't hate calls home to his mom. He just enjoys literally everything, including deep root tooth cleanings, more.

"Really, Orry… It's time. It's beyond time. It's-"

"The nine millionth time we've had this conversation. I'm not coming back to the Corporation."

"It's your _home,_ Orry."

"Art is my home, Mum. The Corporation was Dad's home."

His mom sighs.

"What else is up? You aren't calling just to annoy me about the Corporation." She does that six times a year, and it's a good month early for her usual call.

"We found your cousin. Maybe…"

Orlac blinks. He's got six cousins, they run the Corporation, none of them are missing… Except… Gods, he hasn't thought about _him_ in forever. "Ben? You found, Ben?"

"Maybe. Do you pay any attention to the Order out there in your temple to political neutrality?" Her voice is sarcastic. The Calrissian Corp has always been political neutral, not in the explicit way Orlac's school is, but in a more lucrative manner of dealing with anyone and everyone who has the credit to buy their goods and services.

"Not since it ceased to be the First Order and the Resistance fell apart." Though that isn't _strictly_ true. But what his Mum doesn't know about what he does here is… well, pretty much everything about why he's here. It's easier that way.

His mum nods. "Rumor has it, the new Master of the Order, Kylo Ren, was Ben Solo once upon a time."

"Rumor?" he asks.

"The first year celebrations were recently, and a few friends went, and according to them, he told Amelda Long, of the United Federation of Byltheen Systems, that he was Leia Organa's boy."

Orlac blinks. "I remember when Uncle Han came to see if Dad could get him back from Snoke, but…"

Annilie Calrissian nods, again. "It always weighed heavily on him that he turned Han down."

"I know, Mum." Orlac was still at home when Uncle Han and Uncle Chewie, Han frantic, Chewie resigned, came to Lando for help. And he still remembers the weeks they spent, pouring over everything they could find about the First Order, about Snoke, about every scrap of intel they could get. And he remembers the screaming fight between Han and Lando, because, in the end, Lando wouldn't commit his men to it.

"I'm not getting five million men killed to fail at getting your boy back, Han!"

"YOU'VE GOT TO!"

"Go home, Han. Go to Leia. Cry about it with her, and then… I don't know, try writing him a letter or something. He'll come home when he wants to."

"Snoke's not going to let him go!"

Lando's eyes were tired, defeated, and Han's were bright with rage tears. "I know. But the only way he's getting out of there is on his own. There's not a single private army in existence with enough manpower to get him out, and even I don't have the credits to bankroll enough of my competitors to get a force big enough to end the First Order, let alone end it tidy enough to make sure Ben gets out alive." Lando shook his head, laying his hand on Han's shoulder, and Han yanked away, burned by the touch. "It can't be done, old friend."

"Don't give me that 'old friend' shit. You'd do it for Orlac."

Lando had looked away from Han, to Orlac, and said, voice quiet, "I'd want to. But every man with me is someone else's child, and I can't send them off just to get killed for a mission I know I can't succeed at. If we had even a one in a million shot at this, I'd try it, but, we don't."

Later, he pulled Orlac aside, kissed him, and Orlac pulled back, he was fifteen and much too old for petting from his father, especially after that conversation. "When you lead, you need to keep in mind that people are with you because they trust you to value them. They'll go to the ends of the galaxy for you if they think you'll go to the ends of the galaxy for them, but if you go off and get them killed stupidly, you break that trust."

Orlac nodded. "What's Uncle Han going to do?"

Lando had a very sad look in his eyes. "Hopefully, get very, very drunk, and let Chewie make all the real decisions for a while."

"And what are you afraid he's going to do?"

"Try and get Ben back himself."

"Suicide?"

"Yes." He gave Orlac another hug, holding him close.

"Orry…" His mother's voice brings him back to the present.

"Mum?"

"You weren't listening at all, were you?"

"No. I was remembering the last time I saw Uncle Han."

His mom nods at that, understanding. "Orry, it's a rumor, and I don't know if it's true, but… Could you check?"

"How? I don't have ears in the Order." Which is literally true, if not true in spirit.

"No. For as silly as this art stuff is," he sighs, a long, drawn out sound, "I know no one in the galaxy has better eyes than you do. There are recordings of his speech. If it's Ben, you'd recognize him, right?"

"Mum, I haven't seen him since I was twelve."

"Yes, but he was twenty then, so he shouldn't have changed _that_ much."

Orlac sighs, thinking about Ben. He, at least back in the day, had an awfully distinctive face. Between the ears and bone structure, he'd stick out. "I'll look." He turns to the side, fiddles with his holovid player, and pulls up a feed from the Order. The first few views are from far enough away, Orlac can't tell. "The hair is the right color, and the ears are similar. I don't remember Ben being that big, though."

She's also looking at the feed. "He always had those enormous ears. The first time I met him was at our wedding, and he was a little guy with these huge ears poking out from messy black hair."

"It's not messy now." The man in the recording has hair smoothed back into a neat pony tail.

The camera moves in on him as he gets into the speech in earnest. The first thing Orlac notices is the scar. Hard not to. "If it's him, he's worse for the wear."

"Someone tried to cut his face in half."

"Succeeded. Not tried." Watching the man, The Master, the size of him, the glint of his eyes, Orlac adds, "Probably died for it, though." He keeps watching. The voice is familiar. Deeper, but the cadence is right. The shape of the mouth, again, is similar, though the lips are larger now. The nose is wrong. Ben always had what Lando called a schnozz. It was always too big for his face, but it used to be straight and narrow. Granted, given the scar, it's likely that nose has been broken at least once, too. That would certainly account for the skew.

The camera pulls in close. Really close. Orlac pauses the image.

"Same eyes?" Annilee asks.

"Probably. Older, a bit deeper and saggier. The same color." It's the moles that sell Orlac on the idea that this is Ben. "It's him. The moles line up the way they're supposed to." He unpauses the video. He sees Ren extend his hand to the crowd, and then turn, extend his hand to a girl, a girl he hadn't noticed before, and she steps to him, and all of the blood drains out of Orlac's face.

He sits there, stunned and silent, as Kylo Ren kissed the girl he knows as Rey, the girl Chewie brought to him to learn more about the Force, the girl who left him a bit over a year ago, his entire library in hand, and vanished.

He blinks, remembering his one visit to Luke's planet, to his Jedi school, and seeing Ben, who was _Ben_ , who was a Jedi then, and there, now, in his arms is another Jedi… or not Jedi… Force user, and…

One of the things Lando had said to Orlac, a long time ago, well before Ben leaving, well before everything fell apart with his art school and the Corporation and everything…

"If you ever get a bad feeling about something, pay attention to it. More gamblers, pirates, smugglers, and traders owe their lives to listening to that little voice than the best blasters, fastest ships, and deadliest aims."

Orlac is watching, nodding slowly. It's not a bad feeling, but something, in his guts and heart and bones, is screaming, aware that something's shifting, and he feels like, for better or worse, he's supposed to be part of it.

"Orry? Remembering again?"

"Yeah, Mum. You know how Dad used to say, 'Felt like a shadow crept over my grave?'"

"Yeah. It never made any sense, but yes, I remember it."

"I'm feeling it right now."

She looks at him, curious, but he doesn't say any more. He just remembers how, if he'd been the son his parents wanted him to be, he would have been the second Senator from Cloud City. If he'd done what his parents had wanted to, he would have joined the Senate at the age of eighteen, and if he'd done so, he would have been sitting there, on Hosnian Prime, at the ripe old age of twenty, and been blown to dust with the rest of them.

And, here, now, he's wondering if all of this truly did happen for a reason, and if he's here, now, because in the not wildly distant future, Calrissian and Solo are, again, going to make some history.

* * *

Hey All, and welcome back. Happy Holidays! So, we're gearing back up again. This time I'm going to be slowing down, at least for now, on the update cycle. Probably once a week, maybe a little bit less, and likely on Saturdays and Sundays. I hope you all enjoy what's coming up!


	2. The Plan

1/2/2

00:55 _The Supremacy_

"So, now what?" Frakes says to Kylo and Rey as they wander back to the party, looking… refreshed. He's got the sense they may have found their own blind corner, somewhere. He's not going to ask.

Rey yawns, a wide, tired, near jaw-dislocating inhale/exhale. (Or maybe they're so tired they've come round through the other side.)

Kylo wants to yawn, but that takes more energy than he wants to spend. "Sleep. You sleep. We sleep. We're off tomorrow. You're off tomorrow, the day after, and the day after that as well. And then, back to it again."

Rey's leaning against Kylo. "Dinner. Tomorrow or the day after. A real dinner. At our place."

"You, us, Poe." Kylo nods at that. "The first meeting of the Order of the Maji."

Jon chuckles a bit at that. "Even if I'm not Maji?"

"You can be the Order bit. Poe'll be the Maji, and we'll meet in the center," Kylo says.

"But not tonight. Sleeping, now," Rey adds, pulling them back to Lirium, where, finally, the day ends.

* * *

09:25 1/2/2

In the morning, at breakfast, as they're drinking their coffee and eating some spiced porridge, Rey says, "Just Jon?"

Kylo nods. "Right now, just Jon. And… I can't tell you why, other than that's just how it feels. Kinear and Schiff, and Ellie, I know they're part of this game, somehow, but… Not here, not this time."

"But Poe?"

He nods. "Yeah. Poe's supposed to be here, and… honestly, I think Rose is, too, but I don't think she'd come to this, yet."

"I can ask her. Mirina more or less ordered her to be at the next Order shindig, all fancied up, and playing the game."

Kylo laughs. "How'd that go over?"

"I don't think she's sold on the idea. But I'll ask if she wants to come to some of the smaller, just us gatherings."

"I'd appreciate it."

"So, Rose? But not Finn?"

He shrugs. "Maybe I'm just more comfortable with her. Or maybe I already know he'll turn it down flat? How does it feel to you?"

Rey skirts that, fairly sure both are true. "Poe and Jon…" She half-smiles. "How much of this is that they're commanders we trust, and how much of it is both of us hoping they'll like each other?"

"For right now, I'm sticking with commanders we trust." There's a spark in his eye, though.

Rey sips her coffee, and takes another bite of the porridge. Then she lays her cheek against his shoulder and her hand on his. "I think, feel… part of us balancing is _this._ " She looks to their home, and them, her in a robe, him in a loose pair a trousers, blanket wrapped around his shoulders, both of them planning on finishing eating, and then going back to bed for a very lazy day of napping and just _being_ with each other. "And, I know there are religions out there where sex and love and… this… is part of it. Where they think those are good things that… whichever god, gave us, and as such, we're supposed to seek these things out, and enjoy them."

He adds just a bit more salt to his porridge. "Would have been nice if the Jedi had felt that way."

"Yeah. But… We don't have to be Jedi, and I think we can feel that way, and… Having a home and love and sex and good things, pleasure and comfort," she eyes the porridge, seasoned the way he likes it, eaten for enjoyment and nourishment "and someone whose body cherishes yours," he lays his free hand on her thigh, "and… And I think the Maji get to have that and encourage it."

He smiles at that. "So, the Maji will have some opinions on _communing._ "

"At least to the degree that it's a good thing that we should encourage."

"I can get behind that. And possibly drag Jon into it."

She laughs at that. And then yawns. "Later. We're eating and going back to bed."

He stretches a bit, and also yawns. "Yeah."

* * *

14:58 1/2/2

Later, after a quiet nap, and quiet sex, a quick lunch, and another quiet nap, when they're both under the blankets, spooned together, warm and relaxed, Rey says, "I think pleasure matters. If we believe that our feelings matter, that they're real and valid and important, then… this…" she floods him with all that she's feeling right now, not just the warm, mental contentment of them, together, but also the sensation of clean, soft sheets, and his hair silky and warm, his skin, the faint hint of cologne still on it from the day before, the pleasant thrum of his breath against her neck, and how _good_ all of that makes her feel.

He smiles against her shoulder, lifting up a bit so he can see her face more easily, and she rolls to her back, to kiss him gently.

"I think this _matters._ That, feeling like this… This is part of the balance. Bad, horrible things are going to happen to us, and we can't avoid it. We'll hurt, that's just part of being alive, so we shouldn't deny ourselves time like this."

He kisses her, lips gliding over hers. There's a warm, sated pleasure in that. Neither of them are particularly interested in anything erotic right now, but the touch still feels good.

When he pulls back, he says, "Shall we be hedonists, then?"

She doesn't know what that word means, and he catches it, so fills in the blanks. Rey nods, and then says, "Tasha and Mirina know that we're intending to hit Canto Bight at some point, and Tasha mentioned that she thought it was tacky. The sort of place for people who just wanted to burn credits."

He's listening, but, he's never been to Canto Bight, and would assume any sort of casino is about burning credits. Maybe earning some, too, but for most of the people going, it's just an expensive way to have fun.

She can feel his thought on that, and goes on. "There's burning credits and burning credits. Apparently Canto is about showing off how little they mean to you, and how many of them you're willing to set on fire. They've got a drink with gold flakes in it."

"Why?" Kylo asks, not getting that at all.

Rey has a little naughty smile as she says, "Apparently so you can shit gold after. You can't taste it. It doesn't make the drink any better, just more expensive."

Kylo sniggers. "I take it Lady Frakes has opinions on that."

"I'm not sure if she did, but Tasha does. She'd rather get a better drink. And I think that's what I'm meaning by pleasure. Things we can actually, tangibly enjoy. Not fancy for the sake of fancy. But…" she smiles, "like your white shorts, fancy for the sake of genuinely feeling better."

He nuzzles against her shoulder. "That feels right to me."

"Good. Let's see if anyone else likes it."

Kylo yawns and stretches. He's not sleepy, but just being here, with nothing else to do, feels really good. "Tomorrow."

She nuzzles against him. "Tomorrow."

* * *

1/3/2

"You're back!" Rose says when Rey finds her out behind the microfarms, messing with the water pump.

"I'm back." Rose is brushing the snow off the connection between the pump and the waterline. "Problems?"

"The flats are getting dry. Which means we're not getting the water flow through we need, and…" Rose looks around. Snow, so much snow. "So, the question is, where's the freeze? In the pump? In the pipes…"

"Is any water moving?"

"A little. Everything is still damp, but not as wet as it should be."

"Great. Uh… Give me a moment." Rey heads into the microfarm, where Opal, Torine, Cassie, and Xanth are all, by hand, watering the plants, grumbling about how the damn water's practically frozen by the time they get it to the microfarm, and waiting for it to thaw back out once it's in here is annoying.

"Snow," Rey says. "Pack the snow into balls or rods, and then lay it on the dirt where the plants aren't, we don't want them to freeze, and then it'll melt and water the plants, and you don't have to lug so much liquid water around."

The kids listen to that, nod, and head off to make snowballs.

Rey goes to the main water valve, and sees if she can get a feel for the flow of the water. It takes a moment, but she can. It's just easing on in, flowing freely enough here, because inside the farm is warm, but she can feel the constriction, outside… All the way to the lake.

She goes back to Rose, shaking her head. "The pipes aren't deep enough. It's frozen all along the line."

Rose growls quietly. "I was afraid of that."

"Solutions?"

"Keep the water running. It won't freeze solid if it's moving. Dig deeper, under the frost line. Find some sort of heater to keep the water warm enough it won't freeze in the pipes." Rose looks out toward the lake. "Granted, none of that will matter at all if the water freezes deeper than the intake."

Rey groans. "Come on." They head toward the lake, which these days is just a flat, smoothed over bit of snow amid the gently rolling hills of snow.

"So, how'd it go?" Rose asks as they trudge toward the lake.

Rey knows what _it_ Rose is talking about. "It was… Not bad. Tiring. Stupidly tiring."

It's clear that doesn't make any sense to Rose, and Rey shakes her head. "I know, _stupidly._ We're not really doing anything, but… It's just _long._ "

"But it wasn't bad?"

"It wasn't bad. I didn't make a fool out of myself. I got to meet some interesting people, and a few crashing bores. The food, once we got to have some, was good."

"Once?"

"We spent three hours saying hello to people, and you don't get to eat when you do that."

"Ughk." Rose winces at that idea.

"Yeah. How about Finn? Did he properly appreciate you?"

Rose sniggers a little, a warm glow lighting her cheeks and eyes. "He seemed to approve of the hair and makeup. And Ren? He was looking awfully appreciative."

Rey laughs at that. "He did appreciate. And both of us would have liked some alone time to have done something about it, but, apparently, if you're the host of one of these things, you don't get to just wander off." She shakes her head. "It's so scheduled you barely have time to pee."

Rose winces. "So, you don't get to eat, you don't get to pee, you don't have time with your sweetie… This doesn't sound like anything I ever want to do."

"And I do not blame you, at all. Though, for that matter, I don't think we're doing it like that, again, either."

"So… you're not going to dragoon me into Mirina's plans?"

They're at the pump in the lake, both of them having walked, easily, onto the ice. Rose and Rey both kneel, and begin to shift the snow out of the way. The only good thing about the snow on the lake is that it's fairly shallow. Mostly because the lake is flat and the wind can just whip the snow right off of it.

Still, shallow means a third of a meter deep, so Rey and Rose are brushing it aside as Rey says, "I have a feeling fancy gatherings will happen in the future, but the ones we host, we'll keep them to fewer people, more private, more casual. And anything you ever want to come to, you, and Finn, if he ever wants it, have a standing invite, courtesy of," her voice goes a little sharp and sarcastic, "The Mistress of the Maji."

"Ooo… Mistress Rey… How fancy," Rose says with a grin and a little shove.

Rey rolls her eyes, and brushes away more snow. "You got a laser probe?"

"Of course."

Rey doesn't have to say it. Rose sets the tip flush to the ice, and a moment later, they've got the reading. "Shit," Rose says.

Rey nods. "Has it been a full month since we buried it last?"

"Barely." She scowls at the reading. Part of why the water is sluggish is because the ice has almost covered over the intake. "Finn and Poe sunk the intake a meter under the ice line a month ago."

Rey rubs her eyes. "We can drill, and sink a heater under there, but…"

"But if it keeps getting colder, we're going to end up with a little melted out bubble in the ice, and no water."

Rey nods. "We've got to sink it deeper. Likely the pipes, too."

Rose grits her teeth. "Rey…"

"I know." They don't have the equipment to do that, not now. And getting it won't be cheap and quick. They can do one or the other, but not both.

"Laser drill, a 4867 Krinaa, my dad used to run a crew on one of them. They use them for precision deep mining operation. We don't need a huge hole, just one deep enough to get under the frost line."

"One that can dig deep enough to find where the frost line is," Rey adds.

And Rose nods. "Finn's not thrilled with the idea of Mistress Rey." Which is a 'round about way of bringing up the fact that they _both_ know who can lay hands on that sort of drill, fast and easy.

"Yeah. I figured. And… It was… easier than I was expecting it to be. And it matters. And I should do it. But _I'm_ not thrilled with Mistress Rey, so there's no reason why he should be, either." Though that wasn't exactly, completely true, and apparently it shows on her face.

Rose raises an eyebrow at her.

Rey rolls her eyes. "Fine. Uh… The speech, did you watch that?"

"Yeah. A bunch of the kids did, too."

"Okay. Uh… The clapping and cheering part was nice. And… After we walked around the _Supremacy_ and just talked to people, and… A lot of them… are really excited… in a good way… about me."

"What kind of good?"

"Everything from," she sniggers a bit at this, a bunch of Order members would have just _died_ if they knew that Rey and Kylo could feel what they were thinking, "'Thank the Force someone signed up to fuck that man, he's been so much calmer ever since,'" Rose starts laughing loudly enough that it echoes across the snow, "to 'she's so pretty,' to just wanting a queen, to… ideas of how this sort of thing is supposed to work, and apparently a lot of them have a queen shaped hole in their idea of how a state works, and they're happy to shove me into it."

"I thought that when I saw you all dressed up, too. You look like… The Mistress, or Empress, or Queen, or whatever. You look like you belong."

Rey shrugs. "I don't really feel like it, but… I was so ready to mess up every which way, and have them all staring and laughing, or condescending and judging, so a bunch of them looking at me with starry eyes, wondering how big the wedding will be and if they'll get off time for the celebration, that was a welcome change."

Rose smiles at that. "So, it wasn't bad."

"It wasn't bad. But… It's different." Rey's never felt particularly afraid of screwing up this part of being Mistress Rey, though. But… now she's not sure. Because there is an obvious answer to how to get that drill and take care of their water problem. Still… is that moving in the right direction, or away from it… "I'm not thrilled about having Mistress Rey ask for a laser drill, but…"

Rose nods. "By the time Chewie can find one, we won't have water. And, not to put too fine a point on it, but Dad didn't just grab one of those drills and use it on day one. He spent years training on them so he could do the job right."

"Yeah," Rey replies, looking around at the settlement they built. "Fuck."

"Rey?"

She shakes her head. So much for not being sure. "I can feel it shifting. Merging." She pulls The Order of the Maji symbol out from under her shirt. "It's not going to let me keep doing this, going on our own. The Force… wants this, and getting there means I've got to… ask for help."

Rose flashes her a _get over yourself_ sort of look. "Asking your husband for help shouldn't be a big deal."

Rey rolls her eyes in return. "Asking _Kylo_ to help dig this out, isn't. Yeah, I hate piling anything else onto his plate, but between his saber and my staff, and rigging a few shipstones into some serious heaters, we can likely get a quick fix in that'll last—"

"Not long enough."

Rey's nodding. "Asking Master Ren for a drill, and some people to use it, and maybe a few to help relay the pipes, fast, so we don't have more than a day or two without water, is different."

Rose nods. "It is." And Rey can feel her seeing Lirium with Order men on it. She can feel Rose's shudder, the memory of when the First Order showed up in Hays Minor still bright in her mind. She can feel Rose's sense of Finn's reaction to a collection of Order men showing up, and her second-hand fear on his behalf. And through all of that, she can feel Rose's practicality, as well. No water means they have to leave. It means the end of their settlement. It means twenty-two kids suddenly going homeless. "Finn and Chewie are going on a run the day after tomorrow."

"You want me to time it for when they aren't here?"

"Yeah. Make it easier for everyone involved."

Rey inclines her head a bit. That's one way to deal with it. "Are you going to tell him it's happening?"

Rose glares at the lake, and the heavy gray clouds on the horizon, and the promise of even more snow, soon. "I won't not tell him."

"Rose… are you sure…"

"No. Fuck… We'll talk. We need water. We're not set to do it fast enough just on our own. We've got, maybe," Rey can feel Rose thinking through the math, how cold it'll have to get, or stay, to send the ice the handful of centimeters deeper, and shut off their water intake. "three days before the waterline is frozen solid. Less if it gets even colder. And if Finn and Chewie go looking for a drill, in three days they _may_ have found a one, so, get it set on your end, and if this is the Force shoving the Order and the Maji together, then maybe it's time for Finn and I to go back to living on the _Falcon_."

Rey nods, understanding, but she adds, "It won't be home, not really, without you three here."

Rose nods, too. "I know. It won't be home without water, either. Get it set. I'll talk with him. You will, too. But we need water, so, get it set."

"I will." Rey half smiles. "So… uh… We're having dinner at our place tonight. Poe, Kylo and I, and Jon,"

"The Floof?" She only saw Jon for a few minutes, long enough to see he had the same sort of smirk on his face that she had on hers at getting to spend a minute watching the Rens in each other's company.

"Don't call him that." Rey doesn't exactly know what that word means, she doesn't think Rose does, either, but she's sure it's not a compliment.

"His sister calls him that."

"And he intentionally lives on the far side of the galaxy from her."

"Okay, so, the four of you, and…"

"You and Finn and Paige if you want to come. We're going to try to figure out what the Order of the Maji is and does, and… You're part of it."

Rose shakes her head. "Not yet. Let's see if we can get him to stick around when you've got a few storm troopers drilling here."

Rey can feel Rose's image. She shakes her head. "They only wear the armor when they're fighting now."

"Well, that's something. He won't, if he sees them, immediately flash back to any of the fights."

"Hopefully."

Rose shakes her head, and then looks back to the microfarms. "In the meantime, let's get some insulating blankets over the water pumps. It likely won't help much, but it'll stave off freezing solid for a bit longer."

"Yeah, lets. Stick a heater or two under there with them, keep the water moving a little easier."

* * *

Kylo heads back to the _Supremacy_ for just two things that day: Jon and supper.

He's standing in front of Jon's rooms, waiting for him to come to the door, getting looked at, curiously, by the few people walking down the hall.

Apparently, Masters don't linger outside their friend's room waiting for the door? Or maybe they don't have friends? Or maybe he's got his hair pulled back in a messy half-pony tail, wearing his casual, really casual, at home, bumming around, one-step-above-pajamas (and the only reason he's not wearing pajamas is that he doesn't have any on Lirium, and considers it something of a point of pride that since he's been with Rey, the ones in his drawer on the _Supremacy_ have stayed in that drawer.) clothing, which is, among other things, not all black. The person who walked by a good thirty seconds ago now was mostly just trying to figure out if it was really him.

After all, the scar is really distinctive, but… not black. Not formal. Not… _The Master._

The door opens, and Kylo steps into Jon's rooms and rapidly notices something. Jon's also in his casual clothing. Kylo's bumming around at home clothing is a pair of loose slacks, a long sleeve undershirt, and a sweater, wooly socks, and boots. (And when he gets home, it's likely he toss a blanket over his shoulders, too.)

He's seen Jon's casual clothing before. He just didn't… put it together with the idea that he'd wear it. Jon's in a light, mid-arm length, button down, with several undone buttons, and light trousers, and shoes, and if he's got socks on, Kylo can't see them.

Which means, once he gets to Lirium, he's going to freeze.

"Do you have… A coat or sweater or jacket or something?" Kylo asks once he gets to that conclusion.

"Why? We're going to be inside, right?"

"Probably, especially if you don't have any warmer clothing. But if you want to see the settlement, you're going to want more clothing. It's winter, with a vengeance, by the local calendar."

Jon heads into his room to change, not bothering to shut the door behind him. "What's _with a vengeance_ mean?" he asks as he begins undoing his belt.

"Snow's past my knees, and with the heaters on full blast, and the oven on, we can get it to just about 18 inside our house."

"Oh." Kylo can hear him rummaging around in there. Then sigh. "I'd been hoping not to wear my uniform, but the greatcoat is going to look stupid as hell with just my usual lounging around wear."

"Wear what makes you happy. Literally no one will care. Everyone on Lirium is dressing to stay warm."

A few moments later, Jon's out of his room, in his full uniform, including his gloves. "Better," Kylo says. "So, ready to go?" He holds out his hand.

Jon takes it, gingerly.

Kylo waits for him to nod, and _then_ ports him to his home on Lirium.

* * *

The second time porting is a bit less bizarre than the first. It doesn't feel like much of anything. It would probably be less creepy and disorienting if he felt like he had moved, but, he doesn't. One minute he was in his rooms, and now… Jon looks around, "You weren't kidding about not all black."

Kylo rarely thinks about their home. It just is. Rey set it up, and she was here, so that's all it needed for him. But, it's a really _her_ space. The walls, floors, furniture, appliances, all of it is in light, creamy colors. A splash of blue in the one chair, little wreathes of prairie grass she made, circles of gray-green, rapidly going grayer by the day. Pretty much everything else is white, ecru, cream, or eggshell.

The window sills are black, and the metal keeping the transteel panes in place are black, but besides a few blankets that have wandered over from the _Supremacy_ and some tools, nothing else is black.

Kylo nods at him. "Get comfy. I'll be back in a second." And then he's gone.

A moment, later, in which Jon just looks around, and wonders where Rey is, Kylo's back with a tray with three bowls on it. "I'm generally in charge of dinner."

"You mean the cooking crew on the _Supremacy_ is in charge of dinner."

Kylo half-inclines his head, and tucks the food into the cooker.

"So, who's here for supper?"

"Us, Rey, and Poe."

"Tell me more about Poe," Jon says as he looks out the windows to the tiny settlement around them. From the kitchen window, he can't see much of it. Most of the development is on the other side of their home. The dome of the chapel is visible, only because it's got a coating of ice and snow on it, and the stable they built for the Faviers is also in view. The lake is technically in view, except it's just a flat expanse of snow among somewhat less flat expanses of snow. All of it is tinged greeny-brown by the green sun setting.

Jon's never seen so much nothing in his life. He's fairly sure that he could stay here for about three days before he went stark, raving insane.

"He's a pilot. The son my mother wanted but didn't get."

Jon blinks, looking away from Lirium toward Kylo. "Wow… that's… bitter."

Kylo half-shrugs. "He's not much older than I am. Looks, at least in description, similar: pale skin, dark hair, dark eyes. No one's who's ever seen both of us is going to mistake one of us for the other, but..." Jon nods. He understands the concept being explained. "He acts a bit like my dad, a lot of the same attitude. Same loves. It's not his fault that she wanted a little Han and got… me. I'm not annoyed at him for it."

"Uh huh." Jon raises an eyebrow at that. He knows a lie when he hears one, and that one's a whopper.

" _Now._ I'm not annoyed, at him, now."

That sounds true. "Better. So…"

"He was on her personal protection detail when they were with the New Republic. He followed her to the Resistance."

"Which you would have done if you could have?"

Kylo doesn't actually know that, but… "I like to think it would have worked that way. If… we'd had anything approaching a functional relationship. If I'd been a pilot or politician instead of a Jedi." His voice is very soft as he says, "If she fucking _asked._ " His voice goes back to normal as he says, "As for Poe, between us killing the higher ups off, and his own talents, he ended the war Admiral Dameron, second-in-command of the Resistance."

"How much of each?" Jon asks, as Rey opens the door and walks in, a whirl of snow and frigid air following her.

He shivers at that; Kylo's not kidding about winter with a vengeance, and he's less fussed about changing into his full uniform. He feels stupidly formal with it on, here in Kylo and Rey's home, where both of them are in their casual clothing, but it's also _cold_. And as the man who approved the specs on the Order greatcoats, he knows that they were designed for two things, to look great, and keep you comfortable in a _wide_ range of temperatures.

"Jon!" She puts two bowls down on the table, then walks to him, and gives his hands a gentle squeeze.

"Rey."

He watches her greet Kylo with a warm kiss, and then head to the bedroom to take her over coat off. He doesn't miss that she keeps her jacket and scarf on.

"Didn't you tell me you'd gotten better insulation and heaters?" Jon asks when Rey comes back.

She sighs. "We got both. And for a good two weeks it was great, and then the temperature dropped twenty-five degrees overnight, and now what used to be our low temperatures are our high temperatures, and…" She shakes her head. "The Kennas said that it was going to get _cold_ and it looks like they're right."

"Hopefully though, this is as bad as it gets. There's two suns for this planet, and the blue one's gone from the sky round the clock now, so… Hopefully, this is dead of winter, and from here, it'll just get warmer," Kylo adds.

Both he and Rey can read the look on Jon's face, which most readily translates into: _You were insane enough to put a settlement on a planet_ before _doing a full climate survey?_

Rey shrugs a bit. "No one else is here, and it was summer when I got here, so…" She changes the subject, "You're looking perkier than the last time I saw you."

They hear the knocking on the door that means Poe's here.

Kylo goes to get the door, opening it, letting Poe in, as Jon says, "Yeah, well, _someone_ was working my ass off, and _someone_ finally gave me enough time to actually sleep, see my friend, have a decent meal and conversation with her, sleep some more, and then a bit more, and finally get up, eat again, see her again, and start to feel like a real human."

Rey's sniggering at that, as Poe pulls off his overcoat, looks around at the lack of places to hang a coat, and then drapes it on the basket near the door, and Kylo says, "Jon Frakes, this is Poe Dameron."

Jon turns, smiles at him, pleasant enough, and extends his hand. Poe nods, works off his gloves, and takes it. Jon can see Poe's a little wary, likely because of the uniform, but he has a good, strong, defensive nothing-bothers-me look in place. He doesn't hold Jon's hand a second longer than necessary, though.

Jon says, half to Kylo, half to Poe, "We don't do titles here?"

Poe rolls his eyes. "These days, just Poe. Master Poe of the Maji, if you're feeling formal." It's clear he's eyeing Jon's uniform, wondering how big a deal _formal_ is to Lt. Colonel Frakes.

"And before?" Jon asks. Kylo can feel that matters to him, he's getting a sense for how _Resistance_ Poe is.

"Commander. That was the only one I had that ever mattered. All of the fancy ones came after we were so short on people as to make them meaningless. You?"

"I've been told I'll be a Grand Marshall as soon as I wish to claim it," he's looking at Kylo as he says it.

"Fancy," Poe says, with a smirk, also looking at Kylo. "Last guy I knew who was jonesing for a Grand Marshall didn't like me much."

Jon raises an eyebrow. "I'm not sure _jonesing_ would be the word. If it was, I'd likely already have the title."

Poe nods, and seems to radiate, _fair enough_ though he doesn't say it.

Jon's thinking over what they just said, and then asks Kylo, "Master Poe, Master Ren… Is that your formal title as a Maji?"

"I'm Master Kylo, or just Kylo here, depending on which of the little boogers is talking to me. The Master part…" Kylo sighs a bit. "That's my Jedi rank, and… I kept it when I formed the Knights of Ren, and apparently kept it when we became the Order."

Poe's staring at him. "So… you actually got to Jedi Master?"

"Yeah, by the end there were three of us. Luke, Tash, and I."

"What happened to Tash?" Poe asks, and it's fairly clear Jon's thinking it.

Kylo rubs his lips together, uncomfortable radiating off of him. He answers anyway, "I was better with a lightsaber than she was."

That lands with a thud, everyone catching and radiating Kylo's uncomfortable back at him. Finally, Poe says, "Here, I'm Poe, and she's Rey."

"Not Mistress of the Maji?" Jon asks.

"Not here." She looks to their table. "Come on, eating to go with talking." They sit down, each settling in front of a plate.

Kylo grabs the bowls out of the cooker, and both Poe and Jon would have to admit, levitating them out of the oven and pulling them over to sit on the table certainly _looks_ impressive. Once they're settled, Kylo says, "Pretty informal manners here. Just grab it, put some on your plate, and pass it along if it's not in easy reach." As he reaches for the bowl of pickled radishes and carrots, takes some, he says, "I see we're finally starting to get some produce from the microfarms," and then passes them to Rey.

Poe nods, then says to Jon, "Greens come in fast. We've had them for a while." And there is a bowl of greens on the table, too. And as Poe mentions them, a bottle of dressing wanders, by itself, out of the cooler. Jon's not sure if Rey or Kylo did it, but it probably doesn't matter. It's, gratifying probably isn't the right word, but it's close, that Poe also stops speaking to watch it happen. Jon's glad he's not the only one who still goggles at seeing things like this.

When Kylo takes the dressing, kisses Rey's shoulder, says, "Thanks," and both of the non-Force users know how the dressing got to the table, Poe continues, "Radishes and carrots… Yesterday was the first day we had any ready to go. We're not self-sufficient here, yet, but we hope to be at some point."

Jon looks out the window again, but it's not like he can see much. The suns are down, so all he's got is the reflection of the four of them. "So, you've got farms. And children. And… Is this a monastery?"

Poe sniggers at that idea. More at the idea of him being a monk than this place being a monastery. "Uh… Not like any I've seen."

"It's similar to where I was raised, and you could likely call that a monastery if you liked. There's the Maji… Which is…" Kylo's looking to Rey.

"Maybe a philosophy, or possibly a religion, and don't ask me where exactly to draw the line between those things because even with reading as much as I can get my hands on for more than a year, I just don't know. It's…" She takes a drink. "The Force is real. I… back up… Were you raised in any faith or… How'd you start with this stuff?" she asks Jon.

Jon sighs a little, putting a serving of veggies on his plate, and greens, and there are noodles and some sort of biscuits, so, he has a bit of each of them, and then takes the jug that Poe passes over and pours whatever that is into his cup. (Pear cider, non-alcoholic, he'll find out once he takes a drink.)

"If my family had any faith, it was the Empire, which fell shortly after I was born. We didn't attend religious services, and… My mother never had anything kind to say about Jedi, but we knew they were a thing and the Force was real. We knew Palpatine has some sort of Force magic, but wasn't a Jedi."

"Sith," Kylo says. "The Jedi were the light side, the Sith, supposedly only two of them at a time, were the dark."

"Why only two?" Poe asks.

Rey replies, "I think it helped to concentrate power, and it made sure you only had to watch your back against one person. The Apprentice kills his Master, and becomes the Master, then takes a new Apprentice. Only one way for the Sith to move up."

"My sister used to say that if Vader had done his job, we'd have never ended up with the fall of the Empire. I didn't realize it was literally his job," Jon says.

Kylo shrugs a bit, eating a bite of radish. "According to Luke, he did, in the end. Vader threw Palpatine into the power reactor for the Death Star. Just… Too late to save the Empire or himself."

Jon inclines his head, skeptical of that story. "Yeah, we all learned it that way, but… If you grew up in an Empire household… I mean… Vader wouldn't do that. He had a million chances to turn on the Emperor and didn't, so… No. Meanwhile, if Skywalker is going to be _Skywalker,_ he's pretty much got to tell the story that way, so…"

Poe blinks in shock at that idea. He's never even thought of doubting the story of Luke Skywalker marching into the hands of Vader and turning him from the dark side by the power of hope and selfless love.

Kylo shrugs a bit. He's fairly sure Luke's version of the story is true. But he's also aware of how slippery true can be in the hands of a Jedi.

And Rey's just shaking her head, _no_ at Jon.

Jon makes a noncommittal sound, takes another sip of his drink, and says, "And to get back to your question, Rey, my mother, she'll, occasionally, make snide comments about the only way anyone could have taken down the Empire was with dirty tricks and magic, so, that's about all the 'religion' or philosophy I grew up with."

"Does she still feel that way?" Rey asks.

"Get enough alcohol into her, and she'll still admit it. Granted, it's probably been a decade since she's had that much to drink." He shakes his head a bit. "We lived in Imperial City. She was an intimate of the Emperor's Mistress. Many of her clients and friends were well-placed in the Empire. They played the political game; their fathers, husbands, brothers, and sons served in the Imperial military. My father was a Major, on the rise. Lt. Colonel was coming soon, once the Death Star was finished… Our lives, business, everything, was tied to the Empire. When it fell, she was able to recover faster than most, but… It hurt, bad, and it hurt everyone she loved."

Poe's just watching this, because he's never actually seen anyone who was an Imperial. Obviously, they had to exist, but… In the world he was raised in they were all shadowy figures hidden behind white masks or gray uniforms. Not a mild, nice-looking guy sitting across from him, sipping on a cider. Not… people.

"What happened to your father?" Poe asks.

"Stationed on the Second Death Star." He shrugs a bit. "All hands lost." He shrugs at that, too. "At least, as best we know, not like we got a visit from the Grays."

Jon can tell none of them know what that means.

"According to mom, before the first Death Star went up, and there were just too many to handle, if your kin was killed in the service of the Empire, two members of the special services division would come to your home. In head to toe gray dress robes. If anyone saw them… People would get out of their way, and pray they weren't going to their homes. After the Death Star… They tried, but the backlog was so deep…" Jon shrugs at that. "Anyway, if Dad made it off, he never came home." He nods to Poe. "How about you? Church of the Force, or something like that growing up?"

"We weren't formal members, but… You couldn't grow up in the Rebellion and not at least acknowledge the Force."

Jon thinks about that for a moment, taking another sip of his drink, and then says, "And… Your Rebel pedigree goes back as far as my Imperial one, right? If the Force is serious about this balance thing… That would… work, right?"

Poe nods. "Mom fought in the battle of the Endor… Second Death Star."

Jon's cup is at his lips, but he lowers it to ask, "Survived?"

"Sort of." Poe glares at the universe in general. "She lived for another six years after. Any human who was too close to the Death Star when it went got sick, eventually. Even with the shielding on the ships… Too much radiation. They got cancer. Some faster, some slower. If you got the right kind, and noticed it soon enough, and let the med droids cut enough of your body off, you might survive… longer. She didn't have the right kind, and didn't notice it soon enough, and by the time we knew that cough was a real problem, not just a cold, there was nothing the droids could do."

"I'm sorry."

Poe nods. "Me, too." He takes a drink. "I mean, about your dad. I don't have any use for Imperials, but, it still sucks to lose a father."

Jon half inclines his head. "Thank you, and… I appreciate it." He takes another bite. "So, no real religion or philosophy for me. Pattern making, dress making, parties, my mom trying to get me married off to any suitable woman who'd have me, since none of them would, she booted me out of the house as soon as the First Order was a going concern in Coruscant. And it's not like they ever had any real philosophy. Do the job, do it well, follow orders, and that was that."

"It was just a job to you?" Poe asks. Again, with the exception of Kylo, who he's thinking wasn't an 'average' member of the First Order, he doesn't actually know anyone who was, voluntarily, a member.

Jon half shrugs. "Not just. I certainly didn't mind the idea of bringing law to the galaxy and an end to the Civil Wars, but… Mostly, it was just a job. They needed armor, to spec, under budget, sourced from beginning to end, rolled out for a force of more than twenty million, so I made it." He sees the derision on Poe's face. That gets another shrug. "Things may have been different in other areas, but in Tactical Design, there were a lot of people with very specialized skills who couldn't find work elsewhere because the Military of the New Republic wouldn't hire ex-Imperials, or their kids. Most local militaries wouldn't, either, because they didn't want to risk upsetting the New Republic. So, no legitimate work for people like me. Not to design uniforms, not to test armor, or design ships, or weapons, or… Lots of practical experience, but we were untouchables, something about _conflicts of loyalties,_ and 'not another Galen Erso,' so…"

It's the delivery that gets to Rey. Jon's just explaining it, like he would if he were going over how to lay out a seam.

"That's how Kinear joined, too," Kylo adds. "The New Republic couldn't convict him of war crimes. He didn't break any of the rules of war, and was on the other side of the galaxy from the Death Stars, so they couldn't blame them on him, but even when the wars heated up, they wouldn't give him a command, so…"

Jon nods. In the kind of work he did, a _lot_ of people joined for that reason. Then he looks up at Poe. "People don't enjoy starving, especially if they have useful skills other people will pay for." His voice is still dry, but it's sharp, too. He smirks a bit, "But I suppose you'd know something about that, being Commander Poe of the Resistance and not the Navy of the New Republic."

Poe takes a determined bite of his noodles. "Unlikely. I was Captain Dameron of the Navy of the New Republic, personally assigned to Senator Organa's protection detail. I left, for a cause, to do the right thing, with her." He takes another bite. "I was never good with just going along to get along."

"Oh." Jon looks at Kylo. "Until about a year ago, that's all I was doing. My private life gave me meaning. My public life was just a way to keep the private life going." He takes a bite of his biscuit. "I think that's how most people work… At least where I was. Is that… not how the Resistance… or the New Republic… worked?"

Poe sighs, and Kylo glares. Both of them thinking of the New Republic. Poe's the one who answers, first. "Just getting along wasn't… at least in my experience, a thing among the Resistance. You had to seek us out, know someone who knew someone, and… That's not the sort of thing the complacent join. The fact that we were officially 'extra-legal' to the New Republic, and enemies of the First Order meant you didn't join us unless you were _motivated._ Unless you were willing to die for it.

"The New Republic was different."

"Stagnant, weak, a snake eating its own tail," Kylo says, and looks a little surprised when Poe goggles at that. He rolls his eyes a little. "She didn't talk to me a lot, not about that, but I could feel her frustrations with it when we did. And she did talk to Luke, and I could feel those, too."

Poe half inclines his head. "Chaotic is the term I'd have used. Every system, sometimes every planet, a few dozen mega corps, and cities, all had representation, and they were all their for their own best good, and none of them really agreed about what they wanted to see happen, and to avoid another Palpatine, anything that was going to effect the whole galaxy needed a 3/4th majority, and… Nothing ever happened.

"We had our military, and any 'member' could use it defensively, in theory, but an attack required 3/4ths majority, and even with the First Order eating the rim worlds, we couldn't get enough of the vote to do it."

"Why not?" Rey asks. To her this should have been a really obvious move.

"Every member had to provide ships and troops, every member had to pledge resources to keep those ships flying and men fed, and every one of those ships and troops wasn't going to be on their home world, protecting them from… whatever else was out there."

"And the First Order wasn't the only threat in the galaxy," Kylo adds. "She and Dad talked about it, a little. There were still Imperials with small navies and forces out picking off less well-defended targets, setting up their own kingdoms."

Poe nods at that. "And pirates, and raiders, and some systems wouldn't join as a system. Sometimes it would just be a planet or two, and as long as it was 'defensive' service, their ships and troops stayed local, if we moved onto an attack, they'd send a decent-sized chunk of their military off, and would have to just hope their neighbors would behave."

"And they rarely did," Kylo adds. "That was part of what the Jedi Knights did, enforced the will of the Old Republic, made sure the different players behaved."

"Peace through mind control and superior fighting technique? Jon asks.

"If it works…" Kylo lets trail off. "For a while, at least. Somewhat. Until someone turned those skills against them."

"That's where the Emperor comes in?" Jon asks.

"In the version of the histories I've read," Rey replies.

"Okay… The Jedi are off being Jedi. They're keeping the peace, manipulating people's mind and lopping off heads when need be…" Poe's just staring at Jon as he's saying this. That's _not_ how he learned it. But Kylo's smirking a bit, apparently agreeing, and Rey's face is neutral. "And they, like you guys, can sense the Force, and feel all the power around them, and…" he takes another drink of his cider, "put delicately, how the fuck do they let Palpatine rise? Why didn't they mind control him into submission, or lop his head off?"

And Poe would have to admit, _that's_ a really good question. That's the sort of question you can only ask if you weren't raised to believe the Jedi were a group of near-perfect, all knowing, super beings. That's the sort of question that's never been in danger of even threatening to form in Poe's mind.

Kylo looks to Rey, she's the theory and philosophy half of the equation. "Okay," she says, also taking another drink. "I don't know if this is real or not. It just… feels that way. Maybe if you see Anakin again, you could ask."

Kylo rolls his eyes at that.

"Who's Anakin?" Poe asks.

"My grandfather."

Poe blinks slowly. He knows who Leia's adopted father was, and his name. And he knows the name her biological father used, in his professional capacity. But, thinking about it, he's got to assume there was a time he didn't answer to Darth Vader. Then he says, "He's… uh… dead, right?"

"Very," Kylo replies. "And he tends to show up infrequently at best, so…" He strokes the back of Rey's hand, turning the conversation back to her.

"Wait..." Jon says, "Are we talking about Darth Vader? Is that Anakin?"

Kylo nods.

Jon takes another drink, wishing it were stronger. "Is this… normal, for Maji? Chatting with dead folks?" Kylo and Rey can feel both fear and hope coming from Jon. There's one dead person he'd dearly like to see again.

"No," Rey says, shutting Jon's hopes down. She doesn't know exactly how this works, but best she knows Force ghosts don't visit non-Force sensitives, and she doesn't want Jon wishing for something that isn't going to happen. "It happens, but it's not common, and usually only when you really need the help."

Kylo notices that Poe's paying way more attention to Rey's words about that than he would have expected. He's also got his sabbac face on, and yes, he could find out why he's got his thoughts shut down right now, but he doesn't want to.

"And, to get to why the Jedi didn't take out Palpatine before he got too powerful… My best guess is this," she touches the Maji pendent on her own neck, the dark and light swirling into each other. "The Jedi existed to extinguish the dark. And they were _good_ at it. But the Force has to balance, it can't not balance, so between the Sith 'there can be only two' practice cutting down the number of potential darklings, and the Jedi cutting down the others, they ended up with _extremely_ concentrated power on the dark side.

"That's, actually my theory on how we got Snoke, too. In fact… It's possible that the only reason things 'balanced' for as long as they did was Snoke was hiding in the background while the Jedi took out darklings right and left.

"Anyway, they did such a good job of concentrating power on the dark side of things that a few individuals were vastly too strong. But there were so many lightlings, that they each lost power, becoming less and less sensitive."

Jon thinks about that, and nods a bit. "So, does that mean the dark will always be stronger? I mean… there just are fewer darklings, right? Most people are sort of just bopping along."

Poe half inclines his head. "By my, non-Force sensitive, view of things, darklings and lightlings are both fairly rare. We've got a few lightsiders, and counting him," he nods to Ren, "five darklings. Everyone else is sort of in the middle."

"And part of what I'm doing is trying to help keep the middle ones in the middle, and let the lightlings and darklings find an easier time balancing." She strokes Kylo's hand. "He's never going to be light, but he doesn't have to be as dark as he was. I'm never going to be dark, but I don't have to try to be a Jedi paragon of virtuous stillness and calm."

"And you're somewhere in the middle?" Jon asks Poe.

Poe shakes his head. "Last year I'd have said yes, but… Apparently, Dark isn't so much about evil and hurting people, as it is changing things, tearing them down, passion, attachment, impatience, rashness, so… Uh… I'm not Force sensitive, but I'm definitely dark."

"And going along to get along… That'd be… Light?" Jon asks Rey.

"From what I can tell, yes. You were talking about just getting along. That's the only thing I did for the entire time I was on Jakku. Granted, that's the only thing most people could do there. But, unlike those two, I notice I have a really easy time getting into patterns, and a much harder time getting out of them. The light is still, and deep, steady. So light and dark, it's more about active versus calm. Construction versus destruction. Good and evil are one matrix, and that's… about what you do. Dark and Light is about how you do it."

Jon thinks about that for a moment, chewing his noodles, and then says, "But you want me to make armor for you? Isn't that… really _active?_ "

Rey grins. "It really is, and we're going to get to that soon, I hope. I'm light gray, and he's dark gray, and not having anyone bordering on white or black is where we're hoping to get."

"Snoke was probably as close to black as anyone's gotten, and I think we're all better off if that doesn't happen again," Kylo says. "Hell, given how much building up and construction he did, Palpatine was somewhere likely on the mid-gray scale. He was also evil and power-mad. Mix those together and… well… Death Stars."

"Uh huh…" Jon says, still thinking. Then he puts his fork down. "And you think," he gestures to the four of them, "we're the… heart… of The Order of the Maji."

"Speaking of which, were you intending to mention that to me?" Poe adds.

"What's to mention? This is real. You're part of it. You feel it," Kylo says.

Poe shoves Kylo's shoulder. "Talking, Kylo. You need to _talk_ to people, not just assume and order them around." Poe smirks brilliantly at Jon. "See, that's not a Dark thing. I know I'm Dark, but I don't pull that sort of shit on people, at least, not any more. That's an entitled asshole thing, which, from what I can tell, he comes by honestly. His mom could be the _Queen_ of the entitled assholes, and I've got stories about his Dad that would make you blush, but we're going to break him of it."

Jon bites his lip, to stifle his giggles. "Remind me to tell you about the throne someday."

"Throne?" Poe asks.

Kylo sighs through gritted teeth, glaring at both of them while Rey smirks happily. "Off topic."

"Fine," Poe replies. "So this is something you're… putting into play, so… Get talking, what and how and where, and… I can be a damn good second-in-command if someone gives me at least the start of a plan, but I don't exactly like coming up with it from scratch, so… Talk. If we're The Order of the Maji, what does the Order of the Maji _do?_ "

"My thoughts, exactly," Jon adds, looking at his empty cup. "Do you have anything real to drink here?"

Poe stands up and gets the bottle of brandy. "Another good point." He pours both of them a shot, holds the bottle to Kylo and Rey, who both decline, and then offers a toast to the other three. "To the future of whatever the hell the Order of the Maji is."

That gets some smirking, and clinking glasses.

Jon takes a sip. Then he says, "Okay, so you and I," he gestures to Kylo, "talk about this politics thing, and what we're doing, but… It hasn't escaped my notice that you don't actually have any goals or policy. Anything beyond how we get people you've kicked down the road to whatever eventual elections we have."

"What do we have?" Poe asks.

Kylo sighs. "We're volunteer. That's bedrock. People come to us. We don't conquer them, we don't steal them, we don't… anything. They join us."

"Like your speech," Rey says, "anyone who can get to you can find the future they want."

"That's a policy, right?" Kylo says. "People are the most valuable thing in the galaxy. Everything else is meaningless if you don't have people. So… We take people. They give me five years service. I give them a shot to make their lives better. If other systems want to hang onto their people, they've got to give them a better deal than I offer them."

"How does that tie into our balance, Rey?" Poe asks.

Rey doesn't shrug, but she does have to think about it for a second. "It's easier to balance if you're doing something you like."

Kylo nods. "A _lot._ "

"Yeah, well, The Order isn't exactly happy, happy joy land when it comes to that," Jon says. "A lot of our new recruits are doing shit jobs and going through significantly less-than-pleasant training."

"For a few years at most," Kylo adds. "Just the promise of better will get people through hard things."

"That's how I got through basic," Poe says. He shakes his head. "I don't think any military training program in the galaxy is _fun._ "

Jon sips his drink, eyes Poe, and says, "Yeah, well, there's a difference between 'not fun' and 'having to occasionally castrate one of your trainers with a laser sword in front of all the others to keep them in line.'"

Poe turns his gaze and stares at Kylo, eyes the size of plates. "Uh…"

"Retention levels are a lot better now," Kylo says, completely deadpan.

Poe shudders.

"We need to go over the new curriculum soon," Jon adds.

Kylo sighs, and then says, "I know. I can give them the shot at a better life, and a lot of them are using me as a way to get from one place to another. Hopefully, if I can get the training figured out, I can get them attached enough to the Order to stick around long enough to become citizens."

"There's another bedrock. They volunteer, and you treat them like _people._ Like they're valuable to you," Rey adds.

Kylo nods, and then pulls a data pad to them, setting it on the table, and starts to type, one-handed while eating.

"Notes?" Poe asks.

"If you had a third of what I'm supposed to keep track of in your head, you'd need notes, too."

Poe smirks. "There's something to be said for _not_ being a commander."

He's looking at what Kylo's jotting down, and suddenly he knows why he's here, and what his purpose is. "Your year end speech, you talked about people coming to you, and a better life, and peace… What are you going to do about places that don't want you sucking people out of them?"

Kylo looks up from the pad to Poe, and for the first time really _sees_ Poe, sees who Poe is and what he's good at, and what he's been doing for the Maji, what he did for the Resistance. He opens his mouth, closes it, and then says, "Oh."

Poe nods. "I'm probably the current foremost expert in setting up underground organizations designed specifically to get people into places they aren't supposed to be and out of places they aren't supposed to leave."

"Chewie," Rey says.

Poe's grinning. "If…"

"Who's Chewie?" Jon asks.

Kylo sighs at that, too. "What have I told you about my Dad?"

Well, there's the bit Jon really remembers, that Kylo killed him, beyond that… "Not much. Obviously, at some point he had a relationship with Leia Organa. You said your name used to be Solo, so… Solo… Oh… Han Solo… Right. I… Uh… Saw pictures of him on some of the holovids." Jon rolls his eyes. "We were all happy and content New Republicans, but I did my best to _not_ pay attention to anything in any of our history classes. Oh, look at all the pictures of people grinning and celebrating the day your dad died. Look at them put medals on each other. Read a few more pages about how everyone in an Empire Uniform was utter evil. Look at how stupid and evil they were, killed by overgrown rodents with rocks and sticks…" Jon shudders a bit, and then refocuses on the present. "I failed a lot of history classes. That's part of why I got to quit school and went to work with my Mom fulltime at fourteen. Fail too many of those classes, and people would start to talk."

Kylo reaches across the table and gives his hand a little squeeze.

"You remember the Wookie usually somewhere in the picture behind Han?" Poe asks.

Jon's thinking back, trying to remember, and then he nods. "Yeah."

"That's Chewie," Kylo replies. "My mom was born in the Rebellion. It literally started the day she was born. Obi Wan gave her to Bail Organa to keep her hidden and safe from Vader and the Emperor. My dad was anti-Empire from the other side. He, like a lot of our recruits, joined the Empire to get out of a bad situation, then he was kicked out of the Academy because orders and rule following was never his thing. He found Chewie, or Chewie saved his ass, depending on who's telling the story. He bet well and won the _Falcon_ off my uncle, and the two of them went off to break the law in any and every system they could get to, and every law the Empire ever tried to enforce. They were smugglers. Chewie still is."

Poe wiggles his hand meaning, sort of. "He and Finn bring us the things we need here. They finance it by moving some hot stuff, too."

"You don't finance it?" Jon asks Kylo.

He looks to Rey. "My personal funds are invested here, but someone would prefer not having a horde of Order engineers here getting everything set and ready to go."

"Doing it, ourselves, matters," Rey says, out loud, _Can we talk about that later?_ flows from her mind to Kylo's too.

Kylo's eyebrow raises. _What's happened?_

 _Later._

 _Interesting._

"Anyway," Rey adds. "Yes, Kylo's personal funds are part of the mix, but I haven't felt right about taking Order funds."

Jon glances to Kylo, and then goes to the living area window, to look out at the rest of the settlement. The suns are down, but he can see the lights coming from the windows of the other cottages. "Okay, this isn't lavish, but I know how much they pay me, so…"

"We may have won a million or so cheating at gambling, too," Rey adds.

"And are planning to do a whole lot more of that," Poe adds.

Jon turns slowly to Kylo, licks his lips, blinks, and then says, " _That's_ what you do on vacation?"

Kylo smirks a bit. Then he nods, and deciding to just go with it, says, "Lots of sex, too. It's fun."

Kylo's not sure which one of the men laughs harder, but both Jon and Poe appear to really appreciate that line. Rey's just staring at him. _What? It was funny._

She rolls her eyes at that. When the men have calmed down and can listen again, she says, "Chewie was Han's partner. He's currently the owner of the _Falcon_. He and Finn are keeping up the smuggling business, and if there's anyone in the galaxy who can move hot cargo around, it'd be them."

Jon nods at that. "Okay. That's great, but… Your sense of scale is off. I mean, sure, if you can get him to do this, great, set it up, but… To do this on any level where it'll matter, you're going to need more than three guys."

Poe slumps a bit at that. "That was the same problem I was having before. I can set these things up. I can set them up all day, every day, and every night, too. But I need people I can trust and… We just… ran out of people."

"I can get you people," Kylo says. "We're actually… Right now it's not a problem, yet, because most of them are still in training, but we're going to get to the point where I've got too many ground troops and not enough ground, so if you can train them, I can get you people. We can set up… Businesses or something that needs to have goods coming in and out, all over planets that don't want the Order around, and we can use that as cover to get people out."

"And if I get them trained in how to fly under the scanners, make connections, and find people, and get them out, then they go to you, do their five years, become citizens, and…" Poe's eyes are lighting up. This is the Resistance, back when it was young and winning battles, and shiny, and everyone was hopeful again. _This_ is one of the things he's _good_ at.

"Go on to do or be whatever they want," Kylo says. "That's what the Order is. The promise that your present and past don't have to dominate your future."

"And how does the Maji work into that? Do we have to become Maji? Do you want… Churches? All over the _Supremacy?_ " Jon asks.

Rey's turn to sigh. "First off, I do know that no one will have to become Maji. It won't work if you join because someone is making you. As for the rest… Right now… I don't know. I don't think it's organized enough to start really spreading it around. We're still figuring it out."

Poe shakes his head. "You make it more complicated than it has to be. Don't be an ass. Boom! Maji philosophy and religion in five words or less."

"It's a bit more complicated than that," Rey says.

"Not really. Yeah, you've got all the bits about balance and light and dark, but you also talk about how _everyone_ is part of it, and that means even people who don't know about it are, and when you boil that down, _don't be an ass_ covers the particulars."

"You can avoid being an ass and still not be in the balance," Rey says.

Poe's shaking his head. "I don't think so. You can be polite and not be in balance. Not being an ass requires you to understand the people around you, even the ones you don't agree with, have some level of basic personhood, and are just trying to get to some version of the good life. And if you understand that, you're already half way to balanced."

Jon's looking very pleased by that. "So, that's it, we're… taking over the galaxy, one and hopefully more, people at a time by… recognizing their basic personhood, and… Maybe throwing in some more sophisticated philosophy, but, at the most basic level, we're… just being good guys?"

The four of them all look at each other. It's so blindingly easy and simple and… _right._

Rey nods. "Join the Order of the Maji, we'll recognize your basic dignity and give you the tools to do whatever you want with it."

* * *

The rest of dinner flows fairly easily from there.

"Dessert?" Rey asks as they're wrapping up.

"You have dessert?" Jon asks. Neither Rey nor Kylo, or Poe for that matter, look like they eat a lot of dessert. Or they spend way more time at the gym than Jon thinks they do. Granted, given all the nothing out there, maybe they spend a lot more time running around and building things than he thinks they do.

He, on the other hand, is fairly sure he's got at least an extra hour at the gym to make up for tonight.

He's feeling comfortably well-fed, and fairly content with the world in general right now. Be one of the top men in an organization designed to basically make the galaxy a better place for as many people as want to join feels really good.

Plus, he's not minding the eye candy here, at all. And, if they're going to give him literal candy on top of that… Well, he's always had a sweet tooth, and for more than just sugar.

He's not exactly interested in Poe, not as anything he might act on. First of all, nine out of ten men he meets aren't interested in other men. That's one of the few things he prefers about making friends with women, vastly more of them like men than men do. So, odds are awfully good that Poe's just not for him. Plus, if the two of them are going to be able to work together, and it sounds like that's going to happen at least sometimes, it'd be better off to not get stupid and horny about him.

But he's awfully pretty to look at. Especially sitting back, eyes lit up, getting ready to talk about Maji desserts, looking like he's going to really enjoy this story.

Jon's always liked his men dark and lean, and Poe's got that in spades. And, he's taller than Poe, taller than most human men, at least not when Kylo's looming nearby, and, yeah, well, he does, generally speaking, like being able to have his partner cuddle on in, soft and close, body tucked in against him.

And, yes, if he were going to design a personality for himself, devil may care, with a bit of depth behind the eyes, is pretty much where he'd go, but…

Still, working. Professionalism… Yep. Poe's probably good wank fodder, but nothing more than that.

Poe's eyeing the plate Rey's removing from the cooler, getting into the story of Maji desserts. "Master Dark over there taught a few of the kids how to make cookies, and we've been swimming in sweets ever since."

Rey shows them off, "Cookies. They're some sort of nut and jam tart, I think," before putting them in the cooker to warm a bit.

"You taught kids how to make cookies?" Jon says to Kylo.

Kylo shrugs a bit. "Not that kind." He had a few of them this morning with breakfast, and they're not only more complicated than anything he ever learned how to make, but they're better, too. Ostrae is learning _fast_. "And just two of them, but, yes. And really we were learning how to cope with being dark."

Jon runs his fingers through his hair. He absolutely understands every word Kylo just said. He can define all of them. But making cookies to learn how to cope with being dark means literally _nothing_ to him. "Okay, concrete level, what do you guys _do_ here?"

Poe smiles at that. "Okay, concrete level. I go fly around, find kids. Some of them are Force sensitive, some aren't. Right now we've got just about as many of them as we can take, but I'm also coming up empty on orphans in need of a good place to land, so I guess that's the Force at work. When I'm not finding kids, I find stuff we need here. My last run, I brought in piles of hay for the Faviers and a roulette wheel. I teach the kids some basic mechanics. I teach them how to play different card games and games of chance. Part of that is learning how to improve our cheating at gambling finance operation, part of it is teaching them strategic thinking, part of it is learning basic math and how to calculate the odds. BB-8, my droid, and I show them basic robotics. I've been known to putter around in the microfarms, or help Rose with the electronics if she needs extra hands. Sometimes I just entertain the kids. One of these days, I'll get Jacen up, and we'll see how well he's learned how to fly."

"Jack of all trades?" Poe asks.

"That's probably Rose. But I do a bit of everything, too."

"I met Rose right before the party, right?" Jon says.

Rey nods.

"And she and her husband aren't here…" he leads.

"Finn'd rather spit on me than sit at a table with me," Kylo says.

Poe shoots him a _he's got a good reason for it_ look, and then adds, "You cut his back in half and just about killed him, _and_ he's a First Order defector, so… Anyway, those two have _issues_ that are still being worked on," Poe says.

"Ah," Jon says. Then he looks from Poe to Kylo. "But you two, don't."

They both sort of shrug.

"In a different galaxy he likely would have been the kid I'd have been assigned to protect. Or at least my boss's son, so…"

"I'm _not_ that much younger than you are."

"The difference between seventeen and twelve is massive, and if you don't believe that, Jacen'll tell you all about it after a long day of the kids following him around. You would have been the kid I'd have been vastly too old and mature to have anything to do with, and you would have followed me around like a puppy. And given what a snot Mon Mothma could be sometimes, you likely would have been my fulltime job."

Kylo smirks. "And I'd have made you hate every minute of it."

Poe rolls his eyes. "I love his mom. She was… amazing. And…" he glances to Kylo, "I know you two didn't have it easy, but… She wasn't my mom, she was my General, and… She gave me a place, and a mission, and a hope, and forgave me when I was being an utter shit, which happened more often than it should have, and… Anyway. I can't just spit on him. Not after that. Meanwhile, he's shacked up with my other best friend, and again, I can't just… hate him. So, two of my favorite ladies love this man, which means, I at least need to try, and apparently, if you hit him just right, you can put a tiny crack in all that black and see the a person hiding in there," more eye rolling from Kylo, though he's noticing that Jon appears to have a very similar opinion, and Rey's not exactly telling Poe he's wrong, so… "with a kind of wicked sense of humor, and some interesting skills, and… So, yeah, we've got issues, too, but they're not nearly as big."

Kylo just inclines his head in agreement. That pretty much wraps it up.

"As for what they do, Rose is the Jack of all Trades. You name it, she can do it. Finn and Chewie are smuggling and bringing in supplies. Most of what you see around here came in on the _Falcon._ Finn also teaches some combat, mostly baton right now," Rey says. "I teach… Everything but the standard lessons. Threepio used to be doing that, and now we've got MX-R8. He's new, but seems to be settling in, and the kids like him, so that's good."

"And by… everything… you mean the Force stuff?"

"The Force stuff, what balancing means, meditation, lead conversations about things like philosophy and theology, some physical conditioning, some stretching and strength building, balancing bodies and minds, stuff like that."

"Floating stuff?" Jon asks.

"Some. Not all of the kids are Force sensitive, so the lessons have to be useful for everyone. But, yes, I'll break them into smaller groups and do Force stuff, too. Though, as time goes by, since he's the one who had formal lessons, he might be the better choice for teaching more advanced Force stuff."

"You didn't have lessons?" Poe asks.

"In the five minutes I was with Luke? No. I pulled his lessons out of his head, and got the quick version."

Kylo snorts a quick laugh at that. "Vastly preferable to actually doing the work."

"And what do you do?" Jon asks Kylo.

"Apparently, eventually, I'll be doing 'Force stuff.' Right now I teach saber and work with the two little Darklings about how to manage being Dark."

"By making cookies?" Jon asks, not even close to seeing how that might work.

"The little one is seven. And… It's easier to not be constantly on fire if there's something you like doing. So… She didn't know what she liked to do, but she did like eating cookies, so we made some to see if she likes making them, and…"

"And then all the other kids wanted to learn, because, shockingly enough, cookies and kids get on pretty well, and Ostrae's, the little Darkling, tried every variety we've got a recipe and ingredients for, and Finn's bringing an oven for their cottage, and I know he and Chewie have a run to a farming planet soon, so we can get more fruit. She's really liking cooking, and apparently when she's cooking, she's not hitting or biting her older siblings, so we're keeping her in stuff to cook, and she's keeping us in cookies," Rey says, getting the cookies out of the cooker, and resting them on the table.

Jon grabs one, and they are _good._ Some sort of buttery short crust with a sweet, gooey, tart center. He's had considerably worse baked goods at formal events catered for tens of thousands of credits.

"Hitting or biting?" Jon asks, once he's done chewing.

Kylo shrugs. "You remember the gossip about me… Before? Breaking things with my lightsaber? Throwing officers around like ragdolls?"

Jon winces a little, not exactly pleased to mention this, but there was a reason he was about to wet his pants the first time he got a summons from Supreme Leader Ren. "Yeah. I mean… You had to feel how scared I was the first time you called me in to a meeting."

Kylo nods, remembering. "It's really easy, if you've got a lot of dark, to spiral into self-and-others-destructive behavior. Which is great if something old and corrupt needs to be torn down, and less-than-ideal when you're aiming it at yourself and the people around you."

"And your little darkling…" Jon leads.

"Is the youngest of three, the only one who isn't Force sensitive, is angry at the universe in general and her siblings in specific because her siblings are basically wizards and she's not."

Jon thinks about that. "Yeah. I can see that sucking. I spent a lot of time pissed at my sisters for being girls…"

"For being girls?" Poe asks.

"Men don't design dresses on Coruscant. They don't run fancy fashion houses and make lots of money by dressing people. My sisters and mom made a lot of money and scored a lot fashion status off of pretending my work belonged to one of my sisters." Jon sees how Poe takes that. "Don't get me wrong. They're very good, too. It's not like my work was stellar and theirs is just okay. We're all exceptional dress makers. But… They got the credit, and I didn't, and that's beyond annoying."

Kylo nods. "Yeah. Well, add on a naturally sad and destructive personality on top of that, and a bit too much fondness for pain, and a short temper… It's not great. So, I spend time with her and Critt, working on ways to not be angry and sad and tense all the time. Try to get all of us closer to gray."

Jon's looking at Kylo. "Is it helping?"

"I think so." He shrugs a bit. "For me at least. I find working with them centering, and I think it's good for Critt, and I hope it's good for Ostrae. I'll probably chat with them again tomorrow."

Poe leans back, and takes another sip of his drink, "So, Grand Marshall, what do you do?"

Jon thinks about that for a moment, and then says, "When you were with Senator Organa's…" he pauses, makes sure he's right about that, and Poe nods, "security detail, did you go with her to a lot of fancy gatherings where people met and mingled and talked and made deals and plans?"

"New one every day."

"Okay, so, what I do, right now, is make sure the space for the gathering is right, and then I put the right people in it, and if there's a way for the Order to make money off of it, I try to figure that out. I make sure all the people at the gathering are taken care of, are kept in a good mood and whatever it is they need to work out whatever it is they intend to work out, is there for them. I make sure they've got places to stay, and the right people to meet, and that if those two are part of it, they're in the right place at the right time and properly shiny while they're doing it."

Poe nods.

"And I do that for the entire Order. I am, or will be, the Grand Marshal of the Order Diplomatic Corps. And my job is to make sure that everyone who comes to work with us can get whatever it is worked out, and do so in ease and comfort."

Poe whistles. "That's a job, all right. That's what you've got Threepio off doing?"

"Yes, and he's turning out to be _very_ good at it. There are too many details for any human to do the job, and right now, I'm _low_ on staff, so… He's a lifesaver. Literally, apparently the flowers I had brought in were toxic to twelve of the guests, and he's the one who brought it to my attention. Otherwise that first party would have been very exciting in a way none of us wanted it to be."

Poe shudders at that idea. "Yeah, nothing like a pile of corpses to say, 'We're great at this hospitality thing.'"

Jon nods. "Exactly!"

There's a moment, where Jon's about to talk a bit more about the Order's idea of neutral meeting space and whatnot, but… something… happens, and every hair on his body raises in electric fear.

The other three with him all shudder a bit at it, too.

And just as he's about to say, "What the fuck was that," Poe says, "Cassie's right, this one's gonna be bad. I need to get moving, fast, and you too, if you want to get off the ground before the storm hits?"

"Storm?" Jon asks.

"Yeah. Welcome to Lirium, where the winter bites back. On most planets, you've got to be really sensitive to feel the pressure change that comes with an oncoming storm. And Cassie, one of the lightlings, is _really_ sensitive, she can feel them days out, but anyway…" Poe's getting up. "The blizzard will probably hit in the next ten minutes, so…"

"Uh… I didn't fly. No ship to get out."

Poe glances to Kylo. Then he shakes his head. "So you can teleport other people?"

"Apparently," Kylo replies.

Poe glances back to Jon. "You're braver than I am. Just the idea of it makes my skin crawl."

Jon offers him a lopsided smile. "Yeah, well, he didn't exactly ask the first time, and it's not the most fun sensation ever, but it is fast, and I'm not a pilot, so…"

"Makes sense." Poe gives Rey a little kiss on the cheek, ruffles Kylo's hair, and he looks annoyed at that, and then leans his knee on the bench, and looks down at Jon with a grin, and offers Jon his hand. "Anyway, it was nice meeting you Grand Marshal Jon."

Jon smiles up at him, and says, "Back at you, Poe of the Maji."

And this time, Poe holds his hand a breath or two longer than strictly necessary. "Okay, gotta run. I've got a ropeline between the settlement and my ship, but I really don't want to test it."

The other three nod at him. Poe bundles up, and heads off.

Jon stretches. "Probably time for me to go home, too."

Kylo nods at that. "I'll take you. You're off tomorrow and the next day, too. Get caught back up on your rest, because as soon as we're up and running…"

"I know. Threepio's already told me we're getting interest in the services we offer, and if we're going to do this, we need to be sharp."

"Good," Rey says.

Jon, like Poe kisses Rey's cheek, but the glare Kylo aims at him stays his hand, though the smirk on his face certainly indicates there may be a time he attempts to ruffle his hair. Kylo sighs, loudly and put upon at that, and then lays a hand on his shoulder, waits for Jon to nod at him, before pulling him back to his rooms on the _Supremacy._

Jon shudders a bit when they're in his room. "I don't think I'm ever going to get used to that."

"You can get used to all sorts of things," Kylo says.

"I'd imagine so."

"So, good dinner?"

"Yeah, I think it was. We'll talk more later."

Kylo nods, and ports back home.

* * *

 _How'd it go?_ BB-8 chirps at Poe when he gets into his ship.

"Not bad. I met the infamous Jon."

More beeping is met with. "I mean, yeah, he's nice. But, literally the first thing I heard when I walked in was about his _girlfriend_ so…"

More beeping.

"I know. I do. But between the girlfriend comment, and the marriage band he's wearing, I'm thinking this one is _beyond_ off limits."

 _You really can pick 'em, can't you?_

"I'm not picking anything, okay? He's a nice looking man, who's got a decent sense of humor, very pretty blue eyes, and there's no possible way he's ever going to look twice at me, okay? I've got it. He is a no-picking zone."

Apparently, BB-8 can beep sarcastically.

"Look, it's not my fault Finn went off and fell in love with Rose. She wasn't even on his horizon when I got interested in him. This one, I can see the glowing stay away signs, and I'm staying away, okay?"

Sincere beeping.

"Yeah. I know. I do."

More beeping.

"One day. Until then, it's you and me, buddy."


	3. Changes

1/3/2 21:40

Rey's tidying up what's left of dinner when Kylo gets back from taking Jon home.

For a moment, he just re-acclimates himself. Poe, and apparently, Cassie weren't kidding about the storm. It's hit full force now, and even in the house, he can feel the power of the wind. Everything around them is just, slightly, shaking. He can hear it, too, certainly. It's howling around them. He steps over to the window, and cups his hands around his face, blocking the light of the room reflecting off the transteel, and looks out. When they left, he knew he could see the lights of the rest of Lirium. They're gone, now. Just howling, shifting, black.

Kylo shrugs a bit. As long as no one goes out in it, everyone should be fine. Cold, but fine. Then he heads over to Rey, taking up the dishes she washes, pulling a towel to hand, and drying them.

"Thanks," she says.

He nods. "If we got a rack over the sink, we could just keep them there, and they'd dry off, drip into the sink, and we wouldn't need to dry them."

"You guys have something like that at Luke's?"

"Yeah. None of us, even Luke, loved chores that we didn't have to do." He steps across the kitchen, to the shelf where the dishes live, and puts the dry one back. She can feel he's thinking about today, and talking with Jon, especially about who's bankrolling this place. "Of course, we could also just get a sonic for the dishes. Pop them in that, run it, and not have to worry about cleaning them at all."

She shrugs a bit. Aware of the fact that sonics aren't just for cleaning people. "I suppose we could. Do you have any idea what they cost?"

"Nope. Can't be too much. Jon's got one in his apartment."

She nods, and hands him another clean and wet plate. "How much do you get paid?"

He shrugs. "I honestly don't know. Probably around fifty thousand credits a year, but…"

"Is that a lot?"

Kylo shrugs again. "I don't know the answer to that, either. It's more than the thousand a month we pay the newest recruits who are still in testing and training. It's probably, I hope, less than we pay top-rate navigators."

"You hope?"

"The report I'm supposed to read next is about how far below our recruiting goals we are on navigators. I've been told good ones can go for more than a million credits a year, so… Part of why that report's on my desk is they want my approval to start paying navigators a hell of a lot more, and to fast track citizenship for any of them who agree to sign up."

"Ah…"

"Yeah." He shrugs, and then floats the plate over to the shelf. "All part of offering a better deal, I guess."

"Good luck."

"Thanks."

They stand there, quietly washing and drying dishes for a few moments. Then he says, "There was something you wanted to talk to me about…"

She nods. And points to the faucet, which is on, with a modest flow coming out. "That's it. The tap's fully open, and that's as much will come out."

Kylo narrows his eyes a bit. He generally doesn't pay _that_ much attention to the sink. He turns the handle, water comes out, but… This is looking awfully sluggish. "There should be a lot more of it than that, right?"

She nods. "The pipes are freezing."

"Again."

"Again. And the lake's frozen down to the point where the ice is going to block the intake soon."

He nods at that, too. "Finn and Poe buried it deeper last month, right?"

"Yes, they did. And the ice has caught up to them, and unless this is it," she gestures to the storm raging around them, then her voice goes sarcastic, "and it magically warms up in the next day or so, it's going to overtake our water intake in the next few days."

He rubs his lips together. "Ice over the intake means no running water."

"Yeah."

He looks at the limp trickle of water, and Rey, and back to the water. "I rather like running water."

"Yeah. Me, too. My sense is there's no one in the settlement who prefers lugging blocks of snow and ice inside their cottages to thaw it out and use it like that." She feels like that's necessary, because, of course, _they_ can bug out, live in his rooms in the _Supremacy_ and enjoy all the running water they like. Everyone else though…

"I can't imagine that's anyone's idea of fun." He echoes her point.

Rey can feel he's making conversation to let her work up to saying it out loud.

She sighs, bites her lip, and then does it. "I need help. We need help. Rose thinks that if we had a precision drill, and a team who knows how to do it—"

"Done."

She doesn't blink. It's not like him agreeing to this is anything of a surprise. The warm, pleased, _happy_ feel coming off of him at the fact that he can really _do_ something for the settlement is also not a surprise, other than it's more intense than she was expecting.

The fact that he blinks out of their home, and is gone for a quarter hour before popping back up and saying– "Got it. C8 tells me that I'll have an engineer in my office first thing in the morning. I'll bring him… her… whoever over and they should have it set and ready to go day after that. C8 asked if we wanted an entire water processing plant, or just the pipes… but I didn't know, and the engineer will be able to give us plans and what'll be necessary to set them in place."– is something of a surprise, though, really it shouldn't be. He's always been eager to help here, and she's finally giving him something concrete he can do. Or at least get done.

Rey nods, slowly. Feeling somewhat numb. Their… hiding place… not so hidden. Maybe…

"How are you going to bring him here?"

"I was just going to," and he ports to the far side of the room.

Rey nods a bit, and then says, "Do you want people to know you can do that? Jon's probably safe, but…"

Kylo grits his teeth. That's a good point. There's probably a _lot_ of advantage that comes from people not knowing he can do that. "Fly, I guess. Not like I'm low on ships."

"Fly yourself, right?" Because if someone else flies then someone else will know where they are.

He nods. "Yes… Fly the team that does whatever it is, too."

She nods a bit at that. "In between all of the reports, and meetings, and the rest of it…"

He rolls his eyes a bit. "Yeah." Maybe there's a setting on his reports that'll make them read themselves to him. He can fly and listen. Might be worth looking into.

"The only thing Poe's got set for tomorrow is working with the kids."

Kylo purses his lips. Or maybe he could… ask… for help. Because, after all, he's not the only pilot he knows… "So… take Poe with me tomorrow…"

"He probably likes running water, too, though."

"Probably. But since his comes from his ship and is a side product of his fuel processing, he's not quite as dependent on the lake as the rest of us."

"True. But… Maybe he's a bit less busy, but still willing to fly."

Kylo inclines his head. "And he obviously knows the coordinates for Lirium." He smirks a bit, "and how to get off the _Supremacy._ "

Rey smirks at that some, too. "So, you'll ask him, in the morning?"

"Sure. And if he's busy or whatever, I'll fly the engineer myself."

"Okay." She hands him the last dish. As he's drying it, he says, "You know… I could get you your own ship."

"I know."

He nods at that, too. "Just like… engineers, or droids, or… whatever… Just say the word."

"I know."

He looks around their small cottage, and then wraps his arms around her waist and his chin on her shoulder. He nuzzles close, inhaling the scent of her skin and hair, laying a kiss on her neck. "I didn't tell you that story, did I?"

"Mmm?"

"The _I know_ story."

She shakes her head a bit. He was going to tell her, but it'd slipped both of their minds. Apparently, until now. He steps back, takes her hands, and in a moment, they're in the comfy chair, snuggled together under the blankets.

"So, the war's on, and like usual, Mom and Dad are running from the Empire, because, that's just an average day for them. They've got a lot of heat on them, the _Falcon_ is, again, falling apart, and they're low on fuel, or something like that. Pretty much anything that could have gone wrong, did. Which is also, at least from how they tell the stories, also a pretty average day for them.

"They're in the middle of nowhere. A billion klicks from the nearest Rebel base. So, Dad gets the bright idea to take a chance on his old buddy, Lando, and sends the _Falcon_ limping to Cloud City."

"Where things are going to continue to go wrong?" Rey asks.

"Where things are going to continue to go wrong. If anyone was going to ever write the story of Han Solo's life, 'I've Got A Bad Feeling About This, and I'm Right,' would likely be a good title for it."

She chuckles a bit at that. "What happens in Cloud City?"

"Vader wants to lure Luke into a trap. Jabba's got a huge price of my father's head. Cloud City is Lando's first attempt at ruling something, and… He actually was a pretty good ruler. Even then. So, the Empire showed up, wanted my parents and Chewie, they were going to sell Dad to Jabba, and grab Luke when he shows up to save them. Vader made it clear to Lando that this was either going to go easy or hard, and Lando decided his 'Old Friend' wasn't worth the number of people who'd die if he went the hard way."

"Not so good for your dad and mom."

"But very good for the tens of thousands of people who lived in Cloud City. As soon as he got the Empire immediately off his back, Lando cleaned his people out, double-crossed Vader, and then piloted Falcon into the second Death Star, blew the fucker up, and personally crippled the Empire. Did more to win the damn thing than any other person."

"Which is part of why you're taking pages from his book, and not your Mom's."

He smiles. "That, and I look better in a cape than braids."

She laughs at that. "Okay. So, your parents are visiting Lando. So's Vader?"

"Yes, he showed up personally, because apparently my family really enjoys intense meet-the-future-in-laws types of gatherings. Granted, he apparently never figured out Leia was his daughter, so…"

"How?"

"I don't know, and when I asked he didn't have a good answer. For whatever reason, he could feel Luke a billion klicks out, but Mom flew under the scanners. Apparently, being blind to the reality of your offspring is another Skywalker family trait."

She strokes his hair. "I like this."

He smiles a little, and kisses her. "Me telling stories?"

"You feeling comfortable telling them. Joking about them. I can feel some of the sarcasm is defensive, but some of it's just funny."

He thinks about it, watching her, wondering if she'll tell him some of her stories, but she shakes her head, so he keeps going. "Anyway, Uncle Lando hands my Dad over, and for whatever reason, Vader decides that he's going to let my mom and Uncle Chewie _watch_ Lando's guys attempt to freeze Han in carbonite."

"Why?"

Kylo holds up his hands. "No idea. I can tell you that if and when the Order captures someone on our wanted list, we don't set things up so they can have dramatic, teary farewells with their loved ones. We just grab them."

"You hate good stories, don't you?" She's smirking as she says it.

"When it comes to my organization grabbing criminals who've done us wrong, yes. Absolutely. I'm completely in favor of making sure they never get the chance to tell rousing stories of how they got away by the skin of their teeth. Anyway, they've got him chained up, but my Mom lunges forward for one last kiss…" He pauses for a moment… "Might have been their first kiss. I'm not sure about that. Anyway. She says, "I love you," and he, standing there, about to be frozen in carbonite, which, by the way, had never been tested on humans before, and likely wasn't going to be very good for him, says back to her, "I know." Then, into the deep freeze he goes, and…" He rolls his eyes. "Their story goes on pause for three years while Luke comes up with the least intuitive rescue plan in the history of rescue plans."

"So… that's where it ends?"

"No. If it'd ended there, I likely wouldn't have ever heard it as a story. Or existed, period. Time skip a bit, and Dad's out, he's back with Mom, and off to Endor they go. They're trying to get the shield generator down, in yet another amazing plan… Seriously, everyone in the Empire needs to be deeply shamed by getting beaten by these twits. They brought in the entire fleet _before_ they had confirmation the shield was down."

"Uh…"

"And, instead of sending in a bombing team to hit the shield generator from atmo, they landed the craft, _walked_ up to the generator, and then sauntered on in to put the bombs inside of it."

"I'm sure they would have done it from atmo if they could?"

Kylo rolls his eyes. "Maybe… The versions of the story I've heard never indicated there was ever any plan other than using a faked code, landing on the planet, and then taking it out manually."

"Shield around the entire planet?"

"Maybe… I suppose that'd be a reason not to to try and take the shield generator out from atmo… Not a reason for not firing on the generator with the ship they flew onto the planet with. Even the Rebellion had a few guns big enough to blow a hardened target to smithereens. Anyway, they're on the ground, and of course, it's like, six of them versus a billion Stormtroopers, because the Rebellion never believed in sending ten people if five doing the job would make for a really good story.

"And, of course, they get into a fire fight, because from what I can tell the entirety of the plan was, land, walk to the generator, without even so much as a Stormtrooper uniform, sneak in, blow it up."

"How were they going to sneak in?" Rey asks. She's heard Threepio tell this story before, and Kylo's version is… different.

"No idea. Charm and the Force? They had a code to get in and land, but didn't think to keep the ruse going.

"Anyway, fire fight, they're trying to break in. Dad's hot wiring the blast shields. He can hear more Imperials coming up. Mom's covering him. She gets hit. He crouches down next to her, paying attention to her, more Imperials coming up behind them. His body is in front of hers, so they can't see what's going on. He raises his hands, but he can see she's still got her blaster. He looks down, says, 'I love you,' she says, 'I know' back to him, and he jumps to the side and she starts shooting.

"Then Chewie shows up, and saves the day, because he's got a big enough gun to shoot through the blast doors.

"Then they blow up the shield generator.

"And then, the six or so ships that had survived the fight with the two thirds of the Imperial Navy that was up there, all go streaking in against the Death Star, and ten months later, I was born."

She laughs at that. "So… Your parents celebrated the victory?"

"So, my father tells me."

She can feel that's a memory that's warm and pleased.

"Anyway, ever after, they didn't say 'I love you,' but they would say, 'I know' to each other. And, for a while I didn't get it, because it'd be at weird times. Like, they'd be… not fighting. They fought a lot, too, but they'd also just sort of complain at each other, and they'd be doing that, and then one of them would just look at the other and say, _I know._ And the other one would grin."

Rey stretches up a little bit, and the kisses him on the tip of the nose. "I know."

He kisses her back, looking pleased. "So, you'll be here in the morning, looking to chat with an Engineer."

"Rose'll probably do a lot of the talking, but I'll be here, too. You going to tell him he's doing a favor for 'Mistress of the Maji Rey?'"

"Would it bother you if I did?"

"Might be better than him thinking it's a favor for you. Or… I don't know. Is this the sort of thing we're supposed to… see ramifications for?"

Kylo sighs at that. "I think making sure they can't find their way back here is enough ramifications for one night."

"Probably."

* * *

It takes both of them a long time to get settled down. Howling wind shaking their home isn't helping. The fact that Rey's not willing to leave Lirium, wanting to be close if any of the kids need anything, means they're not getting away from the storm.

But slowly, eventually, they sleep.

It's a dream. Kylo knows it's a dream. Beyond that though…

"Please, Ben, you're breaking my heart…" Rey's staring at him, eyes wide and liquid, lips trembling, voice cracking with anguish.

"I have to do this!" He can feel his own tears, feel the heat in his body, and the rage just pouring through him.

"No, you don't!" Her own anger is burning through her sorrow.

"It's the only way…" And it is, anyone even marginally aware of what's going on could see it, but she just won't, and if he could just _make_ her see it, if… He can feel the power starting to coalesce.

There's no place, no sense of why they're saying this to each other, it's just the words, and fear, and hurt, and so much pain, and Rey's backing away from him, tears in her eyes, and his heart is screaming, howling… If she'd only just _look_ she'd understand, but she's blind. Blind to the truth, to reality, to… Everything.

And he can feel his rage piling up, arcing through him, and lightning is sizzling from fingertip to fingertip, and she's holding her… Luke's lightsaber.

Everything around them is shaking and screaming, rending apart. Like the explosion, but bigger, all around…

"Rey, please…" He reaches his hand out, electricity sparking off his fingers. "Please…"

Tears are streaming down her face, but she shakes her head, and steps back.

The lightning arcs off his hands, and her blade rises…

And Kylo wakes with the taste of fear and hate in his mouth, and his heart pounding, clammy with a cold sweat.

For a moment, he's not sure where he is. Silent. Everything is silent and chill.

Then he's oriented again. He's home. In bed. He was asleep. Awake now, really. He sits up and rubs his eyes. It's been a while since he's had a nightmare. Rey's eyes open, and she looks at him, and he shakes his head.

She sits up. "What happened?"

"Bad dream. Go back to sleep."

She can feel how scared he is. "What sort?"

He lies down again, and she snuggles in next to him. He's not sure. It was intense, but… "Just a dream." She was calling him Ben in the dream, and carrying Luke's saber, and there's no version of the present or future where that'll be true, so… "Just my brain feeling a little twisted, I guess."

"You're shaking."

"I know." His body is sparking with electric fear. Or maybe electric dreams. At least the storm is over. That certainly wasn't helping him stay calm.

The images keep dancing in his mind. He supposes that could be the future, a future… a future of a different past, maybe. Force lightning is a skill he hasn't learned. Doesn't intend to, either.

"You want to talk about it?" Rey's rubbing his back.

"No." He kisses her. "Just want to lie here, cuddle until my heart calms down, and go back to sleep."

"Okay." She yawns.

He kisses her again. "Sleep. We don't both need to be tired tomorrow."

She burrows further into his arms, and her breathing evens out.

His does, too. A lot more slowly. He holds Rey close, feeling her warm in his arms, her hair against his face, her skin on his.

He tries not to think about the dream, but it keeps coming back.

They were fighting again, that's clear. She was trying to leave. That's clear, too. They weren't them… That's also clear. The life that let them get here obviously hadn't happened.

 _It's not real._

He holds her close, his chin on her shoulder. _It could have been._

 _But it_ didn't.

He's here, now, with her, in their bed, in their home, that tomorrow he'll round some people up to help it make it through the winter and… _It's not real._

He rubs his lips together, trying to make himself go calm and quiet.

He misses his mantra. Not the content of it. He doesn't need to be dwelling on everyone who's ever done him wrong. It wasn't great for sleeping, but if he couldn't sleep, meditation at least helped him feel somewhat more rested, but he still hasn't found a new path on that.

It's an old image, but it comes to him. Young Ben, sitting next to the other Padawan, though this is early enough it's only him, M'Gll, and Runa. They're in the chapel, and Luke is sitting before them, comfortably cross-legged, looking peaceful, and saying, "Just relax into it. Settle in, open your mind, and _feel_ the Force. Let it guide and support you."

It's not without some resentment, because he was _never_ good at feeling it, at least not the way Luke wanted him to, (In fact, by a few months later, when it became clear that Ben would happily settle into the _dark_ side of the Force, that Luke would modify his instructions, making it clear he wanted them to settle into _light_ feelings.) that Kylo clears his mind, and lets himself settle.

He doesn't try to pull himself lightward or darkward, he just lets himself float.

According to Luke, the goal was to give up your cares, worries, mind, self, to the Force, and allow yourself to exist, cradled in the power that made starlight into life. He made it seem easy. Like he could just close his eyes and slip into it. Even in the best of times Ben was never great at shutting his mind up.

But… It's late. He's tired. He doesn't have anything better to try. And… He knows the dream isn't the future. It's not a warning per se… Maybe a view of who they could have been. Encouragement to continue the path he's on… Maybe.

He snuggles in deeper against Rey, makes sure the blankets are well-tucked around them, and lets himself sink into the flows of Force around them.

Instead of trying to shut his brain down, he lets it skitter from thought to thought, but doesn't focus on them. They're just things that are happening. And eventually they slow down. Everything does. There's his life force and hers and the glow of their Force, and the flow of energies around them.

And eventually, she's poking him in the shoulder, reminding him that if he hopes to talk to Poe before he heads to _the Supremacy_ that he's got to get up and moving.

And he's tired, and really wants to go back to sleep, but…

It's the first time he can remember praying… or communing really… and not feeling _wrong_ about it.

And that's a pretty nice sensation. (Even if his eyelids crusted to each other, and bones a million kilos, and how the fuck is he this tired… isn't.)

* * *

1/4/2

"You look like shit," Poe says when he opens the hydraulic ramp to his ship to let Kylo in.

"Good morning to you, too," Kylo replies, walking up, swathed in head to toe black to combat the cold and snow of Lirium.

Poe's just staring at him, waiting, as Kylo takes off his cowl, and brushes the snow off of himself, and then just stands there for a few moments. Finally he says, "Look, I'm not going to start reading minds anytime soon, so, you've got to talk to me."

Kylo who'd been staring out into space, wishing he'd gotten a few hours more sleep, blinks a few times, remembers where he is and why, mentally curses the fact that, apparently, now that he sleeps on a regular basis he can no longer skip sleeping and still function, unless he's got adrenaline pouring through his system to keep him going.

Poe's still looking at him. "You okay? You and Rey didn't have a fight, did you?"

That jerks Kylo into the present. "What? No! Uh… Nightmares. I have fewer of them now, which means I sleep now, which I didn't used to, but because I sleep now, I turn into a mindless fig if I don't sleep, and… Anyway… You doing anything today?"

Poe nods, pokes Kylo toward his galley, sits him at the table he's got in there, and starts making up the coffee. "Congratulations, you're getting old. When I hit… thirty-three I think, I suddenly couldn't go all day and all night and all the next day without help."

"Lovely."

Poe hands over the coffee, and Kylo slorps it down like it's a lifeline. "So, what do you want my help with?"

"I was wondering, if you'd like to help me get an engineer here to take a look at our very rapidly freezing water system, and make sure that no matter how bloody cold it gets we still have running water. But only if you want to, because I'm _trying_ not to be an entitled asshole about it."

Poe laughs long and hard at that. "And by get an engineer here, you mean?"

"Would you _please_ fly to the _Supremacy,_ and offer transport service to an Engineer, and whatever team and equipment he/she ends up lugging over here to get the job done?"

"A: Yes. And B: Don't you have your own transport?"

"I've got an entire fleet of transport. At last count, I've got over 850,000 ships under my command, and last count was a while ago. That said, I am _short_ on pilots I trust with the location of our settlement."

Poe grins. "Awww… You feel safe with me. I'm touched."

"Uh… Yeah… Sure." He blinks, takes another drink of coffee, feels his brain speed up a bit, and then says, "Shouldn't that be my line?"

Poe raises an eyebrow.

"You knew where Lirium was well before I'd ever let you anywhere near me with a weapon. That said, you appear to be trusting me enough to fly onto the _Supremacy_."

Poe purses his lips, he hadn't thought about that, and then nods, and then shakes his head. "Apparently, so."

* * *

1/4/2

"Good morning," Rey says to Rose and Finn as she steps into their home, much earlier than she usually comes.

Finn is certain that _something_ is going on just outside of his view. Rose appears to know why Rey is here, or at least has a good idea of it, but he's not in on the story.

"Morning," he says, as he works on getting a bite of mushed rice and fluthery into Paige's mouth. Paige seems mostly interested in smearing the mush into her hair and skin.

The ladies are looking at each other. Then Rey goes over to his sink, and turns it on, and… He glares at it, stupid fucking pipes are freezing. Not solid, not yet, but today the water's just dribbling out. Which means they're pretty much hit the point where they're going to have to keep the taps running all the time, otherwise the pipes will burst. But running all the time means the water will freeze in the drains and…

It's a mess. And they're going to be doing a lot of digging, which he's not exactly looking forward to, especially digging through frozen ground, in the very, very cold air. (He's not the weather witch Cassie is, that girl can feel a cold snap coming three days away, but he's got an awfully good feel for it, and if it gets above -15 today, or less than ten centimeters of snow, he'll be damned.)

He's glaring at the water, as he says, "I guess Poe and I and the big kids are going to be doing a lot of digging the next few days."

Rey sits down at the table next to him. "Uh…" She's looking really tentative, like she doesn't want to say something. "Maybe not?"

His eyes narrow further. "What?"

She rubs her lips together. "Later this morning we should have an Order Engineer here to survey the situation, design an all-weather water treatment system, and then depending on how complicated it is, later in the afternoon or tomorrow there'll be a team here to install it."

The first sensation is ice flowing through Finn's body. It's bad enough that Ren's lurking around just down the road, and teaching the kids, and just… being… here. But this! He swallows, hard, rolling his lips together, not sure if he wants to yell, or stalk off in a silent huff.

The next sensation is hot. Hot at the fact that Rose fucking approves of this. Because she would. Because she's _practical,_ and she knows that no water is a deal breaker. (Messy nappies don't wash themselves, and messy hands from cleaning up messy nappies need water, too, and… on and on and on…) Because she saw Ren for ten minutes swanning over Rey and decided he's a _good guy_. (He's mentally glaring at that. He's got a kilometer of scar tissue down his back, three prosthetic vertebrae, a pile of synth nerves in his spine to help out the ones they could regrow, but that asshole makes googly eyes at Rey for a minute, and his _wife_ decides he's turned over a new leaf and on the road to redemption and all the rest of that shit.)

Rose is saying something, and… Right… "Let me know when she's here. I'd like to talk to her about what she sees and what she wants to do."

"I think we'll all know. Kylo's asking Poe to bring the Engineer. I'm not sure when exactly they'll get here."

"So, he just orders someone here and you're fine with it," is what Finn manages to say.

Rose looks at him. "I asked her to ask… I mean… We need water. He can get us water, faster, easier, and for a longer amount of time than we can get it ourselves."

"We're not his charity project."

"Fixing up your own home isn't charity," Rose says.

"His home is that flying monstrosity. This is our home, and he's going to march his… monsters… all over it." He glares at Rey, too. "It's one thing if he's just… here, but… They're going to know where we are. You trust him, great. But the next idiot who wants to hit him, will just dig our coordinates out of the computer system, punch it in, and kill us dead, just to annoy him. That's how _they_ do things there."

"Unless he said no, Poe's going to provide transport for everyone," Rey says.

Finn's ready for that. "And get one of those tracking devices slapped onto his ship. They're going to know, and someone is going to use it. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but someone, somewhere, in one of those ranks is watching, and they're going to get us killed if they know where we are."

Neither Rey nor Rose has anything to say to that. It's not even an _unreasonable_ fear. Unlikely perhaps, but… Kylo Ren has enemies. A decent number of them do work for him. And the ones who don't likely pay very well for anything out of the ordinary that Ren's interested in, like, say a little planet off in the middle of nowhere.

"I suppose Poe could fly from the _Supremacy,_ and you and Chewie could pick them up somewhere neutral. No chance at someone sending the coordinates where they don't belong," Rey says.

He shakes his head. "They'll still _know._ Even if they don't know where we are, just knowing we exist is enough. They'll come looking."

"Finn…" Rose says, voice soft. "Either we trust that no one's coming to take us out for being tangentially next to Ren, or we get driven out by the lack of water. This isn't a problem we can fix, in time, with what we've got. And by the time you and Chewie can get what we need, and then we get it fixed, it'll have been weeks without proper water, and… That's just not tenable."

He glares again, looking at the water dribbling out of the faucet. Then he gets up and heads for their bedroom, not wanting to be 'reasonable' or around 'reasonable' people right now.

* * *

When C8 said, first thing, he wasn't kidding.

Kylo's been in his room for less than a minute, when there's knocking on the door, followed by, "Captian HR-0098 is waiting for you, sir."

Kylo blinks a few times, so much for a moment to regroup his thoughts before he starts his day. "I'll be out in a moment."

And that moment is spent changing out of his soggy, snow-covered staying-warm-on-Lirium garb and into his current command blacks.

As he's doing that, he knows he's going to have to explain to HR-0098 what it is he wants done, which isn't a problem, and why and for whom, which… might.

With the exception of his intimates, he hasn't introduced Rey as his wife, yet. Part of it is setting her into people's minds as the Mistress of the Maji. Part of it is that wedding thing, which he'd rather like to do, and at least as he understands it, one generally has the wedding before getting a spouse, but… well, obviously not for them, but… That's complicated. Part of it is being aware that his _wife_ will absolutely get a lot more attention than Rey likely wants, and not all of that attention will be complimentary.

Yes, while they were talking to people, most of them were pleased to meet her, and see that he had a 'beloved companion' as the the news people appear to be reporting, but… He could feel it at the dinner, some people are very interested in securing their own pet as his wife, and him already having one complicates things in ways they don't like.

He didn't feel any threat to Rey, that would have been taken care of, fast, but he did feel a lot of people looking to manipulate the situation.

And he's just… not sure what to do with that.

But, it doesn't matter. He's dressed, and the person who is going to fix their home is in his office, waiting for him.

* * *

A moment later, he's out of his room, pleased to see that C8 has coffee already on his desk for him, and appears to have offered a cup of it to HR-0098.

She's younger than he would have expected a captain to be, but… She's got a number, so she's been with them since she was a baby, and if she tested well, she likely got her first command rank before she hit fifteen, so the mid-twenties she is now isn't unreasonable for a Captaincy.

"Captain."

She shoots into a standing position, at high attention, waiting for him. "Master."

"At ease." He gestures to the chair she'd been sitting in, and she gingerly returns to it. He grabs his cup of coffee, sips it, feeling something like life coming back to him. (Which usually happens after cup number one, not cup number three.) "I've been told you're the person to see about setting up a water treatment facility."

She nods. He can feel she's nervous.

"Really, ease." He adds a bit of Force to his voice, just a bit to help her relax. "Mistress Rey has a project… We have a small settlement… and the current water processing is vastly under-powered to handle the cold. I was hoping you could help."

"Whatever you need, I can do it. How many kiloliters per hour are you looking to move?"

Kylo blinks. "Uh… I have no idea. There are about twenty-five people, five faviers, a few other small animals, and three micro farms."

HR-0098 blinks back at him. He wasn't kidding about small. "Less than one probably."

"Possibly per day." He's fairly sure a kiloliter is a thousand liters, but he's kind of nebulous as to how much water that is. His bath in the next room maybe? Do they go through that much water an hour at Lirium? A day?

She nods at him. "How are you currently moving it?"

"We have a pump in the lake, and about two klicks worth of pipes. The problem is our ho– colo— settlement is very cold, and they're freezing, and the lake we get the water from is also freezing, so we need some way to get water out of the lake, even if it gets colder."

"Ah… What kind of pipes do you currently have?"

Kylo doesn't know the answer to that, either.

"You don't know the kind of pump, either?"

He shakes his head.

"And before you ask, I don't know what kind of water processing we've got on the pump. I know where the pump is, and if I turn the handle at my sink water comes out."

He can feel HR-0098 wondering where Kylo lives. She'd assumed he lived on the other side of the door he'd come through, and now she's not sure.

"Do you know how deep the pipes are?"

"That I do know, about fifteen centimeters."

HR-0098 blinks at him again, and he can feel she's never dealt with pipes that had a smaller than fifteen centimeter diameter, so the idea that they're buried less than fifteen centimeters below the ground is stunning to her.

"Do you want me to… make suggestions based on… this…"

"I'd like to take you to the settlement, have you take a look, and make suggestions for how to get water through it, preferably by tomorrow."

She doesn't blanch. It's clear she wants to. Apparently _by tomorrow_ is fast for any sort of piping project, even a tiny one.

"How many people can I have for this project?"

"As many as you need to get it done as fast as possible."

He feels her relax a bit at that answer.

"Budget?"

"Same. It doesn't have to be absolutely top of the line. It's got to be good enough to get through the winter. Come spring we can re-do if need be. I'm willing to sacrifice some longevity right now for greater speed."

She asks the logical follow up question. "How long is winter?"

Kylo grits his teeth. "I don't know that, either. At least six more months, likely."

On the upside, HR-0098 is no longer terrified of him. The downside is she's thinking he's something of a twit. Or suicidally reckless if he's got a 'settlement' on a planet he doesn't know how long winter lasts for. Well, he is reckless on things like that, but… Nothing to be done for it.

He's not reckless about what comes next. "I'd like you to come with me. I have a ship that will take you to our settlement. You can survey, figure out what you need, and then take care of it."

He's not exactly asking, and he's not exactly ordering either. He's absolutely making it clear with his voice that she's never going to tell anyone about where she's going today and tomorrow.

"Yes, sir."

"Good." He hits his comm, calling up Poe. "You close?"

"I'm in the queue. My ship is the next one to get scanned."

"Where are you landing?"

"Sub dock 45-B."

"I'll be there, with Captain HR-0098, soon."

* * *

Poe had forgotten the sheer _scale_ of the _Supremacy._

And right now, he's rather wishing he could keep forgetting.

His current ship is _not_ tiny. It's a decent-sized cargo freighter. Fifty kilotons, which, for the kind of work he does, is exactly right.

He looks like a speck of dust floating next to the _Supremacy._ Fighters look microscopic. It's just _stupid_ how fucking big that ship is. Bloody thing is the size of a small moon, or a huge asteroid.

And, of course, because the loading and unloading bays are toward the bottom, he's got to fly under the thing, and it just blots all of the light out of the sky. One moment there were stars and the glow reflected off of several nearby planets, and then there's just _nothing._

It takes his eyes a moment to adjust to the dark, and then find the small lights leading him toward the landing bays.

He's got his comm open, and for a heartbeat, he just can't talk. He's… going to ask permission to _land_ on the fucking _Supremacy_ under his own name in his own ship, and… Fear's up to his throat, trying to shut it down, and…

He can _feel_ Leia behind him, sense her, and he doesn't turn around because if she's not really there he doesn't want to see it, so…

" _Supremacy_ this is _67-Micah,_ pilot Poe Dameron, seeking landing authorization."

There's a moment of silence followed by, " _67-Micah_ , we see you and have you scheduled for landing on sub dock 45-B. You're third in the queue, and there should be about a twenty minute wait until you can go through the scanners and land."

"Noted." He checks the glowing labeled docks, finds 45-B, and pulls up behind two other ships. He can see several Order ships hovering around the first one in the line, likely scanning, and after a few moments they move one ship closer to him, and the scanned ship moves forward into the dock.

Slick, easy, professional. Just like a million other places he's landed, just with… Yeah, that's a lot of scanning ships, way more security.

He's not sure what they're scanning for, but his first guess, something that'll blow the atmo in the landing bay, and likely a lot of the ships around it, isn't getting into their docks.

* * *

Kylo and HR-0098 get to the dock just as Poe's touching down.

And they are causing quite a stir. Because Poe is flying a cargo ship, he's in one of the cargo bays. Most of the ships around him are unloading raw materials, food, equipment, and the like.

None of the people who work down here with mostly droids and mech suits have ever seen anyone with a rank higher than Lieutenant. So the _Master_ down here, on his own, with a Captain, has them dumbstruck.

A lot of them are staring. Staring so much that the unloading is beginning to get sluggish.

Finally the Lt. in charge, who apparently spends most of his time up in the control tower notices the slow down, and comes down, yelling orders, until he, too notices Kylo, and goes dead silent, frozen, and then begins yelling even louder, and everyone around them jerks into action.

Kylo doesn't smirk at that. At least not where anyone can see it.

But, as Poe's stepping off his ship, he's got the idea he can feel the amusement behind the look on his face.

"Captain HR-0098, this is Poe Dameron."

And as soon as he's said it he feels Poe tense. HR-0098 doesn't. Poe, even without Kylo's skills can feel she doesn't recognize his name, which means this meeting is going to go rather smoothly.

"Poe will be taking you to our settlement. Once there, you'll talk to Rose Tico and Mistress Rey, and they'll fill you in on what exactly it is we need there."

The Captain nods, eyeing Poe's ship, which is a rather odd choice for this sort of transport run.

Poe nods to his hatch. "Hop on in. I'll be there in a moment. Want to talk to the Master a bit."

She's not comfortable with that, but Kylo nods, so she follows Poe's order.

Once she's in the ship, he says to Kylo, "That was close."

Kylo nods. "Yeah. I didn't think about it until the two of you were face to face. She doesn't know who you are."

"Good. I'd rather not have to fly with my hand on my blaster."

"She's not armed."

"You hope."

"I _know._ You think I'm going to let an armed Order officer on Lirium? I may be reckless, and possibly insane, but not in that direction."

Poe inclines his head to indicate that's not a version of insane he ever thought Kylo might be. "Uh huh…" He looks around at the ships and the mechs and droids unloading, and the people supervising. "You want to talk about one of the most surreal experiences of my life?"

Kylo smirks a bit. "I can imagine."

Poe looks around again, able to see a lot of Order people, none of them in stormtrooper armor, pretending to not be watching them. "You're creating a stir by being down here."

"I'm getting that sense."

"When we come back, she's going to want to bring people and equipment, so this ship will work, but if something like this happens again, a transport that doesn't stick out this badly, let alone you down here, would be a good plan."

Kylo nods. "I have a personal transport ship."

"Your _Silencer_ isn't subtle."

"I have a non-Order branded transport, too. Tonight, I'll bring that home. If you or Rey need a ride at some point…"

"Good. What does she know about where I'm taking her?"

"It's a settlement. Rey's… maybe mine… I… didn't have a good story prepared. I also haven't explained who exactly Rey is, other than the Mistress of the Maji."

"Who you occasionally tongue on stage in front of several million people."

Kylo rolls his eyes at Poe. He can see people watching them, but none should be close enough to hear what he's saying. "Like you wouldn't have if you'd had the option."

Poe gives him a little shove. "Kylo, there are so many flavors of wrong with that sentence, I don't even know where to begin."

Another eye roll followed by, "Get her back to Lirium. Don't tell her too much about who's there and why."

Poe waves that off. He doesn't need instructions on how to do this. "The person I can't charm with piles of creative bantha shit hasn't been born yet. That said, Finn's not exactly looking forward to this."

"Going to cause trouble, not looking forward to it?"

Poe shrugs. "After he got done glaring at Rose and Rey, he came to me to bitch about it, and found I was getting ready to fly, and… He's had better days."

"Well, he can sulk about it while he gets his next shower."

"Be nice. You wouldn't enjoy it if a pile of New Jedi came and invaded your home."

"Didn't. I didn't enjoy it when Luke showed up."

Poe raises and eyebrow at that, then nods, and says, "One day, we're going to sit down and talk about ghosts. But today isn't that day."

Kylo almost asks, but he can feel Poe really doesn't want to touch it now. And he's trying to not be an entitled asshole, so he doesn't just barge into Poe's mind.

* * *

"He's bringing some of _them_ here," Finn says to Chewie, voice bitter, as they go through their pre-flight plans.

 _Them?_

"Order fuckers. Supposedly it's an engineer and a team to put in a water processing system."

Chewie thinks about that for a moment, and then says, _Better them freezing their nards off chipping through a million meters of frozen shit than us._

Finn looks up from the news reader to him, almost startled, and then thinks about it for a second more, and laughs. "Fuck… Okay, yeah. You've got a point." He wasn't exactly loving the idea of having to re-dig the pipes.

They're quiet for a few more moments, both of them catching up on the news. "You see this," Finn points to a report about a small settlement not ridiculously far from them.

Chewie howls in agreement. _Rich pickings if no one else has noticed._

"You know anyone there?"

 _Nah. We'd be flying in blind, but…_

"But…" The news is reporting that the settlement on Hitlnor IV had a recent fire, and that fire took out their bacta plant. Also, judging by the rest of the report, it's harvest time. So, if they were to swoop in with a lot of bacta, which is dirt cheap on planets that can make it easy, they could probably get a lot of fresh produce, which they're pretty low on, unless they want greens, radishes, or carrots. No one on Lirium has had a piece of fresh fruit in weeks, so… Finn shrugs. "Not like we can't use the bacta here if we can't sell it. One of the little boogers scrapes something every day, so…"

Chewie's nodding, and starts looking for the closest, least expensive bacta producing planet.

Finn goes back to skimming the news, looking for another planet likely experiencing a shortage of something they can fill their hold with on the cheap. Preferably something either on, or near, a bacta producing planet.

That holds his attention for a few minutes, but he sees Poe's ship landing, and he glares at it.

Chewie lays a hand on his shoulder.

Finn nods, and then makes himself focus on the pad in his hand.

* * *

HR-0098 has had a lot of difficult assignments.

In the twelve years she's been in charge of setting up water treatment facilities on different First Order bases and worlds, she's done it with not enough resources, not enough time, not enough people, and often with locals or the Resistance actively working to sabotage everything she was doing.

After all, in a camp, or city, or any concentration of people, the easiest way to take them out is to reroute a pipe or two and lead the waste line into the clean water. Or sneak into the water treatment facility and muck with it. Or break a few pipes and kill the waste removal system.

Any of those will cripple a battle force faster that any ground attack.

And with _many_ fewer casualties to the attacking force.

So… she's used to doing this with more security people than engineers, and with local populations that hate her, and…

This is not that. Okay, she's been stuck in a cargo ship with an overly chatty pilot for more than an hour. And he's not exactly answering any questions she might have about this place. (And after the second non-answer, she stops asking.) Even though he also won't shut up.

And it is kind of nice to be able to sit up front, in the cockpit, and actually watch the stars zoom by. Her personal rooms don't have a view, and her job means she's basically never sees the sky. So that's nice. Once they break atmo, and the pilot says, "Welcome to Majirium," she's got a view of… nothing. The whole bloody thing is white.

Still, Majirium… Mistress Rey of the Maji. Maybe this is the Maji homeworld.

Granted, as they get lower, she can see that Master Ren was not exaggerating when he said twenty-five people. There's barely a dozen buildings on the ground, so, if this is their homeworld, it's awfully sparse.

Or, this Rey isn't Mistress of much…

Or… shit… It could literally be a school. She's a mistress in the sense of teaching classes…

Huh…

Poe, the pilot, lands the craft, and a moment later, he gets up, and then vanishes. He's back a minute later with what looks like the blanket from his bed. He's also got a coat, a scarf, a hat, gloves, and goggles.

"I don't have extra winter gear for you." He hands her the blanket. "If your great coat isn't warm enough."

She'd roll her eyes, an Order greatcoat is designed to keep the wearer comfortable from 15 to -35, but she doesn't have a scarf, hat, or goggles, and with all the snow outside, having something to put over her head may be welcome.

Whoever she's bringing back to work here will have full winter garb.

When Poe opens the hatch, there are two… people… she steps closer and realizes they are women, and, she doesn't know the shorter one, but she recognizes the other one… She bows, low, before saying, "Mistress Rey."

The other woman appears to be smirking under her goggles and hat. And the pilot doesn't snigger out loud, but she's got a feeling he wants to. He introduces her to the women, and she learns the other lady is Rose Tico.

She's also got a feeling that the blanket wasn't a bad idea. Any part of her covered by her coat is fine, but the wind keeps trying to open her coat, and it's creeping up under her trouser legs, and trying to whip down her collar. She's wrapping up.

"Master Ren wasn't kidding about cold."

Rose nods to her. "No, he's not. Cassie says we've got another cold front coming in later tonight, so it'll be even less pleasant tomorrow. More snow this evening, as well."

Everyone she brings to this will definitely be covered in head to toe winter garb. Starkiller wasn't exactly cozy, and they've had people stationed in even colder locals over the years, and for once, they're really going to test the limits of that gear.

Rose smiles at her, and says, "Come on, let's show you the issue, fast, and then you can think and work somewhere warm."

HR-0098 nods. She appreciates that.

* * *

It's, honestly… quaint.

It's a tiny little settlement on the edge of nowhere, with way too many kids and not nearly enough adults, and the kids keep 'wandering' over to check her out.

HR-0098 gets the sense that they don't get a lot of visitors here.

She's also getting the sense that Mistress Rey is, in fact, literally a teacher. Of a tiny little school. That's not, exactly, what the news feeds about the 'beloved companion' were hinting, but they didn't outright say anything one way or another.

It's occurring to her, the people talking on the news feeds likely didn't know. Because if the way the littlest of the kids stare at her is anything to go by, no one else has ever been here to see this place.

She's looking around at the scattered buildings jutting up from the snow, and if this is a place for visitors she'd be stunned.

The one thing that isn't stunning her is the job. She could have done this as a first year. It's an idiotically simple job. From what she can see, the current set up is just fine, it just needs to be lower, and given how the surface layers of the planet are going to freeze solid, set up with a heating system.

Get a drilling rig, plop it in a retaining bubble, down into the lake they go, find where the frost line is, go a bit deeper, fill it with plexiflass pipes, wire it into the shipstones they've already got here, hook it to the buildings, maybe, if Ren's willing to add an extra day without water, she can get a decent filtering system into the lake, too, and they'll be good to go.

Granted, that's half of the problem, getting water into the settlement.

Getting waste out…

They're using cisterns now, and that'll likely keep doing the job. Flushing them out if winter lasts too long and they fill up while the ground is still frozen solid will be annoying, but compared to the time it'd take to get a full sewage treatment plant up and running here, they're probably in good shape.

She's in… She's not sure. Rey's house? Maybe? (The Master's house? Does he actually live here? The only thing she could think of to tell that, pictures on the walls, aren't up. If he lives here, there's nothing obviously his in the kitchen/living area.) She doesn't think this is Rose's house, because Rose has a baby on her chest, and she doesn't see a crib or any baby things in here.

So, sitting in a pleasant, mostly white and cream colored room, munching on some cookies and sipping a mug of tea, she talks mostly to Rose about what they're going to do, and Rey just nods along.

Finally, Rose says, "So, how many people are you going to need to do this?"

"Master Ren said I could have as many as I need, but given how small everything is, putting more than four people on it would be overkill. There's only so many you can fit in a drilling rig, and we only need the one rig to do this."

"Will you need extra shipping beyond Poe's to get everything here?" Rey asks.

"No. I won't even fill half of his hold. If we ever put in a full sewage treatment plant, we'd need more cargo space than he can offer, but until the ground thaws, that's not worth it. Not with the system you've currently got."

Mistress Rey nods at that. "Good. Starting tomorrow then?"

HR-0098 shrugs. "It's important, right?"

"You saw the kids," Rose says. "We can make do without water for a few days, but we'd prefer not to."

"It was an hour getting here, probably another hour to collect people and things, another hour back. If you can put us up for a night, we could get a few hours in tonight, and wrap up early-ish tomorrow."

Rose and Rey glance at each other.

Rose says, "We do have an empty cottage. It's… Really just a ceiling, walls, and floor."

"Running… well, dribbling water, a cooker and cooler, and a refresher. It's better than a tent, but there aren't any beds in there right now. You'd basically be camping," Rey finishes.

"We've lived harder than that before. Let me get back to Mr. Dameron, and before the sun sets, we'll have started on setting up the retaining bubble and getting through the ice on your lake."

Rey and Rose walk her back to Poe, and HR-0098's got the sense that they don't want to leave her alone in the settlement, though what they think she can do here, by herself, she doesn't know.

But, it's not exactly like being wary of stranger is a new thing in the Order.

* * *

Once HR-0098's off, Rey says to Rose, "Is he going to be okay with them here overnight?"

"I can't imagine it'll be any worse than them being here during the day."

They both share a look. Both of them well aware of the fact that sinking suns and slumbering minds have a tendency to intensify both the good and the bad.

Finn's feeling okay when he sees the Order engineer go heading off with Poe. And he's feeling pretty proud of himself. He did _not_ march on out of the Falcon and demand that she get no where within a thousand meters of his wife and daughter.

(Likely because, as Chewie pointed out, a strong wind would knock the girl over, so between Rey and his wife, she'd be over-teamed in about a minute. And while Finn would have liked to suggest that First Order-trained officers were tougher than that, at the rate Ren's been picking up new people, he's got not idea if the girl actually is a First Order-trained officer.)

Still, he breathes easier when he sees her get back onto Poe's ship, and head off.

Chewie watches him eyeing the girl, and then says _You know it's going to be fine._

Finn rolls his eyes. "Yeah, the part of the brain that _thinks_ knows that this woman is not going to show up at Ren's house and blow it up, because she's not fucking stupid or suicidal. Ask me how close to in charge the part of the brain that thinks is."

Chewie gives him a long, knowing nod. _Been there, done that. Wanna go shoot some shit?_

"Nah. Want to wrap this up, have a good night with my wife. Pretend a herd of stormtroopers aren't going to show up here tomorrow to do Force alone knows what. Snuggle my girl. Soak up some family time, because day after tomorrow we're in the air for at least a week."

 _Good plan. Could use some baby cuddles myself._

"And Paige is always good to cuddle her PapaChewie, so I think we can work with that."

Chewie grins at him. _Good._

Finn shoves the trade roster aside. They know where they're going, what they're hoping to pick up, and where they want to trade it. He sits back a bit. There are a few hours before supper. An hour before he'd normally get home and start working on supper, so… "I appreciate you not telling me to get over it."

Chewie smirks at that. _It'd be like telling you to fly. You're not going to do it, so why waste my breath."_

"Rose… doesn't think I should… but I know she'd like it. Rey would, too. Even Poe's somehow been charmed by this bastard into… Getting along."

 _Charmed? Unless he's learned a lot of new tricks, charm isn't in his arsenal._

"Magicked?"

 _Probably not._

Finn raises an eyebrow at that.

 _I'm not saying he couldn't. I don't know if he can or not. Luke could but I don't think he ever used it more than once or twice. Obi Wan certainly could. I'm sure Yoda could. I don't know if Ben can, but I'm pretty sure he doesn't. Doesn't seem the type to care enough to make people like him. Not like that._

"I wouldn't know. Other than he hates being called Ben apparently."

 _Fuck that. I was there when they named him, and I'll call him Ben whenever I like. He's lucky I don't call him Benny._

"His nickname as a kid?"

 _Benny, Ben-ben, Little Starfighter, Lando'd call him that. I've got all the peeing on the rug and running around naked stories. He was a baby, just like everyone else._

Finn's voice is dark. "Except for when he wasn't."

 _Except for when he wasn't. Toddler tantrums are… unpleasant for seasoned parents, and terrifying for virgin parents when the kid can blow the power if he's particularly upset about not getting a cookie. Worse when blowing the power freaks him out, too._

"Yeah, I'm not looking forward to that."

 _And I don't blame you at all. Give our little Paige a year, and she'll be running around, yelling at you for trying to get her to drink out of the wrong sippy cup, and then yelling when you give her the right one, and then yelling some more because yelling is making her tired and unhappy._

Finn lets out a _long_ sigh. "Thank you, Chewie. That's a whole new nightmare to add to the list."

Chewie grins at him. _Yes, but just think. She's in a tearing fury, and then you can take her over to Uncle Kylo, and plop her angry, angst-y self on him, and laugh your way home for a nap._

"And then have nightmares about what he'd do to an angry, angst-y toddler."

 _Look disconcerted and chew on his lip. Probably get Rey to help both of them calm down._

"Look, yes, I pretty much _know_ that's likely true. Rey's telling me that. Rose is telling me that. Poe's flying his ass into this guy's lair. Poe flew into his lair, and obviously flew back out of it. Ostrae gave me a handful of cookies… So… I _know,_ but… I _don't._ " He eyes Chewie. "You're less angry about him than the last time we talked about this."

Chewie shrugs. _His dad's really happy with him right now. It rubs off some._

"Some?"

 _He's happy, and that makes me happy, then I remember I'm talking to a fucking ghost, and why I'm talking to a fucking ghost, and… He would have been a ghost by now anyway. Except, if he'd gone naturally, maybe he wouldn't have been a ghost… Maybe he'd have just been gone. So… It's complicated. Still… The things that make Rose happy, they make you happy, too, right?_

"Her being happy makes me happy. I'm not always keen on the things that make her that way."

 _That works, too. This makes Han happy. And… we wanted Ben to be happy… Well, we honestly never thought he'd get there. We wanted him to be not murdering people and vaguely content-ish doing it._

"That's a remarkably low set of goals."

 _You didn't know him as a teenager._

Finn inclines his head, and decides he's rather glad of that.

* * *

When he gets home, Rose is already there, starting on dinner. Paige is on the floor, working on getting up onto her knees and rocking back and forth, seriously thinking about doing some crawling soon.

He picks her up, and cuddles her close, inhaling her sweet baby scent, and feeling her cuddled against his skin, and tries to imagine… a dark, Force sensitive kid.

And decides he'd rather not.

Instead he puts Paige, down, pulls off his coat, and snuggles up to his wife, kissing her warmly, before asking, tentatively, "How'd it go with the Engineer?"

"Her name is HR-0098…"

Finn shakes his head. He doesn't know her. Though, he supposes, it was possible he could have known her. If she's on water, and he did sanitation. He knew… or at least knew of… a few of the water and waste engineers on the _Supremacy._

"And it went fine." Rose turns on the water, and a bit trickles out. "She's bringing the crew in tonight. Should be here soon. And by the end of the day tomorrow, we should have full running water. And it should stay warmer longer, because the pipes will be heated."

Finn doesn't like hearing about stormtroopers showing up sooner rather than later. But Rose also knows he's something of a shower fiend, and _really, really_ likes a long, hot shower. Likely because he never actually had a water shower until he was with the Resistance. And, at least lately, with the water so much colder before it hits the water heater, it doesn't get as hot, and it gets to lukewarm a lot faster.

"What's a crew?" Finn asks. Rose is cutting vegetables… He knows that's the last of the fresh veg in their cooler. He reaches for the meat she's got out, and begins to chop that up with her.

"Her, four workers. They're going to sink a retaining bubble into the lake, find the frost line, and put the pump under it."

"Can't get more than four into a bubble like that."

"Exactly. She's sure the job won't take long."

He glares a little at that. "First Order jobs never did. Take too long once, and you'd be 'reconditioned.' Take too long twice, and they'd kill you."

She winces at that. Then she turns to Finn. "You're planning on leaving the day after tomorrow, right?"

He nods.

"Okay, here's my deal with you. When they come back, we'll get HR-0098 away from the crew. Bring her in for tea or something. Have her set up the rooms for her crew. You wander on out and talk to them. If they want to run, plop them on the _Falcon_ and get them out of there."

Finn blinks at that, and then smiles, wide. "I don't tell you I love you nearly enough, do I?"

"You say it every day."

"And I should say it more. I love you." He bends down to kiss her, and she kisses back.

* * *

Just like Rose said, once everyone has landed and gotten started, she and Rey pull HR-0098 away, and the crew is out there, on the lake drilling through the ice, and setting the retaining bubble into place.

He walks toward them. Hot thermoses of tea in hand. The snow's pouring down right now. More than anyone who spends most of their time on a ship would be used to. But there's still a good thirty meters of visibility, maybe a bit more because the sun is down, but the snow catches the light of the houses, and the lights the Order men have set up so they can see what they're doing. By Lirium standards this isn't a bad storm.

The four of them are looking pretty miserable. They've set up windbreaks. They've got First Order Winter garb… Though as he gets closer he can see it's _not_ First Order winter garb. It's still white, but there's no armor, the symbol is wrong, the workers have name tags (and only two of them have numbers).

It's… not what he was expecting.

Still.

He idles over, and says, "Fucking frosty today. Thought you guys might like something tasty and warm."

And just like every soldier in the history of soldiers left out in a cold place doing a job they'd rather not, they're all over hot drinks.

So, they slorp down the chai, and thank him for the hospitality, spend a moment introducing themselves and shooting the shit. And Finn's good at it. Another life, a different choice, he'd have been one of these guys, or at least very similar to them.

When they hand the thermoses back to him, he says, quietly, "I've got a ship, if you want out, I can get you out."

 _That_ has gotten their attention. Two of them are shifting from side to side, very uncomfortable that this apparently nice man has just said something _wrong_ to them. The other two are staring at him like he's insane.

One, (Finn mentally rolls his eyes) named Hrver, at least according to the patch on his coat. Because of course his coat has a patch with his name on it. Hrver, like all of them is wearing cold weather gear which covers his face, but it's clear it's there to keep him warm, not anonymous. Hrver looks at him nervously before saying, "Why would we want to do that, sir?"

Finn slumps. Of course. Yeah, he claims he's changed things, but… Hux method training beats the idea of any life other than the First Order right out of you.

Then Hrver throws a twist at him. "We can leave whenever we want. Ralph used to be on this crew, but he left last month. Decided he wanted to try and make a go of it on Rndll. Fucking stupid, if you ask me. But he had his five in, and wanted to settle down, try something new, so…"

"Ralph?" Finn asks. Anyone with their five in should have a number, at least on this sort of crew.

"That's what he decided he wanted to be called. New life, new name. RL-478F. That's the number they gave him, but he wanted something different, so… He took it. He and his lady up and left. Anyway, I've got three and a half years to go before I've got my five, and I'm not heading out a moment sooner. After that, maybe. I don't know." He glances at the video feed of the retaining tube he's putting into place so the pipes can stay insulated and warm. "I like doing this, and it looks like the Colony Emancipation Program is going to need people with my skills, so… Anyway, that's later. Right now, this is good."

FR-9985, the man working the forward drill says, "You've got to test into the Colony Emancipation Program, and you're shit at tests, Hrr."

Hrver glares at him. "I'll ace that bloody test. They say you get into that program, there's a monthly bonus, and they're talking about single billets."

"I'd heard that," Ygrine says. "Of all the things I miss about home, _not_ sharing a room with five other assholes, all wanking and farting at me all night is the top of the list."

"Awww… does the Prince miss his comfy room at home?" FQ-4586 says.

Finn's stuck with whiplash. _This,_ griping about shit, feels like, _home._ He's spent about a billion hours doing it with other First Order soldiers. Names and plans, and a program they're trying to get into, that's _different._

Ygrine glares at him, and adds, "If you'd ever had your own room, you'd fucking well miss it, too. Some things you don't want a constant audience for."

Finn tries not to snigger at that, because of all of the things he appreciated most about getting out of the First Order and into the Resistance, having a space of his own was pretty high on the list.

He decides to ask, "What's the Colony Emancipation Program?"

FQ-4586 replies, "So, we go to planets that have stuff we need, and see if they want to stay part of whatever system they're part of. Most of them are someone's colonies. Supposedly, if they say, 'fuck this deal, we're out of here,' they can sign up with us. We head over, spruce things up, and then slowly pull back over time. Test well, have useful skills, and you get to join the group setting up the colony. It's a ten year period of time, so if you stick around for the whole thing, you get to be an Order citizen in a newly freed planet."

Hrver's nodding. "I'm seriously thinking about it. Assuming we can get a good colony planet. Some of them are pretty rough, but… Get in at the beginning, start fresh, build it up, build your stake. I can get used to that idea."

"Just got to pass the test," FR-9985 says.

"I can study."

"Sure. You can barely read. Study all you want," Ygrine says with a sneer.

"Prince-y here is doing his time until he can stand for election," FR-9985 adds. "Poor boy's slumming it with the likes of us, and wishing every single day that Daddy didn't make him join up."

"Fuck you. Some of us have homes and lives that need to be protected. Some of us are here because there's something greater than ourselves at stake."

Finn raises an eyebrow. The idea of joining the Order to protect your home is something that hadn't occurred to him. Though he does vaguely remember Leia saying something like that. He doesn't recognize Ygrine, but he wonders if he was part of the Resistance, or at least nearby it.

Ygrine, as well as Finn can tell with someone wearing goggles, a hat, and scarf, looks annoyed by this. "Anyone with eyes can see you either join the Order or you hope to hide. We're too damn big to hide, so…" He shrugs. "Here I am. Two of my sisters, and a few cousins are here, too. And yes, come that first slate of elections, we'll all be citizens, and we'll _all_ be up for election. If you don't want to be run over, you damn well better be steering the ship, and we're going to steer the ship."

Finn laughs. "Ren's going to steer the ship. You're just making it look pretty for him."

Ygrine's eyes are sharp as he's overlooking the tiny settlement on the plain. "We'll see about that." Then Ygrine looks around. "So what is this place? We saw Mistress Rey for a second when we got here. This her pet project or something."

Finn doesn't like that look, doesn't like Ygrine, doesn't like any of this. He hates the fact that he knows what he's going to do next with this. Hates the fact that by protecting himself and his family, he's going to protect Ren, too.

His teeth grit. "Or something."

* * *

Finn's annoyed when he goes to Rey's house after supper. They're wrapping up, and Ren is… He grits his teeth harder. Stupid bloody things are going to end up cracked at this rate. The Master is… _drying the fucking dishes._ Megalomaniacs out to shatter the galaxy don't dry the fucking dishes. Husbands at home, with their wives, killing time, talking about their days, _dry the fucking dishes._

And when he sees Finn, and feels the… everything coming off of him, he does do that stupid chewing on his lip thing. It's like he's going out of his way to look like a nervous puppy.

 _A fucking_ huge _nervous puppy who practically cut you in half._

Finn grabs one of the dry ones from Ren and puts it away. At least he doesn't have to look at the bastard when he says it. "Ygrine means trouble, for you, for us. And apparently he's got a few sisters, and some cousins in the Order, too."

Ren nods. "You think him knowing about Lirium will be an issue."

"Yes."

Ren's face grows dangerous. And Finn feels that spear of ice up his back and in his bones. "I'll take care of it."

Rey's washing the dishes, listening. She doesn't seem terribly concerned.

Finn is. He's got the image of Ren and the lightsaber, and his eyes hot and cold and the power and dark just pouring off of him in the forest pounding through his mind. "How? You're not going to kill them, right?" Just because he doesn't want Ygrine to become trouble doesn't mean he wants the man gutted like a fish.

Ren glares at him for that. "I have a few more tricks in my book than murder. They're here tonight, camping in the empty cottage. Tomorrow they'll finish the job. I'll escort them back to the _Supremacy._ Everyone on the team will be under the impression they set up a water system for my personal vacation retreat. On an island of temperate plains, with green rolling hills, trees in the hollows, and a well set up, flourishing, farm."

As he's saying it, Finn's seeing it. "Will it hold?"

"Well enough. Unlike a lot of memories I've built for other people, this one I know inside and out. They'll never have any reason to think they weren't there."

"Is that… home… for you?" Finn asks, hating that he's curious.

"Rey is home for me. That's just a place I lived for a while."

* * *

When Finn's done with that, Rey offers to walk him home. "You okay?" she asks.

"Can't you just feel it?"

"I can feel you're conflicted."

He rolls his eyes. "Probably a good word for it. I know he's your man, and even I can see you love him, but… Did you hear what he said? Like it was no big deal. He'd scramble five people's memories, on the fly, just like that. Yeah, I suppose it's better than killing them, but…" His head shakes, and his eyes are earnest. "How do you trust someone who you _know_ can do that?"

Rey sighs. "I just do." They take a few more steps. It's only a few hundred meters between his house and Rey's. Then she says to him, "You still remember the fight. He's willing to take you hating him rather than alter your memory of it."

Finn brushes that off.

"You might as well just say it. I can feel it's bugging you."

"I hate the fact that the safety of my family is tied to his safety."

"The Force doesn't do things like that as an accident."

He narrows his eyes. "Han once told me, 'That's not how the Force works,'"

Rey's beyond skeptical of that, but… "Then break the tie. Head off. Settle somewhere else. We'll… talk and send letters, and I'll visit from time to time. Clean ship. Won't lead anyone to you. He'll just be part of my life you can ignore. And I'll be Auntie Rey who comes from time to time with neat presents and cool stories."

"Until the Order shows up in my corner of the galaxy."

"And does what? Opens up a recruiting station you don't have to go to? Even Chewie trusts him to behave."

"It's not him I'm worried about. Not now. I don't _like_ him, but I know I can turn my back on him. Sort of. I keep telling myself that. I know it's real, and wrong, and… Anyway… It's getting caught in the crossfire when someone comes gunning for him. That's real, too."

"We've all got enemies."

"Not like him."

Rey doesn't have an answer for that. She knows it's true. She doesn't like it. And she can see a time when people who get too close to the Order will be targets. She can just _feel_ it. They're going to upset too many places, and people will _hurt_ them for it.

And innocent people nearby will get hurt, too.

Finn knows she understands. He nods. "It's fucking freezing. I'm going home. See you in the morning?"

"Yeah. You heading off soon?"

"Day after tomorrow. We've got a week long run coming up."

"I'll miss you." That's true, too.

He rolls his eyes, and pulls her into a hug, giving her a little kiss on the cheek. "I'll miss you, too."

* * *

1/5/2

Finn watches the Order workers head toward Poe's ship at the end of the next day. He's far enough away he can't see or sense their expressions, but he's sure that Ygrine did not miss that Ren is there. That he came from one of the cottages to join them in Poe's ship.

And then they vanish into the ship.

And he tries to sense, tries to feel it, but… Whatever Ren's doing in there, he can't feel it.

But somehow, a collection of people are going to get a very wrong idea of what they just did.

And he doesn't know what or how to think about that.

He turns away from the window of his house… His _home._ For better or worse, this is his home. This is where lives with his wife, and where his daughter was born, and… Everything in the world that really matters to him is _here._

He steps to the sink, and turns it on. Water comes pouring out. Clean, clear, _hot_ , gushing water.

Finn closes the tap, and closes his eyes, and tries to find a way to make this make sense.


	4. The Banker's Son

1/6/2

The Order, like the First Order, like the Empire, works on an Imperial Standard Day. Which is, pretty much, the Coruscant clock. A Coruscant day is 24 hours and three minutes. Since they're not on planet, they shaved the three minutes off the day.

It just makes everything easier to not have to deal with that.

(Why Coruscant didn't make their hours just a hair longer is a question currently lost to history. It does come up on referendums often, but keeps getting defeated because of… tradition, or something.)

Order recruits have four portions of their day. Eight hours of active duty (broken into two four hour shifts). These are hours spent doing whatever it is they do. Four hours of light duty. These are spent studying, in lessons, working off demerits, or on punishment duty. Four hours of free time, which can be used for whatever the recruit likes (Usually broken into two two hour segments). Eight hours of rest time. They don't do bed checks, but recruits are supposed to be located in their (or someone else's) cots during this time.

Robert Ygrine, having finished his second shift on pipe maintenance, moves onto his second free time shift.

He's glaring at the universe around him as he heads back to his bunk. Each of them has their own bunk, a one meter by one meter by two and a half meter rectangle carved into the wall with a soft mattress, a too small and too hard pillow, too rough sheets, and a fairly nice blanket. They're stacked on top of each other, two high. Six of them to a dorm room. Each dorm has it's own eating space, a cooler for keeping personal snacks, a refresher, and whatever assorted lounging furniture he and his bunk mates have managed to buy, borrow, or steal.

The bunks do have a small 'privacy' curtain, so his whole life isn't constantly on display. But it's not the same as having his own suite, containing a bedroom, office, entertaining space, and bathroom. (He _really_ misses the bathroom. He works the pipes, so he knows there's water a plenty on the _Supremacy_ but they don't waste any of it on showers for recruits like him. One of the perks of rank, you get your own rooms and an actual, water shower. Now he's stuck sharing a sonic with five other guys.)

It's especially not the same as home when he wants to do something like have a 'private' conversation with anyone from home. His father made sure he had an encrypted comm when he got here, but he's still got to talk into the damn thing, and… There's just… nowhere he gets to be alone.

Which means he's got to sound like some sort of stupid, excited, Ren fanatic whenever he calls home. He can gush all he wants about all the great stuff he's doing here, and if anyone overhears they just assume he's a half-wit who's really pleased to be here.

(The fact that he's only this enthusiastic when he's calling home makes his bunk mates think he's trying to pull something over on his parents. He doesn't mind that they think he's scamming his parents. As long as they don't think he's scamming _them._ )

He hopes, really hopes, that bringing yesterday's assignment home will make his parents decide that his sisters can do the job, and he can go _back_ home.

It probably won't work.

Between his sisters and cousins, finding pretty _girls_ who might want to drag Ren into their bed wasn't difficult. Hell, two of them volunteered. He knows his parents and aunts though a man was a long shot, but they wanted the angle covered, and he was the only one of the boys who was even close to being okay with that.

And then the bloody asshole showed up with a… No one's entirely sure. Woman. Whatever it is she is to Ren, she's obviously a _woman._ A _woman_ he's obviously _quite fond of._ And his father and aunts' plan to honeytrap Ren have to be withering on the vine by now.

At the very least, their plans to use _him_ to honeytrap Ren should be dead by now…

Maybe…

Between that and what he can bring them… With any luck they'll tell him that he can be on the next ship off the damn _Supremacy_ and back to Ygrith Prime. Let his sisters rot here trying to catch that bastard's eye. He'll help run their election campaigns when they've got their citizenship.

* * *

Sometimes, there's more privacy in a crowd than in small quarters. He takes his comm with him to his favorite noodle shop on the D deck, gets a bowl of r'hathran broth and rice noodles, fried egg on top, and finds a somewhat less packed back bench to sit down on.

The only good thing about being here as an Ygrine is that he does still get allowance from home, so he can still afford things like a decent fucking bowl of noodles. (And, well, okay, they've got people here who make some fucking awesome noodles. He wasn't expecting that.)

The other trainees are squeezing by on a thousand credits a month, which… Well, he supposes if you eat in the canteens (free), spend your free time studying (free), or training (also free), that thousand will last a long time.

But he's got a taste for real food (much too expensive, at least compared to home), real entertainment (buggering shit, whoever's got the monopoly on that is bleeding them dry of credits), gambling (once upon a time, he was considered good at that, and now he's got the sinking suspicion that he won a lot because people wanted to get in good with Myrton Ygrine's son. But he's learning new tricks, _fast._ ) and whores (actually, they're fairly reasonably priced. At least some decent company is easy to come across here.)

So, if he had to live off of it, his thousand credits a month would last him about five days.

But he doesn't.

For which he is grateful.

Just not as grateful as he would be if he could go _home._

Which reminds him of why he's out here. He takes the comm out of his pocket flicks it on, punches in his father's number, and waits.

"Robert!"

"Hey, Dad," he forces his mock excited tone into his voice.

"And how's our newest member of the Order doing today?"

 _Fucking awesome._ "Just great. I've got two extra free shifts today, because I was on round the clock yesterday. Got a really cool new assignment."

"Excellent, and what did they have you doing? More pipework?"

"More pipework. I never thought I'd be good at something like that," _I never thought I'd have to do hard, annoying, physical labor with my own two hands. Rescue me, you bastard!_ "but at the end of the day, seeing something I built myself is pretty satisfying."

"I'd expect." His father's just oozing satisfaction at that. "There's nothing like knowing that you, personally, put something together that will outlast you, and benefit others for a long time to come."

Robert takes that to mean he's not going home anytime soon. He's also muttering under his breath, thumb over the microphone on the comm about how his father has never built anything in his life. Or, for that matter, ever did anything more taxing than count credits.

"So, just good pipesetting?" his father asks.

"No. Me and my team, because we're the _best," or the ones who had a free shift_ "got picked to go and set up the water system for Ren's personal vacation spot."

"Oh… That's wonderful! I'm so proud of you!"

And that's exactly what his father says it is. He's _very_ pleased to hear this.

"I know. It was a _major_ honor. We were there for almost a whole day. Set the whole thing up. It's… not what I was expecting. It's not like we see him regularly, but… You kind of get a feel for him, but this… It's a little farm."

"Ren has a farm?" Myrton Ygrine can't keep the surprise out of his voice.

"He and his lady. He was there to see what we were doing, check in I guess. Make sure we did it right, and we did him proud. His lady was there, too. It looks like there's an overseer, someone who lives there full time with his wife, and a few hands. I think he breeds faviers."

"Good grassland then?"

"Lots of grass, gentle hills, orchards. Domes. Apparently the man likes domes. There was a lake, or at least the smell of a lake, I didn't see one, but you know…"

They have lakes at home, beautiful ones, and they just… shift the air around them. He misses them. Misses grass and sunlight and real air, and…

"Anyway, Captain HR-0098 came up to us, and I was nervous because… Well, you know, it's usually not a good thing when the Captain shows up to get you to do something, but this… We were on a transport for two hours and seventeen minutes, hyperspeed. I'll never get used to that, stars streaming by us, and then we were landing on the grass, and… There it was, a little farm that needed a water treatment system."

"That's excellent. Did you see him personally?"

"Yes. When we wrapped up, he came to thank us for the work we did, and told us he appreciated the effort. The Cap blushed like a school girl. I'm not sure if an officer, let alone anyone even close to as high ranked as he is, has ever thanked her or told her he appreciated what her team had done before."

"Would you say your team enjoyed the job?"

Robert thinks about it. "Actually, yes. It's precision work, but still, nice to get out for a while. And when you work a double, or in our case a triple, because we were out, though eight of the hours were rest time, you get extra off time, and the time we were in transport counts as work time, but there's nothing to do but sleep or relax, so that was good. Him saying thank you on top of it… Yes, I think they liked that, a lot."

"I see. Have you talked to your Aunt Andromeda recently?"

"Aunty Dra? No, not recently."

"Pity, she was on board for the year-end extravaganza."

"Ah… And how did she like that?"

"She said it was a blast. A very nice young man, an officer by the name of Jon Frakes, made an impression on her. Apparently, he's a friend of Master Ren and Mistress Rey, and enjoys a good party."

Robert knows what that means. He's not leaving here anytime soon, and his parents have indeed decided his honeytrapping skills are no longer necessary, for Ren. But, like everyone else, he's also noticed the young Lt. Colonel who is often near Ren, so…

Better than the Grand Marshall or the Grand Admiral, both of whom appear to be only slightly older than Snoke.

"I've seen him around from time to time. He's not generally in my circles, though. He's in design and diplomacy."

"Ah… Well… I suppose that's a specialty you could aim towards."

If his test results were anything to go by, the answer to that is a resounding no, but he doesn't see any reason to inform his father, if he doesn't already know, that not only did he not test into any officer track skills, but that the skills they did think he'd be useful for should only put him in the path of Frakes, or any other highly ranked officer, if his personal shower were to explode.

And, honestly, on the ship, someone with a higher security clearance would likely get picked for that.

Granted, he did get picked for Ren's retreat, so… There's something.

"Did you see what sort of ship the Master piloted to get to his home?"

Robert thinks. And for a second there's this sense of cold on his back, and goggles digging into his eyes, but… "No. I know he's got a command ship and his TIE Silencer, though. He came in after we were bedded down for the night, and left after we did, too."

"Of course. I'm sure he works all the hours of the cycle."

"I think so, too."

"Thanks for calling in, Rob. I know your down time is precious, so I won't keep you."

"Thanks, Dad. Give Mom a kiss for me."

"You know it."

And then the comm goes dead. And Robert Ygrine goes back to his noodles, and his dreams of getting _off_ the _Supremacy_.

* * *

Myrton Ygrine closes off the comm call, and ponders for a moment.

Ren has a 'vacation home.'

That's… intriguing.

Add in what Andromeda was able to glean from the First Year party, that apparently Ren's lady has a… monastery… maybe…

It's possible that Robert may have stumbled into one of the most valuable, and currently unknown pieces of information in the galaxy.

The location of the Maji.

Maybe.

Or perhaps Ren does just have a little out of the way spot for when he wants some time with his lady, alone. He certainly wouldn't be the first powerful man to decide that he wanted a place outside of the prying eyes of the rest of the world.

Rather foolish to let outsiders do work on it, and know it's his, though.

Granted, when it comes to personal security, Ren does seem to border on rather foolish, frequently.

Myrton notes the date. Working back to when his son would have had to have left the _Supremacy._ He also notes the transit time.

And then sighs. Robert didn't tell him when in the day they left, and depending on how fast the _Supremacy_ was traveling, that could make a _lot_ of difference.

His son, whom he loves, because he is his son, is… well… something of a professional dilettante, and… honestly a stint in the Order might not actually be the worst thing that's ever happened to the boy. (Though he can certainly feel Robert thinks it is.) But, from what Myrton can tell, and from what the girls are telling him, Rob is never going to move above drone level work, not on his own talents.

And, again, worse things could happen to him. Making him spend five years actually doing _something_ could possibly help him appreciate his position here more when he gets home.

Cynteenia, his second child, on the other hand, tested into the Navigational program. It's possible, that when he speaks to her next, he might be able to get across the idea that he'd really appreciate knowing where the _Supremacy_ was on when Rob left, what speed it was moving, and at what heading. From there, they can chart a few hours at hyperspeed, and narrow down the collection of potential planets for Ren's private house.

Long, slow, boring, and likely expensive work.

But, good information always is.

Also slow, and likely expensive, but not boring is figuring out what to do with that information once they have it. If it's Ren's private home, it will fetch a very pretty price, in favors if not gold. If it's his Lady's monastery… That's the hottest question in the galaxy right now.

If he could get eyes on her, and what she's doing…

Who is Lady Rey? Where does she come from? What is a Maji? What does she do? Getting those answers and then leveraging them…

 _That_ is well worth the time and money to find out.


	5. The Machinations of Old Women

1/8/2

It has not escaped Ellie Kinear that Mirina Frakes is still on board the _Supremacy._

What's she's not sure of is _why._

She does have a hunch though. If anyone at that party was likely to have _complicated_ feelings about Kylo Ren having been Ben Solo once upon a time, Mirina Frakes is that person.

The question is: what to do about it?

But, of course, not knowing exactly what those complicated feelings might be… Makes determining the correct plan of actions… difficult.

Ellie sits in the private chambers she and Pat share. The _private,_ routinely debugged, on _her_ personal ship, chambers. She sips her tea, and thinks, and wonders.

Thirty plus years ago, when the Emperor was still hanging onto sane by his fingernails, and he was living with the third of four mistresses, Ellie was one of her intimates. One who intentionally lived slightly outside the wheel and thrum of the formal courts of the Empire.

She was, of course, invited to important functions, and traveled in the right circles, but as Pat's wife, she was part of the military sphere of power, and not the political/senate circle.

Selina Beau, the Emperor's Mistress, was, of course, the highest lady of the political circle.

And both of them benefited by having in intimate friend in the other's circle.

And both of them, and many others, benefited by having a good friend who had many very wealthy, very well-connected, very talkative clients, who, in a relaxed setting, often with a glass of wine in hand, had a tendency to say things they likely shouldn't have.

Enter Mirina Frakes, who was perfect for the job. She's not the only well-connected courtier that Ellie collected over the years, but one of the best, and most useful.

And even to this day, only a handful of people ever knew what her real job in the Empire was.

But the Emperor didn't stay sane. He disbanded the Senate, blew up Alderaan, and a few weeks after that, he was seeing conspirators in all corners. (Of course, by blowing up Alderaan and disbanding the Senate, the number of conspirators against him likely did increase a thousandfold. People will allow someone on the verge of insane to rule them, but once it's clear they've crossed the line…)

Including his lady of more than twenty-five years.

Before Selina Beau fell, Mirina and Ellie were able to get her out. Officially, she's been dead for thirty-five years, in actuality, she's been quietly living in a small villa on Granium V. They had the feelers in place to see the winds shift before they did. So, a few days before the warrant for her arrest was to go live, Selina went for a pleasure cruise and "oops" crashed. It was a great tragedy for about ten minutes, The Emperor spent a huge sum of credits on an extravagant funeral and tomb, and then, as soon as the cameras turned away, he installed his new favorite into Selina's place.

The Emperor's new pet, Alia Dib was easy for Mirina to woo, because of course, by then a Frakes gown was synonymous with high fashion. To not have one, if not more, was a direct snub, and one that Alia couldn't possibly afford. Especially not after Selina ran the Emperor's court for almost twenty-five years.

Ellie decided it was a good time to see what Pat was up to. The close, personal friends of the ex-mistress are not, generally speaking, welcome in the court of the new mistress.

And that's where Ellie and Mirina's relationship ended, because shortly after, that's when the Empire ended.

But it's not where it began.

It began a long time ago, when a Senator, who had once been a Queen, needed a favor. A small, discreet, favor. One she was willing to pay well for.

And she was such a sweet girl. And a good client. And so pretty. And… well, sweet, pretty girls sometimes find themselves in need of certain favors. Especially sweet, pretty girls who were from planets that didn't approve of sweet, pretty girls making sweet, pretty babies without a husband.

And, while it was true, that _technically_ the sweet, pretty girl had a handsome young husband, it's also true that the cost of revealing that was _much_ higher than what either of them wanted to pay.

So Mirinia would, _of course_ , do her a favor. Over the years she did a _lot_ of favors like that.

After all, a pregnancy is fairly easy to hide, for a while at least, from almost everyone, except for people who see you naked, or, the people who make your clothing.

And Mirina was the latter.

And over the course of several months, as Padme Amidala's sweet, pretty belly kept expanding, it became clear that there was an opportunity brewing here.

There was a chance to… align things in a way that would benefit everyone.

After all, it was becoming clear that the Republic would not forever remain a Republic. And it was clear that the would-be Emperor would never chose to produce a legitimate heir. His mistress knew from a long and intimate association with him that he'd made certain that would never happen. Since he was young, he'd had visions of his offspring murdering him, so he made sure said offspring would never be born.

So, a power vacuum was going to happen sooner or later.

And here was a Queen, a Senator, with her Jedi Knight lover, and as it became clear to those who listened to who had meetings with whom, that said Jedi would rise _high_ in the government…

And it was obvious that Palpatine knew what he was doing. He would clear the board, leaving himself the last of the great powers.

But even Palpatine was mortal, so…

So, sooner or later, someone would have to succeed Palpatine, so why not his pretty apprentice and the Queen who had chosen him as her consort? Why not their line? Ellie, Mirina, and Selina were sure that Amidala could be molded correctly, her man seemed… conveniently stupid. That appeared to be part of why Palpatine liked him, too. Powerful, but gullible. They could shape him in a direction they'd like. Amidala and Skywalker would likely make a pile of extremely attractive babies, and those extremely attractive babies could go on to create a stable dynasty to rule this new Empire.

They'd been working the angles on that for almost six months when everything went sideways, Amidala died, Anakin, who's primary advantage over Palpatine was that he was young and _looked presentable,_ (the secondary one being he was easily manipulated) suddenly _didn't_ , and those dreams died.

And then, two decades later, went even further wrong when the Skywalker thing happened.

But… Now… Fate appears to be realigning things back to where they were trying to get them.

After all, if the three of them had had their way… Kylo Ren, who was apparently born Ben Solo, and likely would have carried the name he chose for himself, Amidala, had their plans worked, had fallen back into their laps, and managed to grab the start of an Empire for himself, so…

Better late than never, right?

"Sevvie?"

RI-7V, her personal service droid hovers nearby. "Ma'am?"

"If Madam Frakes is still on the _Supremacy,_ please invite her to join me. If not, clear my schedule so I can see her."

"Done, Ma'am."

* * *

1/10/2

"Were you waiting around for me, old friend?" Ellie asks when Mirina comes to her ship, looking around at the lush, private apartment with a nod of satisfaction.

"I could have been."

"But you weren't, were you?"

"Truly private?" Mirina asks.

"We're not being listened to. As you know, anything I get, Pat gets, too. Alas…" Once upon a time, anything Mirina got, that would be valuable to the right people, her husband got, too. And if it'd be valuable to others, well, those others often, in a 'round about sort of way, got the message.

" _Alas_ covers a lot of ground," Mirina replies, sitting down in the chair next to Ellie's small sofa.

Ellie offers her a cup of tea, and gestures to the tower of silver trays laid out with small sandwiches and cakes. "It's not a proper tea. Even with the might of the Order, I can't quite get one out here, but it's close."

"Close will do," Mirina take a cake and nibbles it while Ellie pours, and fixes, she still remembers how Mirina likes it, her tea. "You know, I'm starting to come to the conclusion that there never actually was a proper tea. We keep telling ourselves that we're getting closer and closer, but I don't know anyone who's ever actually had one. At least, not since the Empire fell."

"Perhaps a stable empire is a necessary precursor for a proper tea…" Ellie says.

"Did we have them under the Republic?" Mirina takes a sip. This is good. It's just not _right._

Ellie sighs. "I think we did, but it's been a long time."

"It has." Mirina sighs a little, too, and puts her cup down. Between the two of them, they can do this until the end of time, not getting any closer to the meat of the conversation, so… "You want my help, and you know I'm loathe to give it, and why I'm loathe to give it. And, likely you know the real reason I'm here is trying to pry my son away from the spawn of those murderous sluts."

Ellie slaps a fake smile on her face. "Well, let's not be vague when straight out will do."

"I'm tired of vague."

Ellie arches an eyebrow. "If he'd been anyone else's son, you'd be ready to rally the greatest, vaguest vague for the cause."

"If I'd been talking to anyone else, I would have, but what's the point? You and I both know the score of this game. You want me to throw in with the _Rebellion._ " It's a curse in Mirina Frake's voice. "I've spent decades taking their shit, smiling along, and allowing them to just storm all over the galaxy, pretending that… everyone I loved was horrible, and I didn't have much to do with them, and it was so _tragic…_ and I'm done with them. I'm not going into their service."

Ellie rolls her eyes a bit. "You always were dramatic."

Mirina glares.

"If Anakin, Obi Wan, and Padme hadn't screwed everything sideways, that boy would have been born on a throne that we'd put him on. The future we spent so much time working for is literally looking us in the face, and you want to spit on it because we had to take a detour to get there?"

"My husband's death was not a detour!"

"Yes, it was. And there was a time you knew that. But on the off chance it's not abundantly clear, do you know what name he chose for himself, and for his lady, when they aren't being Lord and Lady Ren?"

Mirina sighs, making it clear she's humoring Ellie.

"Amidala. She introduced herself as Rey Amidala. Now, tell me, with everyone who knew that name having died before that boy was conceived, how exactly was he to know that name? Pat and I didn't whisper it in his ear."

That has Mirina beginning to look interested. It's true that she's never been one for faith. It's also true that over the years she's noticed more than the occasional useful coincidence, and she _knows_ not to spit in their faces.

"He found it, and he's reclaimed it. He should have been born with that name, and now… We can put him where he belongs. Where he would have been born if things had worked properly."

"The fact that he was able to look up his grandmother isn't a sign."

"It should be. And it should be telling you where you need to go, what you need to do, and who you need to do it for. From everything I've been able to tell, you didn't get out of the game just because the Empire fell. You snugged in with the First Order the second it started raising trouble for the New Republic, you've been feeding the right people the right information for decades, under your son's nose. Then you plopped him in here. Does he honestly think he started up with the First Order as an officer because they really needed a dressmaker to design armor?"

Mirina doesn't deign to respond directly to that. _Many_ people who start military life in the officer track have an in. "He earned his promotions."

"Yes, he has. Between luck, skill, and the fact that he's been willing to work his ass off and _on_ anything in his path he's done remarkably well."

"He married Lane. He didn't just sleep his way into that job."

Ellie's voice is arch. "Just." As soon as Pat brought word of Jon Frakes, both of them got very excited. Once they got into his files and saw he was, indeed, part of the Frakes family they thought he might have been, she got reading, and asking, and looking. And Jonathon William Frakes, has had, to say the least, a _storied_ career. Like many women and several men who rose high and fast in the First Order, and before that, The Empire, Jon Frakes is not only insanely good at his job, he's also ridiculously pretty, a good flirt, sexually flexible, and willing to put _all_ of his skills to use. "I _know._ He'd likely marry Kylo if he swung that way. You taught your boy well. He's learned every trick you, your girls, and your clients have shown him. But that's the reason you got him that commission. You'd been rather hoping he hadn't. Or hoping he'd learn some new tricks."

Mirina glowers. There are spheres of power, and spheres of power, and the ones she'd been hoping her _son_ would excel at don't appear to be the ones he did.

"If Bill had lived…"

Ellie shakes her head. "Bill would have had even less idea of what to do with your son than you did. I've raised a lot of boys, and helped raise more of them, and there was absolutely no chance that you, or Bill, would have turned your son into a proper, narrow, Imperial. The only thing Bill could have possibly done was make him miserable trying to shove him into a mold he was utterly unsuited for. Be happy he found a way to use the skills he's good at, get over your disdain for the Rebellion, and help me, and him, get the Court of Ren up and moving."

"The Court of Organa," Mirina's voice is sharp and bitter.

"Do you really want to give up now? Or change sides? There are factions that want to see the Court of Ren fall, but the most fervent of them is what's left of the Resistance, which was run by Organa. I know they've got a few people gathering forces on the edges of the galaxy, looking for a way to hit us. Do you want to throw in with them? Or do you want to put your intellect and intelligence behind the man who killed the Resistance."

"Or made peace with them. Or was put in here by them. No one ever suggested Organa couldn't do the math. She had to know she couldn't win by force of arms."

That gets a look of withering scorn from Ellie. "I'll ignore that, because you don't know him. But it's abundantly clear to anyone who's spent more than an hour with him, one on one, that he was not here on his Mama's orders. And if you don't believe my ability to judge character any longer, judge this, Kylo Ren is the man who killed Han Solo."

That gets a slight widening of the eyes and a swallow out of Mirina.

"Yes, that's going a _trifle_ far just to sell a role. The reports of the Battle of Crait, the last military encounter with The Resistance, shows that Kylo Ren took the field, personally, with his lightsaber, and cut Luke Skywalker in half. He did it hours after he took his throne by cutting Snoke in half. They call him the Jedi Killer, did you know that? The whispers were that he personally destroyed Skywalker's Jedi Academy. I never met Organa, not personally, and I know you haven't either, but nothing, nowhere, ever suggested she'd send anyone, let alone her son, in to do _that._

"So, I ask you, Mirina, how much more blood do you need from the boy? Does he have to personally murder his mother, too? Or was just betraying everything she ever stood for enough?"

Mirina's regrouped, and re-centered her disdain for the Republic. "Is he? Or is he resurrecting it in his own hands?"

Ellie shrugs. "I don't recall the New Republic being fond of the idea of an executive branch. They eventually decided they needed one, but… They were too afraid of another Palpatine to give it enough power to be useful. And for all their talk of democracy and fairness, I don't recall them actually attempting to do anything but go back to what was there before the Emperor rose. Ren's interested in trying something _new,_ and we both know it's been a bloody long time since anyone's tried anything _new_ in the political sphere."

"Because there are no _new_ ideas. Just old ones reheated and served on different platters."

"Well, if this one isn't new, it's old enough no one in living memory remembers anyone trying it."

That gets them to a momentary impasses. And for a moment, both of them sip their tea, staring at each other, thinking.

Finally Mirina, says, "He'll be bad at it. There's too much of both of his grandparents in him, and not enough of the adopted ones. Last time we backed an Amidala who was thinking too much with her heart and… cunnie, just about everyone died."

"He won't be bad at this. Or if he is, he'll be bad in an endearing way. I know you felt the rush of the crowd. They like him. And her. Or the idea of them, and… You remember her, right… The long flowing hair, those perfect dresses, Naboo countryside in the background… We could have run that forever. Could have made everyone stand up and cheer. They're not quite as pretty as Amidala and Skywalker, but I think they're more compelling. And I think if we work it, we can run this to the end of time. We can use them to build a stable dynasty."

"Again, _until they all died horribly_. There's too much of the Great Urus in him. Too much of Anakin's fire and Amidala's sorrow. He's thinking with his heart and shaft, and it's all focused on her. The rest of this is… whatever he does when he's not doing her."

Ellie shakes her head. "Amidala wasn't in the game just for her gonads, and Kylo isn't, either. He might have started this for her, but… He's in it for him, too. Maybe she was the push he needed to get moving in the right direction, but she's not the endgame."

Mirina's awfully certain Ellie's wrong, but… Kylo's only half of the story. "She doesn't have the temperament for it."

"Not yet. But she's trainable. And… I think, when she comes into her own, she'll bring something truly interesting to the table. People like the idea of one of their own rising up high enough to rule them. She's perfect for that. Orphan from the desert who becomes a queen. They'll eat that up. Couple that to his royal birthright… It's _perfect._ "

"You told me that about Skywalker and Amidala, too."

"And I wasn't wrong. If they hadn't imploded, people would have liked that."

" _If_. And these two…"

Ellie stops that before Mirina can get started. "Are rock solid stable with each other. Even you don't doubt that about them. When we were playing with Amidala and Skywalker we were playing the game with children. This time, we're not playing with children. We're playing with people who have been through this, together, and come through it. They know the stakes of the game… We can spin this out, we can _win_ this, with them."

Mirina's eyes narrow. And Ellie can feel, or at least imagine Mirina seeing a moment of their shared past. A quiet room off the main floor of Mirina's atelier. Small cups of tea, savory and sweet nibbles, the scent of Virnania Lilies and hot house roses, and a girl, almost a woman, with a stomach that wasn't bulging, yet, but would soon, a need for a favor, and discretion.

And all the myriad opportunities of that moment.

Ellie says, "He's her grandson. We didn't know her long or well, but we knew her enough, and, more importantly, we knew the opportunity she represented. Take the time to sit with him, and really _look._ There's Anakin in there, and, of course Leia and Han, and Luke and Snoke, though he's cutting that out as fast as he can, and… Padme's in there, if you look for her.

"Sit with him, have a chat, about something other than looking pretty for a party, and _see._ Then remember the plans we made, back when his grandmother was young, and the Chancellor was moving into position, and hope was still a thing."

Mirina's eyes narrow. "Neither of us can afford to be hopeful, not any longer."

Ellie shrugs. "Maybe. But I'm still allowing it for myself."

Mirina's eyes narrow further.

"And if you won't feel it for yourself, feel it for your son. He's going to go so far with this."

"They told me Bill would go far, too."

"Bill did go far. Your son will go farther. Grand Marshall, Diplomatic Corps. Right hand of the Master. The paperwork is filed. All he has to do is claim the title, and it's his."

"A pretty title, but no real staff under him. And only a few million under his command. I know Ren wanted to make his people feel special, counted, appreciated, but he just let everyone know that he's _vastly_ below the targets everyone thought he was at."

Ellie hadn't thought listing their numbers was the greatest plan, ever, either, but… What he lost in surprise, he gained in loyalty. She hopes. "He's working on that. They're coming, too. Coming in droves. He'll be where he's supposed to be in less than five years."

"In less than five years he'll have real enemies, too."

"And hopefully _friends._ "

Mirina glares. But Ellie can feel it, the anger is fading. She pulls the last card out of her sleeve. "You've dressed Senators and Republicans. You've made their weddings sparkle. You've listened to their confidences and passed along their secrets and lies. You've done it to ensure your position and the position of your children. All you have to do is _keep_ going."

* * *

1/10/2

Kylo lays another data pad with yet another report to the side. So far today he's approved paying navigators more, and offering them full citizenship after three years. He's done the same for experienced pilots and mechanics.

What he hasn't done is magically come up with the money to actually pay them those higher wages.

He reaches for the next pad, hopefully details on the first of the potential meeting space deals. Hopefully _lucrative_ details.

Jon says they're getting nibbles, so…

He's pulled his cup of coffee close, taking a sip, and opened up the latest pad (Not what he was hoping for. This one is a status update on his new dreadnoughts, so he's not disappointed, but he feels like this is a fairly low priority item… He checks the date… And it's been on his desk for six weeks, so… Low priority indeed.) when he feels half of an argument.

Kylo puts the pad down, and closes his eyes for a moment.

Mirina Frakes is in what had been his throne room, and from the feel of it, is attempting to intimidate C8 into getting a meeting with him, even though she doesn't have an appointment.

C8, of course, not only cannot be intimidated, but he also has been told that today and tomorrow are days where no one other than Schiff, Kinear, or Frakes has any access to him, because he's wading through the million plus reports that have been sitting on his desk for, apparently, at least the last six weeks.

So, he can feel an irate Force signature, small, dim, untrained, but very much there.

And he can imagine what C8 is doing to cause said signature to be so irate.

And he sits, rubs his eyes, and wonders if this is the sort of thing where, if he ignores it, pretends he can't feel her out there, that it'll just quietly go away.

But, given who this is, and what Jon's said about her…

He stands up, stretches a bit, flips the top datapad so it's face down, takes one more sip of his coffee, heads to the door, opens it, and says, "C8, it's Jon's mom, just let her in."

"Are you sure, sir?"

"No. But apparently we're going to do this anyway."

Mirina stares up at him, looking… he was expecting her to look pleased about being let in, but… She's… not… exactly. He's having a hard time reading her right now. Partially because he's not really trying, and partially because she's shielding.

He's fairly sure she's not doing it intentionally, at least, not beyond the most basic level of being aware that keeping her thoughts to herself is of value right now.

So he shrugs, steps out of his doorway, and gestures to his office. "Come in. Is there anything you want? C8 can get you anything on the kitchen rotations."

"A cup of P'Talian Brusk tea, two sugars, one citronen slice. Two almond biscuits on the side."

C8 looks to Kylo, and he nods. Then he glances at the chronometer. "Might as well bring my lunch, too."

"Done, sir."

Kylo pulls one of the chairs at his conference table to his desk for her, though he doesn't wait for her to sit before he seats himself.

She follows him, eyes on him, and his office, and back to him.

After a moment of it, he finally says, "I'm not sure if I wasn't clear about this before, but I don't exactly enjoy being looked at like a zoological garden exhibit."

She shrugs. "Cost of being a leader. People will look."

"Yes, but in my experience very few of them look at me and try to catalog how similar I am to whatever that large, shaggy black thing in your mind is."

"It's an Urus. And the answer appears to be, fairly similar."

Kylo shrugs at that. "If it is, it is."

She watches him a bit longer. "Your lady thanks droids."

He thinks for a second, realizes he didn't thank C8 for fetching lunch. "I will when he brings the food."

"Would you have if I didn't remind you?"

"Eventually. I don't always remember, but I do more than most people, I think. Why does it matter?"

"It probably doesn't."

Kylo stares out at space, and sighs. _Jon's mom, be nice_ is going through his head.

She's still just _looking._ Well, not _just_ looking. He can feel her Force trying to read his.

That gets a sigh from him, too. "Ellie Frakes said that once upon a time, you couldn't walk twenty meters without bumping into a Force user on Coruscant."

"Near the senate or the Jedi temple, yes."

"Then you have to know this isn't going to get you what you want. Your Force is mild and untrained. Honed by decades of reading people, but you never really learned how to use it. Mine not mild. I've been formally trained in how to use it by two of the most powerful Force users of the last century. My babyhood was spent with probably the best untrained Force user of the last century, and I've had at least a few years of honing the skill of just getting a feel for people. You will not get what you want just by looking. My walls are _considerably_ better than your skills. That said, you're Jon's mom, and he's happier when you're content, so just ask, and I'll talk to you."

She continues to look at him. Just feeling him. The wave of exasperation off of him staggers her, but only for a second.

"It's not a question I can ask, Kylo."

"Yes, well, being stared at is annoying, so if you'd at least point me in the direction of what you want, we could get this done a lot sooner."

"I knew your grandmother."

"I understand many people did. Queen of Alderaan not being a particularly obscure position."

"No, not Breha. I knew of her, too, but I'm talking about Padme." That's got his attention. Mirina is continuing to stare at him, trying to peel away his skin and walls and _see_ him. "She was young and hopeful and in love and stupid. And because she was young and hopeful and in love and _stupid_ a lot of people died."

Kylo blinks at that. "I… didn't know her."

"Obviously. She died well before you were born."

He watches her, and feels it. "And you're trying to see if I'm similarly young, and hopeful, and in love, and stupid?"

"Just stupid. You're already older than she was when she died. You're obviously in love. And I get the sense you're simultaneously hopeful and wary."

Kylo's not sure what to do with that. Finally he asks, "She was a senator. The books say she was a good queen. What do you mean by stupid? Obviously she wasn't slow or low on book learning."

Mirina inclines her head, and nods. "Decent question. The galaxy was shifting around her. She was being nudged into place to take advantage of those shifts. She and her Skywalker should have been the Emperor's heirs apparent. She knew it was coming. She _had_ to know it was coming. She was sleeping with Skywalker, pregnant with his children, and he was the Emperor's enforcer, and yet, when the blow fell, she got weak and silly, and… Everything fell apart, and what should have been an easy shift from one regime to another fell apart in a wash of dead bodies and ruined hopes."

"Are you asking if I'm weak and silly?"

She keeps staring. "I'm certainly trying to figure it out."

He raises an eyebrow, and is saved from having to immediately respond by C8 entering with his lunch and her tea.

Once it's served, he does thank C8, and, having a bite of his lunch, is able to put his thoughts, and hers together.

"You said you knew her."

"Yes."

"Did she seem… of two minds? Like, say, completely on board with where you wanted her to go when Anakin was near, and rather reticent about it when he was away?"

Mirina thinks, sips her tea, nibbles a cookie, and thinks. "Possibly. It's been so long, I don't exactly remember the time frame, but… Yes, there were times when it felt like everything was just going to slide into place, and then there were times where she was unreasonably bubbling about Obi Wan, and… Well, pregnant women aren't exactly known for iron-clad emotional control, let alone young ones."

He nods. "She was being mind-controlled by Skywalker. It wasn't intentional. He wasn't doing it on purpose. But he wanted her, and she didn't want him, and as long as he stayed close, she was warm, and happy, and pliant, and when he wandered off, or she did, her own mind came into play. You couldn't make whatever your plans were work, because you weren't actually dealing with Padme Amidala. You were dealing with a reflection of Skywalker who looked like her, part of the time, and her own self, the other part. And apparently, her own self was not fond of the future he was attempting to build for them."

Mirina nods, slowly. That's the piece of the puzzle they were missing. "Ah."

"Does _stupid_ make more sense now?"

"Actually, yes."

He stares at her, eyes hot. "Whatever else may be true about me, I'm not that flavor of stupid."

"No… I'd think not." Again, she's watching him. Sipping her tea, eyes on his. Finally, after a long, quiet moment she says, "I lost my husband to the service of one Emperor." She rubs her lips together. "I cared for him very deeply. Maybe not… the great passionate love you and your Rey seem to have. But we were well-matched, enjoyed each other, and had similar goals.

"I lost my place, and purpose in the service of one Emperor. Jon doesn't know what all I did for the Empire, and he doesn't need to. You don't, either. Suffice it to say, pretty gowns are not the beginning or end of what I've done."

Kylo nods. Given how readily she and Ellie Kinear got together, he was certain there had to be more there that two old ladies of similar tastes.

"Since the fall of the Empire, I've kept my family together, alive, and thriving. Very few Imperials can say that. And my guess is if your Mum had had any idea of who I was or what I'd done, I'd be dead or off in some Republican prison somewhere, _still_.

"I say this because I'm _not_ going through this again. I'm not building up a system to watch some willy-nilly twit throw it all away for a moment of stupid, blind love. If Skywalker had done his job… If he'd kept his Padme in check… By the time Palpatine was a problem, he would have killed him, and taken the throne with her, and the Empire would have gone forth, growing stronger and better with each passing year.

"Instead, Skywalker was weak. He got himself tangled in some mess with Padme and Obi Wan, and all but died for it. He let the Emperor go insane and start blowing up planets for kicks. No one was better off with Alderaan gone. The Rebellion was barely a blip on the scanners before he blew up Alderaan. Sore losers who wouldn't accept the results of a binding election gained hold of the moral high ground overnight because genocide changes everything.

"I know you know these things happened, I don't know what you've learned from them."

Kylo licks his lips. "You mean… what sort of political philosophy I've gleaned from… being the heir of Vader and the Rebellion?"

"To start."

He thinks for another long moment before saying, "I'm not my grandfather, either of them. I'm not my father, or my mother. One of my grandmothers is… the archetype for pacifistic just governance, I guess. The other got caught by the Force in a terrible bargain. And though I am made of those people, I am none of them.

"Snoke sought me out before I was born, hoping for his own Vader. One who wouldn't be turned by affection at the wrong moment. He talked to me about Vader. How he'd been… almost perfect in his service to the Emperor.

"He also thought Vader was weak. He thought I was weak, too. He did everything he could to burn any speck of affection I had for any living person out of me.

"He failed. My weakness cut his strength in half and stole his empire from him, so… take that as you will.

"My whole life, previous to two years ago, was spent either trying to live up to, or deal with, a series of legacies. I was supposed to be… the… Everything… of the Rebellion. The start of a New Jedi to go with my mother's New Republic. I was supposed to be Vader reborn. I was supposed to be a lot of fucking shit.

"There's no _supposed to_. There just _is._ " He untucks the Maji pendant from under his tunic. "That's part of why I wear this.

"I was supposed to be some sort of crowning glory of a lot of different pasts. All merging together into this one spot, one life, and… Fuck that. I am. Here and now. And the Order… that's the promise of more here and now. The past won't die. It doesn't just go away. But it doesn't have to dominate your present and future, either.

"So, that's it. No high or lofty goals. Palpatine… I don't know what he wanted before he went insane, but from what I can tell, after, he wanted absolute power. Snoke did, too. The idea of it bores me to tears. I'll run this thing as well as I can, for as long as I can, and maybe one day Rey and I'll head off into the sunset, raise our family, and just train Maji. Maybe one day they'll vote me out, and like my Mom I'll annoy the hell out of them reminding them of what they could have had. I don't know. I do know I'm not in this to be a God-King. I might be a good king. I hope. I'd be a terrible god."

Mirina's voice and eyes are cold as she says, "If you're just playing at this, being a political dilettante, it's not worth risking my son over."

Kylo would also prefer Jon didn't die for this. That said he's also sure that if he, personally, has to keep this going in perpetuity, a _lot_ of people are going to die. "If I'm not building something that can survive without me, you will lose your son for it, because no one, not even Snoke, lived forever. If there's any chance of this working, it cannot be dependent on me, or my family, or any one person. It's got to be self-sustaining, without the right personality at the head of it."

Mirina inclines her head slightly at that. "The Old Republic lasted a thousand years."

"So, I've been told. You remember it, don't you?"

"I was twenty-four when it fell."

Kylo blinks. She's older than he expected, given that Jon is his age.

"Jon was something of a late surprise. Tasha's twenty years older than he is."

"Ah."

"Supposedly, your mother was trying to get it back."

"I've heard that, too. Given that she abandoned the New Republic, I'm skeptical that she was much of any sort of Republican. I think she knew where she wanted the universe to go, and did her best to get it there, but the mechanics didn't matter much."

"Do you know where you want the universe to go?"

Kylo shrugs a bit. "I know where I want to go. I know who I want to take with me. Everyone else can join in as they see fit, or not."

"You're building a republic."

He shrugs that off. As he does so, he gets the feel for more policy… or more why he doesn't have much in the way of 'policy.' It's not about _him._ "I'm building a senate. If this is going to outlast me, something has to attach people to this. Something beyond my personality or my power. They've got to have a stake in it, so… This is it. Citizenship, a voice, the ability to help set the course. It's not a republic because republics are inherently good or perfect or whatever. It's a way to make the Order something important to the people it belongs to. It's a way to build identity and purpose. Again, it's a way to keep this going past me."

She's watching him like the Urus again, shifting her understanding of him. "The unwilling prince."

He shrugs. "I like being anonymous. That's not a secret. I like quiet. Also not a secret. I like spending time with people who genuinely like me. I understand that's not a rare phenomenon, either. So, yes, I'm building, or trying to build, something that I may be able to step away from at some point. We'll do this as long as we need to, but… yes, at some point I'd like Rey and I to be able to retire from this. To just be ourselves."

She nods at that, too. "And my son? What happens to him when you retire?"

"Assuming I get to leave voluntarily, he'll either be well-enough off and well-enough situated to make a place for himself wherever he likes. Or whoever replaces me, which I suppose could be him if he's so inclined, may find what he can do valuable."

It's _which could be him_ that lights up Mirina's eyes.

And suddenly, Kylo realizes he's got a firm backer, and that Mirina Frakes will go to the ends of the galaxy to make sure he's well-situated and secure. Because if he does get to give up his power voluntarily, and if there is an election for a future Master of the Order, Grand Marshal Jon Frakes, former right hand of the previous Master, would likely be in a very good place to win said election.

It's after she's left, that he's wondering what Jon's going to think about this.


	6. The Blueprint of the Court of Ren

1/11/2

Emperor… Master… Frakes…

Well, Mirina Frakes certainly doesn't mind that idea.

Not at all.

And, if Kylo and his Rey aren't ready for the big time, they are likely good enough to put things in place for someone who is ready, who understands how to play the game, and then, once in position with a good, solid, secure platform, to go forth and really _rule_.

And, of course, getting these things started is always rocky and difficult, so if someone… expendable… someone not her personal son, were to do the hard work, pave the path, and then, graciously, step aside…

Well… That's likely worth some time and effort.

* * *

The _Supremacy_ is, without a doubt, the single ugliest ship Mirina's ever seen.

She, personally, has access to the I-Deck, where her current, adequate, but not spectacular, apartment is; the F-Deck, where the officers live and play; the C, D, and E-Decks, enlisted-land; the main flight deck; and apparently, whomever was in charge of setting up her access chit, didn't realize that post-party, she could still get into a lift, punch in Kylo's not-a-throne-room, and have the elevator deliver her to his personal area.

(Obviously, _that_ has to change. Not for her, personally, but for everyone else who is still lingering on the I-Deck. Mostly hangers-on who have decided life aboard the _Supremacy_ is fairly comfortable. And, it is. Just not as luxurious as home.)

The I-Deck and F-Deck are likely supposed to be the best, most comfortable, most posh part of the _Supremacy_ and they're mostly just klick after klick of sterile looking black and gray steel and transteel corridors… The canteens are… adequate. Comfortable places to gather together and chat in private, outside of one's personal rooms are… non-existent outside of the market zones. Though there does appear to be enough traffic in the markets zones to cover pretty much any sort of discreet activity.

It's a battleship. And, as battleships generally are, it was designed to be a battleship, and it looks it.

She should probably be glad there are market zones. Though… They're _fine._ In a middle-class, plebeian sort of way.

If people are going to set foot on the _Supremacy_ and feel like they've entered the Court of Frakes, the jewel of a city in a crown of sparkling beauty, elegance, and power…

She sighs. This is going to be an uphill battle.

First and foremost. People have to be able to move. Nothing else happens if that doesn't, so… Mirina heads off to scout her battleground. After all, a good general doesn't go into a fight blind, so she shouldn't, either.

* * *

Transportation on the _Supremacy_ is appalling.

Up and down, between decks is fine. There are single floor elevators every hundred and fifty meters, and express elevators, that stop ever ten floors every three hundred meters, and five super express elevators that stop every twenty five floors. So, up and down is slick and easy.

As she strolls the market areas, and chats with officers, she finds that living quarters on the _Supremacy_ are intentionally designed to go through the entirety of the horizontal space of the ship, so that anyone can quickly, by going up or down, get to their station.

So, obviously, up and down transport is ready, willing, and able to do the job.

But from one section in a deck to another section in the same deck… There are trams on C, D, E, and F-Decks. The trams go at a swift running speed, so they're an improvement over walking, but they stop to pick up and drop off more people every half klick, so it takes her more than five hours to go from one end of the F-Deck to the other.

The rest of the _Supremacy_ is set with the idea that if you're on a working deck, you'll be within 150 meters of wherever you're supposed to be, so there's no need for any sort of horizontal transport at a higher than walking speed. Outsiders aren't supposed to be strolling about, or running about, or even standing about, on those decks.

And… She sighs. While it is true that the F-Deck has what is likely the height of comfort, for the _Supremacy,_ it's primarily utilitarian. There's no sense of style or elegance. The market sections are like mid-range markets everywhere. Goods are plentiful, not cheap, but not expensive, either, and anyone can just walk in and buy whatever they want.

If any part of the _Supremacy_ is exclusive, or designed to make people feel like they're some sort of elite, she can't find it. (Of course, she also hasn't attempted to get onto the F-Deck with an enlisted ID. Had she done that, she'd recognize that there is at least one level of _elite_ on the _Supremacy._ )

She sighs at that.

Beggars can't be choosers, and unfortunately, when the dust settled, and all was said and done, people like her didn't have a lot of choices.

And, strolling through the market section closest to her son's rooms, getting ready to have dinner with him, this is what she's got. No one else is coming within light years of offering this sort of option to her son, so…

Take the choice, see what she can do with it, or not…

She thinks about it, looking around, and knows it's not really a choice. Ellie pointed it out. She made her choice years ago, now she just has to keep going on.

* * *

The first year after the fall of the Empire was, without a doubt, or any exaggeration, the absolute worst of Mirina Frakes' life.

Having had four babies in the first seven years of her marriage, she was _done with babies,_ and firmly convinced (and relieved) that menopause had finally hit when she began missing cycles with Jon. And, part of being _done with babies_ was that babies, with their needs, lack of sleep, hormonal disturbances, and all the rest of it, ran her ragged during their first year.

At least, that's the polite way of putting it. "Poor dear's having a hard time of it." That's what her friends or mother would say. The medical term is postpartum depression, and every time, she got it, bad. But, eventually, they'd find the right meds, and eventually things would even out, and eventually, it would get better.

But four times were enough.

Until it became apparent it would be five.

Jonathon William Frakes showed up late enough in his parents' life that, when his father announced he had another one on the way, a lot of his friends chuckled and made comments about miracles and the old shaft not being quite dead yet.

He also showed up six weeks before the Battle of Endor.

So, it was, with a newborn on the breast, in the midst of wracking postpartum depression, made worse by the fact that as soon as the pregnancy hormones cleared, menopause was indeed bearing down full-force on Mirina Frakes, that she got word that the second Death Star, her husband's command, had been destroyed by the Rebels.

She didn't scream when she got the news, because she'd been through it once before. He'd been stationed on the First Death Star, too.

But… the first time… He called home. Before he even checked in with what was left with his command. As soon as the news went live that the First Death Star had gone, as soon as he knew it had happened, he called home. (He was actually the one who told her it was gone. He'd gotten the news before she did.)

A week later, when he still hadn't called home, that's when she started to scream.

Mirina doesn't really remember too much of that year. And she's honestly grateful for both that, and that Tasha, who was twenty at the time, was old enough, and bright enough, and resourceful enough to take over.

She spent most of the second and third year in a panic. A very quiet, calm-looking panic. The show had to go on. Clients had to be met. Life had to continue. Never let it be said the Frakes women can't be internally screaming and externally smiling, making small talk, and looking for all the world like nothing more pressing then the choice of dove gray velvet or eggshell silk were in order.

But the Concordance was signed, and the trials were beginning and friends and foes and allies and enemies were singing their songs, making deals with the New Republic, turning in everyone they knew in the Empire to save themselves, and every night she went to bed, terrified that before morning, some heavily-armed, bright young things from the New Republic were going to show up to arrest her and her daughters.

When Pat Kinear went up on trial, she almost ran. _Almost._ Sheer grit, and the fact that the New Republic either were just too damn egalitarian to understand that there were spheres of power where men just didn't go, or they were too damn amateur to know that the army and navy were just the tip of the Empire, she never learned. What she did learn, slowly, over time, is that the New Republic was too… good… or… moral… or… whatever to drag the officers' wives in for questioning.

Which meant, eventually, five years on, when the trials ended, her name hadn't been dragged into it.

And she was, officially, in the clear.

And she was, unofficially, looking to hit back at the New Republic as hard as she could.

* * *

Ten percent of her contacts were executed for war crimes. Anyone who could have been plausibly connected to the genocide of Alderaan, meaning pretty much every surviving officer of the First Death Star, was executed. Supposedly, if you were playing by the rules, having heard the order to murder a peaceful, unarmed, teaming with Rebels, because they wanted to be on a peaceful, unarmed, perfect moral victory target should anyone ever strike against them, you would have mutinied.

Apparently, Death Star, was foreshadowing for anyone on it.

Fifty percent of her contacts were in prison. Useless. (For the next ten to twenty-five years. As they got out, some of them discreetly visited their old friends. Or had their children and grandchildren visit. By the time the Resistance was up and resisting, most of Mirina's old friends were out and about again, and a lot of them knew where to go to get back at the people who put them in prison for following the legal orders of a legitimately elected government.)

Another thirty percent had gone renegade. Possible, but dangerous. The bounties the New Republic had on any of the Empire's rogue commanders were sky high, and any hint that you could get in contact with one of them would get you a _lot_ more attention than she wanted. She did put her feelers out for Admiral Schiff, who, at that point had a small but growing armada of his own, but he'd taken Thea with him when he went rogue, so her contact on his staff was with him.

The last ten percent made it through the trials, and either by dint of clever bribes and lies, or even more clever service records, came out the other side "free men." They didn't tend to stick around.

The Kinears just vanished one day. They had been on Coruscant since Pat was released, found not guilty of war crimes. She noticed with scorn that he kept trying to get the New Republic to arm itself, and defend the far edges of their territory, and to do _something_ to make it worth the while of the rogue Admirals to come in. Better an easy peace than an unending war.

But they just nodded and ignored him.

And then one day he, Ellie, and the entire clan, was gone.

Rumor had it they (and the others who avoided prison) were heading to the Rim. Rumor had it, there was work for men, and women, who had certain skills, out there. Work the Republic wouldn't let them get near.

 _Not_ the kind of work she could do from out there.

Slowly, Mirina's brand began to grow again, as she began to make _friends_ in the right sorts of places, and slowly she began to notice who thrived when the New Republic was stagnant and chaotic. She made sure they got useful information.

And when those rumors of the Rim, and the Unknown Regions began to coalesce, when they moved past vague hearsay… Well, she knew what sort of information that new power would need. She just needed to find a way to get it there.

* * *

Apparently, the power on the edge of the galaxy remembered her, and when Karoline Schiff, the Admiral's granddaughter, needed a wedding dress, she had a very easy time getting an appointment with Lady Frakes.

And if it took an abnormally large number of fittings… Well, some brides are picky.

And if, over the next twenty years, a collection of somewhat less well known-women had an unusually easy time getting appointments with the House of Frakes, well… Tasha and the older girls knew not to ask, or, as time went by, got in on the game themselves, and Jon, a child and then teen, was too oblivious to have a clue as to what was going on.

And after twenty-five years, the First Order was no longer a ghost hiding in the shadows, and Mirina was, after the correct assurances had been offered, relieved to send her son to them. Hoping he'd take after his father.

Though, unlike her hopes of the First Order bringing about a new Empire, or at least wiping the New Republic off the galaxy, or if not even that, then at least killing the bastards who got her husband, Jon taking after Bill was rather a long shot.

Still, looking around the _Supremacy,_ if she'd realized how far away from the Empire this was, she might have thought twice about offering Jon up to it.

That said… She's strolling around the F-Deck, noticing how empty large sections of it are. There's room here. And… opportunity. Enough money, the right people… This… could be something.

Something her son could rule.

The House of Frakes could move from the shadows to the center stage, and she wouldn't mind that, at all.

* * *

1/12/2

It has not escaped Jon's notice that his mother is _still_ here on the _Supremacy._

It's not like she's underfoot every moment. In fact, several days go by at a time without him seeing her, but… And it's not like she's begging him to leave, though her comments about lovely planets with wealthy people and permissive mores being an excellent place to set another branch of the House of Frakes aren't exactly flying under his scanners.

But she could do that from Coruscant. So, he doesn't know what's going on, and that makes him uncomfortable.

He supposes she might be lingering, hoping to get him to change his mind. Her skills at getting people to bend to her will have always been better in person, but… Well, it has been a long time since they've lived together, and he supposes it's possible that she just doesn't understand that he's not going to change his mind because she's upset.

(Granted, how she could have missed that, what with the fact that she was very clearly indicating over and over that she was constantly upset with him and his behavior as a teen/young adult, and he changed bugger all for her then, is a mystery, but… again… it's been almost a decade since they've lived together, some memories may have dimmed down over time.)

She's asked to have dinner with him, and… well, he's glad she asked, because he's busy, and she generally more tells than asks, so… That's probably moving things in the right direction.

He can pry an hour or two free to have a meal with his mother.

* * *

She shows up one minute early.

She's _always_ one minute early.

Jon lets her in, and she smiles up at him. "It smells good."

"Thanks. I wasn't sure what you'd like, so it's just a chop, potato, and veg."

"I like all of those things." She sees the plates on the table. "Did you cook?" She can't keep the disbelief out of her voice.

Jon sniggers. "Uh. No. I've developed many new skills since I lived with you, that not among them. But, as you always say, rank has its privileges, one of which is that if I want food, food comes to me."

She nods, and appears to be taking note of that. "Indeed."

They settle down, and he pours glasses of wine for both of them. For a moment, they both drink, and it's… a moment. It's… not uncomfortable, but Jon's decidedly unsettled.

Finally, when he's just about to say, "Okay, what's up and why are you still here?" Mirina says to him, "So, what… or where… on the _Supremacy_ would be considered a fashionable neighborhood?"

Jon blinks at her, squints, takes a long sip of wine, and then blinks again. "Mom?"

"A _good_ neighborhood. A place where one might open an elite shop, and set a good flat."

Jon blinks again. Then he takes a much bigger sip of his wine. "Mom… are you… thinking about moving in?"

"Yes." Jon is very pleased that he doesn't whimper at that. "The House of Frakes has always been at the center of power in the galaxy, and… well, that appears to be here, now. So…"

"But… What about home?"

She waves that off. "Tasha has that well in hand. There's nothing going on there that she can't take care of."

He pours himself more wine, and gulps it.

Mirina readies a tidy bite of her chop, balancing it neatly on the tines of her fork, looking for all the world like she's patiently awaiting his response as to where the 'desirable' neighborhoods on the _Supremacy_ are.

After another moment, Jon says, "I… didn't think you wanted anything to do with… Kylo."

"I don't. But, as you said, the only way to get to better is forward, and… If better is where we're going then," she gestures. "So, where would one set up shop?"

Jon sighs. He stabs a bite of his potato, and gets to eating. "Mom, it's a battleship. It doesn't have _neighborhoods._ "

She arches an eyebrow at him, and he can feel she can't believe he's going to even attempt that with her.

"Fine. It doesn't have the kind of neighborhoods you want. This is it, as posh as it gets. Officer-land. And we're sprinkled through here to try and keep us close to our commands, so, for example, I've got an ensign two doors down, and a major across the hall." He doesn't need to point out that this was Lane's flat originally, and he was a major, or how even though he's jumped several ranks, and will jump several more, he hasn't moved, nor does he intend to.

"Where do the generals live?"

"Most of them have their own command ships. I think… Actually, I don't know. Kinear's the top of the heap general-wise right. He has rooms here, but I don't think he lives in them. I assume there has to be someone in command of the troops on the _Supremacy,_ and I assume that general would actually live here, but…"

Mirina nods. This is the sort of thing that the Master of the Order's Diplomatic Department should know, but it's also true that one doesn't, generally, go from tactical design into diplomacy, and Jon's got more than a bit of studying left to do. "And the section I'm in is where you put the well-off guests for the First Year celebrations?"

"Yes. C, D, and E-Deck is enlisted housing and entertainment. F-Deck is officer housing and entertainment. You're on I-Deck, along with the suites we're putting guests in. I suppose if there's going to be a 'posh' section of the _Supremacy,_ it will eventually be the I-Deck, but right now it's pretty empty."

Meaning, as best he knows, Mirina, and three dozen other guests who have, for whatever reason, and he should likely ask if Artoo might be interested in finding out what those reasons might be, haven't left since the First Year party, are the only people on the I-Deck.

Mirina nods at that. "It is. But it doesn't have to be. Did I hear a rumor of potential embassies on this ship?"

Jon looks at her curiously. "If you did, I haven't." He thinks about it. They probably should have embassies here. Probably should see about sticking embassies on other worlds, too. But, right now, he's painfully short of people to put in them. He rubs his head. He needs a C8 or Threepio of his own, and then about fifty humans to start overseeing things like embassies and posh neighborhoods and… Well, shit, if they're doing this, they should really have some sort of bloody market or something. Something people could come here to trade at. Not like they don't have room, or the ability to provide security for a merchant who's looking to move goods. "But if we could…"

"I've heard that you've talked with Kylo about building a palace here. It's too big to be a palace. But it's just right to be a capitol city. How long is I-Deck?"

Two weeks. She's been here two weeks and already is more hooked into the rumor network than he is. Jon sighs. "Fifty-five, maybe fifty-eight klicks across. More than two and a half wide at the widest point."

"Many cities are smaller than that, and that's just one floor here."

"True," he takes a bite of his chop and works on thinking through the angles his mom is talking about cornering. Well, first and foremost, posh neighborhoods and people might be a goal, but they aren't anything approaching reality at this point. "Mom… Not to put too fine a point on it, but… Uh… If you open up a branch of the House of Frakes here, who, exactly, do you think will be wearing your goods? The kind of people who are generally your clients… They aren't here." And given what happened to the board of directors of the Raclan bank, they're likely to be _wary_ about coming here.

"We'll start with Lady Ren, and go from there."

"Does she know that?" Jon's fairly sure that if he hits Kylo with it right, mostly by just telling him it's a good idea, _Kylo_ will let him dress him up and arrange most of the stuff around him to suit Jon's idea of what they need and how it needs to look. He's fairly sure that Rey will _not_ be nearly so easy about this.

"She will." Mirina smiles. That smile doesn't make Jon shiver, but there is something cold about it. "My own rooms. They're adequate, but I'd like to see about shifting them some. The entertaining space is too small, and preferably they'd be within a short walk of the shop. Likewise… transportation within the _Supremacy_ is appalling. It takes forever to get from one side to the other. If someone were to visit, they could get here from any corner of the galaxy in hours, and then spend hours getting from the landing bays to the I-Deck."

"Uh… Yes, I'm sure." Traffic… That's a million levels beyond his training, and well below his pay grade. "Mom… uh…" Jon shakes his head. He's in charge of Tactical Design. He's unofficially, one of the top four people in the Order. Finding someone in physical plant to set up a shop for his Mom would probably take him ten minutes. Except, of course, if he does that, she's not going to _leave._

"I won't be underfoot, Jon."

He eyes her a little. She's always had an unsettling habit of responding to things he hasn't actually said out loud.

"Now, once we've got my space set, I have a feeling we're going to need more flats along those lines. You should likely move up, too."

"I swear you just said something about not being underfoot."

"Jonathon… You know how this works. Important people like to congregate together. It's likely a good plan the Master doesn't end up there. Making sure he's elsewhere helps to cement his image as apart and above everyone else, but putting more of _us_ in that area will encourage others to move up, too, and next thing you know, you do have a neighborhood were power concentrates."

Jon sighs. The only way they're taking him out of this apartment is in a box, and she should know better than to even suggest it. "Maybe you'd prefer to have a chat with a few of those generals. Get them to set their own rooms here instead of their command ships."

"Oh, love, I certainly intend to. Well, their wives, at least. I have a feeling more than a few of them will understand what's being done here."

For a good tenth of a second, Jon almost thinks of suggesting his Mom and Threepio have a chat, but he jettisons that idea, fast. After all, if the son of Leia Organa is a sticking point, her personal protocol droid, is likely to be an issue, too.

That said, if anyone would be good with the idea of setting up some sort of… posh space… that'd be Threepio. He rubs his eyes, and reaches over, grabbing one of his data pads, and makes a note to set up another meeting with the droid, so they can go over this. Hell, if they ever manage to get Kylo's senate into play, they'll need a nice place, likely with attractive rooms, to put them… I-Deck could be where the senate lives. He mentally sniggers at the idea of sticking his Mom in the middle of the Senate.

Mirina waits for him to do that, glares at him for a second, and then says, "Now, tell me about your plans for his throne room."

"It's _not_ a throne room."

"Yes, I had noticed that. There is a conspicuous lack of throne there, which simply _won't do_."

"Yeah, well, that's on the non-negotiable list, so…"

She waits for a moment, "So…"

He shrugs. "What's got you thinking about this?" He's pleased to see she's not trying to pull him away from Ren, but… This complete reversal, followed by her fully throwing in with The Order is making warning signs dance in his head.

"I talked with Ellie yesterday."

"Meeting up with old friends?"

"Something like that. She tells me you've got a reputation for being good at this, so…"

Jon snorts. He knows the sorts of things people say about him. He would prefer they talked about him being good at his job, but he knows they don't. "I've got a reputation for fucking anything that moves."

"Language…"

"Mom, I'm thirty-three and in my own home, I'll say fuck as often as I like. When I'm in your home, I'll censor myself."

Mirina rolls her eyes a bit. "Fine."

"And, best of my knowledge, they don't talk about my job much, other than a bit of speculation as to if Kylo's one of the moving things I'm fucking."

Mirina doesn't glare, but her glance does have a _lot_ of edges to it. He understands her look as _you brought that on yourself._ "Yes, well, that does tend to happen when you marry the man who promoted you all the way from ensign to captain in one move, and then proceed to deal with your grief at his loss by attempting to fornicate it away. Which does not work, by the way."

Jon shrugs, ignores her last comment, and says, "I am good at my job. Lane recognized it."

"And given he wasn't summarily executed for how he took care of your old supervisor, I'm going to assume he was right."

Jon shrugs at that, too. It would have been nice if that was true, but… "Honestly, given how things used to be run here, Lane could have been dead wrong and no one would have cared. Smanth called him incompetent, told everyone he was playing favorites, thinking with his shaft, and promoted me to get into my bed. And then he jumped the line and complained about it to Lane's commanding officer. Even if he'd been right, that was insubordination, and Lane, as Smanth's commanding officer, had every right to handle it, so handle it he did. With the way things are run now, I have a feeling executing an underling for inappropriate comments would have gotten Lane more than a raised eyebrow and three hours of extra paperwork."

"Is that an improvement?"

Jon's a bit irked that she even has to ask, but… She's _Empire._ "I'd like to think so. The more I think on it… The less comfortable I am with people having total power over the people under them. It's… too much begging for trouble." It's clear he's thinking about how some of his very favorite people have used absolute power over the years, what he went along with when they had it, and… These days it's starting to chafe.

Mirina doesn't look terribly convinced by that, but she also doesn't appear to want to argue with him. She'll admit at first she didn't have much use for Lane. She sent Jon off in a last ditch attempt to get him to behave in something approaching tolerable manners and mores, and two years later, he came back with the news that he was getting married, which she approved of greatly, until she understood _Jon_ was the bride.

Then she took one look at Lane, and _knew_ what he was doing. Men get to a certain age, and a certain level of career responsibility, and they decide they want something young and pretty to warm their bed and keep them company. That's part of what her parents were looking for when they introduced her to Bill. Part of what she was looking for in a few of her daughters' suitors.

Major Lane Keenadun, who was forty-three (to Jon's twenty-seven) had hit _a certain age._

As son-in-laws went, it's not like Lane was horrible, or even mildly problematic. Most of her other son-in-laws took to him right off the bat. Senith, Tasha's husband, the closest thing Jon has to a father, genuinely liked him and told her to get over herself and stop being a twit about Lane being a man… but…

Still… This _was not_ what she'd been hoping for when she sent Jon to the First Order.

Then the night before the wedding, when a few of Jon's friends had been drinking, and explained to her, in gory detail, what Lane had done to the man who dared to complain to the General in charge of Physical Logistics that her boy had fucked his way into his Captain's stripe.

And, as Jon had just put it, Lane _handled_ that complaint, and the man who made it.

And _that_ vastly improved her opinion of Lane. Yes, he was still the wrong shape and sex for her son, but he at least understood a husband's job, and had been willing to do it properly… And, of course, he was willing to _marry_ Jon, instead of keep him as a dirty little secret. After all, this sort of relationship was technically illegal in the Empire, but discreet buggery was never (assuming the people involved did their jobs right, were publicly seen with or married to women, and were appropriately pro-Empire) punished.

By their second anniversary, she was willing to admit that Lane was a pretty good son-in-law.

He told her once, with a grin, that she'd learn to love him. And damned if the bastard hadn't been right.

She cried, hard and ugly, for him at his funeral.

Right here, right now, and thinking of Lane, she'd also admit that she sees _no_ issue with a commanding officer having that sort of power. That's the _point_ of being a commanding officer. (And the point of being very good friends with them.) But, in that she's trying to get to some sort of… detente… with Jon, so she can move on toward getting the Court of Ren into a place where it can become the Court of Frakes, she lets it lie.

"So," she redirects. "Tell me about the _not_ a throne room. And where you think the _Supremacy_ is supposed to go if we're building a palace."

Jon doesn't raise an eyebrow at _we're._ He wants to, but… "Well, first and foremost, there's the guy I'm building it for, and what he wants."

Mirina dismissively waves that away. "If you package it right, he'll go for anything you say. There are a lot of issues I wouldn't push that man on, how anything around him looks isn't among them. He's giving you the power, so manage him."

"He's not a condition, Mom. I'm not managing him."

"I know, he's a _client,_ who is hiring your expertise, because he knows he doesn't know what he needs, so _do your job._ "

Jon exhales, gets up, and crosses his living area to his drafting table, and returns with the best of the sketches he's worked out.

"Color palette for the hard surfaces is black, white, a collection of grays and silvers. Sharp lines, hard angles, stark and clean."

"The colors and aesthetic of the Order."

"Right. But we're not just the Order. The Maji's going to be worked into this at some point."

"And the Maji is…"

He half inclines his head. "We don't exactly have a look for that yet. Colors, fluid, soft. Balance. We're working on themes of balance."

He lays the sketch down. The shell of Kylo's not-a-throne-room is structurally unchanged. He's kept the support pillars black. The walls and floor are now light gray. A twining path in black is picked out along the floor. Planters of silver and white marble, veined through with soft grays and blacks are filled with plants and flowers in all colors and sizes. Between and among the flowers are black reflecting pools. Swimming about in said pools are bright aquatics, fish, like Jon's, and also water plants.

"This is the one I'm liking best of the bunch."

"A garden?"

"What's more rare and costly in space? I'd plant trees in there if I could figure out how to keep the roots happy. We've got the hard surfaces in the Order colors. The plants are alive and vibrant, so those are Maji themes, and we balance the starkness of space," he hasn't enclosed the two open walls of Kylo's not-a-throne-room, so there's still the view of a billion lightyears of space all around them, "with a lot of soft, living things."

Mirina's nodding along. She doesn't dare lay a mark on the sketch but she does point to the center of the garden. "A pergola, or gazeebo here. Detailed, filigree work. Metal, black, hard and straight supports with clean arches, in between with lines will curve and twine, put them in silver or white. Soft seating, pillows in a lot of colors. If we're feeling really lush, perhaps chaises. Some place for the Master to sit in comfort, and entertain chosen guests."

Jon nods, and puts a note for that. "More seating all over. Benches…" He adds another note. "Maybe… Water walls, between some of the pillars, create a few somewhat secluded nooks."

"Wired for sound?"

"And visuals," he makes a mental note to point out to Kylo that if they build these things that they're not his personal pleasure garden, so not to go fucking about in them unless he wants the Order's security and spy network to get an eyeful.

Mirina is nodding, seeing the image in her mind. "A proper courtyard. You might want some tame animals, beyond the fish. Something cute and fluffy. People like having soft and friendly animals to play with. It puts them at ease."

He half shrugs. "I suppose so." Granted, soft, fluffy tame animals need to be cleaned up after, and that's something they likely don't need in the not-a-throne-room. "Now ask me how I'm going to pay for it."

"Ah… Yes. Well, that's always going to be an issue." She taps the sketch. "But right now we're dreaming, so we might as well dream."

"Well, if we're dreaming… This is… Temporary. We've got two dreadnaughts in design right now. Eventually they'll be the palaces, and this will be the battleship."

Mirina shakes her head. "No. They're what… five years out?"

"Probably. Maybe four and a half if they go full speed ahead and nothing gets FUBARed between now and then."

Mirina half-smiles. "And when has anything, ever, not gotten a bit FUBAR?"

He snerks at that. "Oh, you get to say it, but I don't?"

"You're a military officer on your own ship, talking about serious plans within the prevue of your command. There are appropriate places for pretty much every word, and this is certainly the place for FUBAR."

Jon takes a bite of his potato. "Indeed. Why not temporary? This monstrosity is going to be well-nigh impossible to turn into anything approaching a palace. I don't know if you noticed the outside when you were flying up."

Mirina nods. She _noticed._ "If he builds this the way he claims he's going to you, you're going to need every centimeter of space you can get. You may eventually move his flag ship to one of the new ones, but the _Supremacy_ can't just be a placeholder. You need to build this like it matters, like this is… the start of your empire."

"It is."

"Then treat it like that. What about the rest of the ship? You obviously don't have the people to fill it, yet, so what are you doing with it?"

Jon rolls his eyes. "Right now, a lot of it is empty, or filled with weapons we're not using. It'd be one thing if we were fighting, but, we aren't, and there's nothing quite so useless as an army at peace."

"That's part of why you're trying to get those contracts."

"Exactly, we've got people who are trained or in training. We've got more arms than anyone needs. It'd be nice to do something with them besides let them collect dust."

"And do you have any contracts along those lines?"

Another issue in the space between dream and reality. "We've got people asking about them. As best I know, as of today, none of them have been finalized."

"I understand you're also looking to expand into the colony game."

"Do you read my briefings when I'm not here?" Seriously, two fucking weeks. What the hell has this woman been up to?

"No dear, I _listen_ when people talk."

"And apparently you've spoken to everyone."

She smiles.

"Yes, we've gotten a few of them either online or getting online."

"And a space to finalize them, make them feel welcome and relevant, and perhaps a neighborhood for the people who are involved with them…" He can stick the representatives of their colonies next to the eventual senators. Hell, if they're feeling really frisky, once they've got a senate, each colony can elect provisional members to it, or something like that.

"Yeah. I know. Last I checked we only had two finalized as of yet."

"But you have a lot of people looking."

"We do. More than looking for security contracts. Schiff's in charge of most of that." Jon sighs at that, too. Those contracts, after year five, will bring in more, _a lot_ more, than they cost. But year one, and probably year two, is entirely sunk costs, on their part, with no pay out.

"I've had a few lunches with Lady Schiff, and will likely have a few more. Thea's utterly lovely."

"I'm sure she is." Jon pauses at that. His eyes narrow. "Wait… How long have you known Lady Schiff?"

Mirina smiles at that, too. "Ages, dear."

"And Ellie?"

"Since well before you, or Tasha, were born."

He thinks about her store, and where they were, and what she did, what his father did. "Do you know the entire Imperial Officer class?"

"Oh, no." Again, she smiles. "Just the ones who matter. And well, if they're still around, they likely matter."

Well, he supposes that likely explains how quickly she's gotten into the loop here. And who the future clients of the House of Frakes, _Supremacy_ branch will be, and who she intends to stuff into that posh neighborhood.

And he suddenly knows what his mother is trying to rebuild.

"He won't be the Emperor for you."

"He doesn't have to be," Mirina says with a smile. "In fact, I'm beginning to think we're sincerely better off if he isn't."

And with that, Jon's utterly unsure if he should be comforted or terrified.


	7. Past, Present, Future: Jon

Notes:

Normally, I just toss new terms in here willy-nilly and let you figure them out from context. That said, I've got some new ones popping up in this chapter, that I figured could use some explanation out of the gate.

Okay, gay/straight/bi just feels really Earth-bound and English-language-culture intensive to me. Likewise top/bottom is just... Too entrenched in this particular culture and time and power dynamics.

So... Narrow/'Verse (as in diverse). Narrow means you're into one (sex, gender, species, whatever) 'Verse means you like more than one of them. So, Kylo and Poe are both narrow (just for different things), Jon and Rey are 'Verse.

Instead of top/bottom, I'm going with Give/Giver and Receive/Receiver.

And there's your crash course in Keryl's version of Star Wars sexual-orientation slang.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

* * *

A million years ago, when Ensign Frakes was new in the Tactical Design group, he would often run into issues where the _right_ answer was not glaringly apparent.

(He also ran into many where it was, which was generally _not_ how Capt. Smanth wanted it done. So Jon began quietly putting his fixes into place, because he'd learned, quite well, from his mom and sisters that sometimes, you just make the changes, don't mention them, and then sit back and relax because everything is better. A few months later, having noticed how much better things were, Major Lane Keenadun, the commanding officer in charge of Tactical Equipment, decided to see why things were getting better, and… Well… The rest was history.)

And when he would run into these complicated issues, his rather clandestine boyfriend (While it wasn't, officially, against the rules for two officers to _fraternize,_ given the massive difference between their ranks, the large difference between their ages, and that Lane was his commanding officer's commanding officer such things were frowned upon.), Major Keenadun, would tell him to put it to the side, work on something else, get a night of sleep (or not sleep), and go at it fresh in the morning.

And often, some time working on something (someone) else did clear his mind and let him see what he'd been blind to before.

Right now, he could use all the help he can get. He's not sure what his mom thinks she's playing at. Or if she's playing. Or if he's better off keeping her nearby, where, theoretically at least, he can keep an eye on her. (Though, what he thinks he's going to do with that eye is an utter mystery, because, just like she never had any luck getting him to do anything he didn't want to do, he's never seen her change so much as a single bead because someone else wanted it somewhere else.)

There's a few centimeters of wine left in the bottle, so he pours it into his glass.

He can feel himself, remember himself, at his drafting table, or here, at this table, pouring over reports, staring at them, willing himself to find the answer, and feeling Lane's hands on his shoulders, his lips on the crown of Jon's head. "C'mon, luv. Go at it fresh in the morning."

He'd look up and say, "Is that an order?" bright cheeky smile and bedroom eyes.

Lane would grin down at him. "You're damn right it is! Bed, now!"

He'd salute, hop up (after tucking his work away. This was playing, yes, but the work still needed to get done.) and saunter to their bed. Laying or reclining back on it, waiting for Lane, he'd say, "Yes, sir!"

Jon swallows half of what's in his glass, and tries, desperately, not to miss his man too much.

He makes himself not look at the photo of the two of them on the beach. It's their honeymoon, and they're both a bit drunk, on each other if not the rum and fruit concoctions they'd been downing, on and off, all day. Lane had asked the couple next to them on the beach to get a shot of them. They'd gotten several, but that was the only one where they both had their eyes open, and were looking vaguely in the direction of the camera.

He glances at the chrono. It's not that late, and it's not like the Specs ever close. He's got the credits. Between his salary and Lane's pension, he's well-off, especially by Order officer standards. If he wanted to, he could certainly hire some company for the night.

It wouldn't be the first time. Probably wouldn't be the last, either.

He stands up and stretches, rolls his shoulders, takes another sip of his drink, thinks about Unthur, his favorite of the Specs. It's been… Probably two months since he saw him last. He thinks about how busy he's been lately. Maybe three.

Five hundred credits for a night. Get a massage, a decent conversation, his shaft sucked… or ridden, been a long time since he's done that, and a good cuddle, wake up refreshed… Maybe.

He thinks about Unthar. He's tall and light, white blonde hair, ice blue eyes, slim… As best Jon can tell, he genuinely likes him and enjoys having him as a client. _As a client_ being the operative term. He's sweet, and gentle, or not, as the situation calls for. (More often than not, Jon wants sweet.) He'll cuddle Jon close and call him love and baby, pet his hair, and… It's not real. It feels real when he's doing it, because he's good at his job, but…

It's not real. Unthar's married. To a woman. She's a Spec, too, and one night Jon paid to work with both of them. As physical sensations go, having both of them ride him at the same time was a treat, one he certainly wouldn't mind experiencing again. As emotional ones… Well, there's a reason why Jon knows he's just a pet client of Unthar's and that's because he's been between Unthar and his wife.

He got to be next to the sort of love he and Lane had, and… It just made him miss it more.

So, visit Unthar, get his tool serviced, relax a bit, and then wake up sad and lonely… Definitely.

He feels listless. He wants Lane. He wants someone he can talk to about the job, and about life, and about his Mom, someone who'll _get_ it. He wants that conversation with diner, and kisses, and sex, fucking gods, yes, he wants it with sex, and he wants it during sex, and he wants cuddles, and he wants Lane's shaft deep inside him while he kisses him and brushes his hair out of his eyes, and he wants… wants… _wants._

But wanting isn't having.

He doesn't cry. It's not that sort of ache anymore. Not… this version of it, at least. He's just… flat. Empty.

He finishes the wine. It's not helping with flat. Nothing does, not really, not for long.

And the stuff that does help… Well, it's fucking stupid, and he knows it. Yeah, two guys and one girl at the party felt good while he was doing it, but… It was _stupid._ He's way too old, and highly ranked, to go chasing danger for kicks.

At least he hasn't gotten bitten too badly with that. He heads to the bathroom to take his last dose of antis, shaking his head. He knows not to fuck strangers without a slick, and he did it anyway, and…

He swallows the pill. Just a mild case, caught early, and treatable. Literally _fucking stupid._

Not like he hasn't had a social disease before, but he was sixteen the last time and literally didn't know any better. It's been half a lifetime, he fucking _knows_ better. He stares at himself in the mirror, debates if he's actually going to stop setting himself on fire with idiot sex and too much drinking.

He has the sinking feeling that he might do better for a few days, or if there's enough work, as long as he can focus on that, but… He'll get bored again, sooner or later.

 _From this breath to my last…_ He remembers Lane's final vow. His, too. They'd held hands and promised to be each other's… everything… _from this breath to my last._

He shouldn't be worrying about social diseases, or slicks, or any of the rest of it, because he's supposed to be monogamous. Yeah, he and Lane both had moments of temptation, but… He was _happy_ monogamous. The eye might have (did) wander on occasion, but the heart didn't, and that kept the shaft in line.

He stares out at the stars easing past.

Kylo's dead are out there, somewhere. His ghosts come to visit.

"Well? You out there?"

If Lane is, he doesn't answer.

And Jon doesn't know which is worse. The idea that Lane, and all like him are just gone, or that the universe is so perverse as to allow only certain, special people the chance to see their beloved dead again, and he's not one of them.

* * *

Nothing else to do, Jon gets his shower.

Scrubbing down, cleaning up, he thinks about company. If he's not going to hire some… Well, there's usually someone, or several someone's looking for a friend, or at least a warm body, on the F-Deck.

And unlike the Specs, there's the possibility that maybe he'd really, genuinely _like_ this one.

And maybe whomever he found would genuinely like him.

And maybe they'd fall into bed and not fall out of it, and maybe…

Speaking of things he's too damn old and highly ranked for… The idea that he can just stroll around the F-Deck, find another officer who just _happens_ to be attractive, and attracted to him, and just _happens_ to like him, and…

He'll be knee… shaft deep… in ass if he goes looking for it. That's always been true. That was true when he was fourteen, just starting out, and didn't know what the fuck he was doing. Golden skin, and long golden hair, and big blue eyes. Back when he was fourteen, he was so pretty more than a few of them thought he was a girl, and were in for more than a bit of a surprise when they got him out of his perfectly tailored suit, but, even back then, if he wanted someone to touch him, he had no problem finding them. And these days, nineteen years later, he _knows_ what he's doing when it comes to pulling men, or women, or ones he's not entirely sure of but likes the looks of anyway _._

The thing he doesn't know, can't, not now, is if they like the looks of him, and a good time with him, or if they're looking for good access to the Master.

He might as well stop faffing about with his Lt. Colonel rank and just take the Grand Marshall. Too many people know who he is now, so he's not exactly buying himself any room to maneuver any longer with the lower rank.

It feels odd to let go of it, though.

Feels like he doesn't deserve the higher one, not yet. Like he hasn't done anything to earn it.

Though… if he pulls off turning this flying monster into a palace, or capitol city, the kind of capitol city that has a palace in it, he'll have earned those extra stripes.

He turns off the water, turns on the air jets, and lets the refresher dry him off.

* * *

Bed. He's not exactly tired.

Not exactly a lot of things right now.

Horny.

He's still fucking horny.

For a while, a few months after the attack on the _Supremacy_ , he'd been part of a group of officers who'd lost their mates, and some of them… He _wished_ he'd been where they were. Some of them just lost interest in sex. They lost their mate, and their libidos rolled over and died, too.

He would have paid money for that.

He _tried_ to pay money for that. Turns out those pills didn't fucking work. Granted, if he'd actually gone to the medbay, they might have had something that worked, but he didn't want that in his file. Just attending those meetings was enough of a risk. After all, any chink in your armor could, and likely would, be used against you.

The meetings were as far as he was willing to go. Beyond that…

No.

And to make matters worse, his personal body decided the most effective way to mourn was to dream about sex, with Lane, all the fucking time. Then he'd wake up hard, eager, _alone._ Sometimes wet. Sometimes _soaked._ Those nights were a relief, because when he didn't get off in his sleep, he'd sit there so horny he was climbing the walls, go soft, and cry. Eventually, he could stay hard, not get off, and cry. And eventually stay hard, get off, and cry.

When he could do it by himself without crying, he started to see other people, but… Yeah, that not crying thing didn't last when he added another person to the mix. (Being able to get hard and get off almost didn't happen, too, but Unthar is _good_ at his job.) On the upside, Unthar told him he wasn't, by a long shot, the only person with that issue. Even in the First Order, having most of your loves horribly killed over the course of a week was considered traumatic.

He still would have rather just not been interested.

Everything would be easier if he weren't roaming around in this body that's constantly trying to get tuffed because it misses being loved and that's it's best idea of how to get back to being that way.

Unfortunately, having a long discussion with his shaft about how attempting to fuck anything even remotely attractive isn't going to get what it really wants isn't going to work. (Or at least, as of now, it hasn't.)

Settling into bed, rolling to the side to slide open the compartment with his toys, lube, and goodies will.

For a while at least.

Long enough to get him to sleep, likely.

* * *

He was twenty-five when he met Lane.

Eleven years after the first time he'd had sex.

And he was absolutely certain he knew all there was to know about what a human body, male, female, or somewhere in between could do.

Lane smirked at him, then smiled, called him "My pretty boy," and proceeded to blow his mind, and a few other things, too.

Apparently, there were entire vistas of sex that Jon had never visited, or imagined, but Lane was _very_ happy to take him there.

* * *

Lane was forty the first time they met. Forty-one the first time they went to bed. Old enough to know better. Young enough to do, and enjoy, it, anyway.

And after that first time, they never looked back.

* * *

He was also old enough to have been living alone for quite a while, and to have collected an interesting array of toys. Many of which he was _very_ happy to introduce Jon to.

And Jon may have had (did have) a whole lot more experience with people. (Women for example. That's a pool Lane never set a toe in.) He didn't have any experience with toys. He was twenty-five, never lacked for company if he wanted it, so… What was the point?

That said, Lane seemed to think there was a lot of point. And if he was interested in showing Jon the point, well, Jon was happy to get it.

And by the time Lane was celebrating his forty-second birthday, Jon knew _exactly_ what to get him.

* * *

These days, Jon's the owner of a well-stocked toy box. Most of them were Lane's originally. Several are ones he added to their collection over the years.

He's not sure what he wants as he looks over his collection.

Okay, that's not true. But he can't have what he wants, so he's not sure what he's going to do. He glances at the dildos and plugs, but… No. Not yet. That was… with Lane. Not _only_ ever with him, but… he hasn't touched them, or let anyone else touch him, like that, not since.

He's fairly sure he can't relax enough to enjoy it, not these days, and… That had been _so good_ with Lane, the idea of… He can't take the idea of _that_ being lackluster and blah.

He reaches for a slick and one of the sleeves. The green one. There are some good memories with that. Good enough to get him hard anyway.

He squirts a little lube into it, sets the temperature to human body temp, and the tightness to just a notch tighter than medium. He doesn't have a huge shaft so he doesn't need it at its widest setting. And he prefers a snug sensation, but not so tight that it's strangling his shaft.

Then he sets it to the side, settles back against his pillows, and thinks about the first time he used that, while gently stroking himself.

* * *

Lane's hand rested on Jon's ass. They were in bed. Long week done, both of them with a coinciding day off, ready to have a _good time._

That hand squeezed, gently. "Have you ever… received?"

At that point in their relationship, six or so months in, Lane had been exclusively on the receiving end, and Jon on the giving. Which suited both of them quite well. After all, Lane said he preferred to get rather than give, and, at that point in time, Jon preferred giving.

Jon nodded at Lane. "Uh, yeah. A few times."

Lane looked expectantly at him.

"I don't know. I had one _really_ good time with it, but all the rest were pretty blah. Either uncomfortable or just not… good. Some of them didn't hurt, but… It wasn't like giving."

He stroked Jon's back, up and down his spine, soft, gentle, hand landing on his ass again. "Tell me about the really good time."

"Why?"

Lane kissed his shoulder. "You want to have one again?"

"I thought you didn't like that." Lane would, very happily, let Jon suck his shaft, or stroke it, or well, pretty much anything he wanted to do to it, but when they got to fucking, he wasn't even remotely vague about who he wanted where.

"It's not that I don't like it, it's that I prefer being on the other side. Still, variety is nice, and… I was thinking some guys who only like to give… They only like to give because they've never got it good, so… If you'd be game to switch it up?"

"I…" Jon remembered the one really good time, and the several lackluster ones. "Could be."

Lane grinned at him. "Excellent, love. I'm going to make you feel so good. So, tell me about the good time."

"Uh… Gods… I was… seventeen, maybe."

"You really did get around… You'd have been my every wet dream if you'd been near when I was seventeen."

Jon kissed him at that, and didn't mention that he was two when Lane was seventeen. "You're damn right I would have been." He shifted so he was straddling Lane's lap, facing him. "I'd have been there when you jerked it to sleep at night, and woke up stiff in the morning, and sucked it in between."

Lane kissed him hard, wet, lips between his. "I love your mouth." He stroked his fingertips along Jon's lips.

"I know it, baby."

"Now use it to tell me about how some sweet thing made you feel really good."

Jon kissed Lane's fingertips. "It was slow. Bride's second cousin and I snuck out before they finished passing around the hor d'oeurves. So, we had _hours_ before either of us had to do anything with the wedding.

"I'd never done that before, and… Well, I wanted to, but… Heard about. Knew it was a thing. Usually, I didn't have the time or place for it, you know?"

Lane nodded. He knew. They certainly didn't do it every night, because between prep, and proper playtime so everything's relaxed and open and ready, and clean up… Anal wasn't on the list for quickies. Or for tired nights when they just wanted to get off before falling asleep.

"And, we were at his place. So… everything he or I needed was there. He told me what I needed to do, and I was nervous and excited and… I probably rushed through that. And then did it again because I was mortified at that idea of not being clean enough."

Lane smirked at that. "We've _all_ been there."

"You, too, a million years ago with your first time?"

Lane kissed Jon. "Six months ago, with our first time, and yes, a million years ago with mine, too."

Jon rested his forehead against Lane, and spent a moment just breathing with him.

"So…" Lane said.

"Ah… Okay, got out of the refresher. Hard and naked and eager."

"There's a pretty picture."

Jon grinned. "Oh yeah. I had long hair back then. Wore it past my shoulders. And it was a wedding, so I had on some cosmetics, too. Dark lashes, little lip gloss. So pretty you'd have choked on it."

Lane kissed his neck and shoulder, and ran his fingers through Jon's hair. "Tease."

"Always."

"Would you… do that for me?"

"Grow my hair long?"

"I was thinking dark lashes and lip gloss. I know long hair isn't going to fly." It was against First Order regs.

Jon grinned at him, a plan forming in his head. "Let me take you dancing, and I'll get dressed up."

"Oh luv, you don't ever want to see me dance. It'll shatter all of your illusions about me being something like put together and sexy."

Jon kissed him. "Never baby."

"You haven't seen me dance." Lane winked. It turned out that he really was a bad dancer. And he never did get the chance to get better. That said, he did like to watch Jon dance. And Jon liked dancing for him. "Story time?"

"Right. Like I said, we had time, so… A few glasses of wine. More than I usually had, so my head was a bit spinny, but… Alcohol relaxes muscles, so…"

Lane nodded. "You want a drink tonight?"

"I'm good."

Then Lane was really staring at him, concerned. "How much of it do you remember?"

"I didn't have _that_ much wine. I've got stories like that, too, this isn't one of them."

"Okay. Party boy."

"Not recently. Though, maybe if we ever get another day off, together, I'll show you some tricks, old man."

Lane's smile was wide and genuine. "I'd like that. Like to hear more of this story, too."

"Okay… Wine, messing around… Kissing, a _lot_ of kissing. More kissing than I think I'd ever done at that point. Petting… Uh… I was kind of splayed out on the bed, feet on the floor, and he sort of slithered down me, kissing his way down, until he had my shaft in his mouth," Lane shifted position, so that Jon was lying on the bed, face down, and began kissing his way down Jon's back. Licking along his spine, hands kneading into the muscles of his shoulders and upper arms. "Mmmm… Yeah… Like that, but down my front."

"I'll get there."

"I'm sure you will. He was sucking me off, and I was pretty keyed up, about to shoot, and then his finger was slowly easing in, and… It was tight, and slick, and burned some, enough to pull me back from the edge."

"You start to go soft?"

"A little. I mean, seventeen."

He felt Lane's smirk against his back, and then his breath against Jon's ear, and his teeth scraped the shell of his ear. "I remember seventeen. Not quite a constant bone like fourteen, but anything and everything would set it off."

"Yeah. He stopped sucking my shaft, and started on my stones, while slowly, gently sliding that finger in and out of me, and when I was thrashing around, about to shoot off again, he slid the second one in."

"And toned you down again?"

"Yeah. The second one was rough and fast, and it dropped me back to just turned-on, fast. Yanked me off of the edge."

"How old was this guy?"

Jon shrugged. "I don't know. Older than I am now, probably younger than you are. No gray hair."

"Old enough to have some real experience," Lane added.

"Yeah. Or he was inordinately talented."

"Experience is how you get to inordinately talented."

Jon lifted up and twisted some to see the spark in Lane's eyes. "You going to use your experience on me?"

"I certainly intend to, love." He slid a bit further down Jon's body, and began rubbing his lower back and ass. "Gods, this is so gorgeous."

Jon wiggled a little for him, then looked over his shoulder. "Gonna kiss it for me?"

"I'll do more than that. I'll spread you open slow and easy, and rock into you deep, steady, until you're dripping, writhing, begging me to come." He kissed the dimples to the right and left of Jon's spine. "And then, maybe, if you're good, and if you finish the story, I'll let you."

Jon moaned, face pressed into the mattress, hips rising off the bed, inviting Lane.

"Yeah, pretty thing, you want it, don't you?"

Jon raised his hips up a bit more, grabbed Lane's hand, and put it on his very hard shaft. "Yes!" hissed out of him.

Lane stretched up, bit the back of his neck, teeth trailing over the skin, raising goosebumps. "Then finish the story."

Jon groaned, frustration, and the feel of Lane behind him, nudging his legs apart, kneading his ass.

"Uh… I was on the bed, and… Gods… He must have had the strongest jaw on earth. He just kept going and going, wet and slow, light, too light. Enough to make everything light up, not enough to get me off. I think I was babbling. I don't remember. I remember how I felt, so… Ready… Then he slid another finger into me and started… Curling them? Something. He was hitting that spot over and over and I was just about hovering off the bed I felt so good."

He could feel the way Lane was grinning at him. Feel open and exposed, too. In a way he just normally wasn't. Lane reached over, grabbed the lube, and he heard the click of the bottle opening, and then his fingers, slick and cool, ghosting over the sensitive skin between his butt cheeks.

"He stopped sucking me, and pulled back to look. I was… I must have been sweaty and flushed and just… wrecked. Laid out, boneless."

"Almost boneless. I bet you had at least one."

Jon chuckled. "Almost boneless. One of 'em really wanted to get buried deep into someone."

"Did it get there?"

"Not really. He was kneeling between my legs, and scooted me down the bed a bit, so my hips were a little lower, and then he just _slid_ right in. Slow and steady. Took my breath away. He wasn't touching my shaft then, though his belly was pressed against my stones.

"Once he was fully in, he was still for a moment. I was, too, just… feeling it. You read about it, and hear about it, and wank to the idea a million times, but…"

Lane nodded, and patted Jon's ass. " _Butt._ It's really different. Especially if you don't have a well stocked toy-box."

"I had about a half-dozen slicks, and some hand lotion, and that was it."

"That sounds a lot like seventeen, too."

Jon smirked at that, and wiggled at Lane a bit more. He went back to kneading Jon's ass, placing little, soft kisses on the plump curve of it.

"Eventually he gets moving?"

"Yeah. Eventually. Or I did. I don't remember who moved first, just that it happened, and… It felt like he was fucking me through my shaft, you know?"

Lane's voice dropped, and he ran both of his hands up Jon's spine. "Oh, luv, I _know._ There's a reason I like taking better than giving."

"And, I felt like I was going to burst. Like, I was so close, but couldn't quite get there. I was reaching for my shaft, going to give myself a hand, but he pinned my wrists to the bed, and was rocking in and out, though he shifted a bit, so his belly was rubbing over my shaft each time he moved."

"Was it enough?"

"Yeah. It didn't take long. A few hard thrusts, and… my vision went white. Spurted so hard, I got his chest and my chin."

Lane laughed at that. "Oh that must have been a pretty picture."

"I imagine it was."

Lane held him close, for a moment. "And let me guess, the next guy who had ten spare minutes, you tripped into bed, and were horribly disappointed?"

Jon didn't pout, but it was close. "I _really_ was. And the guy after that. And the one after that. And… by that point, I decided it was a fluke, and stuck to being on the giving side of it. One of my girls did me with her fingers while blowing me, and that was really good, too, but… It was always a gamble, and when it didn't go off well, everything else soured, too, so…"

"So you stuck with your shaft and the certain good thing."

"Pretty much." He turned so he was facing Lane. "So, you going to break my run of bad luck."

Lane kissed his neck. "I'm going to make you forget you ever had it." Then he reached for the drawer next to his bed, opened it, and pulled out a green cylinder and a slick.

"Uh…" Jon looked at the slick. "I…" he blushed a bit, feeling self-conscious, "know how to clean myself up. You won't need that."

Lane kissed him, hand on his ass and gave him another squeeze. "I know you do, luv. That's for you, not me."

And with that Jon went from slightly embarrassed to curious. "Lane…"

Lane tapped the cylinder. It was about the size of the tube Jon's hair conditioner came in, in a bright, green crystalline substance. He grinned at Jon, bursting with good humor, and then said, "Put a slick on, close your eyes, and you can't tell the difference between this and the real thing."

Which certainly sounded… appealing… probably. Jon just wasn't entirely sure what _this_ was.

Lane kissed his neck, and shoulder, and wrapped his arms around Jon, pulling him snug against his hips.

"Trust me. You'll like this." There was some sort of dial at the base of the thing, and Lane twisted it. There was a button the middle of the dial and he pressed that a few times, too, and then set the thing to the side, on the bed. "Go, clean up. Everything you could need is in the refresher. Then come out here, and I'll make sure you love it."

When Jon got out, Lane said, "See, my jaw can't go for hours, and I want to hold you while I do this, so…" He picked up the green thing, and squirted a little lube into it. That's when Jon noticed there was some sort of opening in the one end. A… snug, wrinkled opening. "See, it's got settings from nervous virgin to good time boy on his fourth client of the night. As tight or loose as you like it, and…" He settled back against the side of the bed, pulling Jon into his lap. "Grab the slick, love."

Jon did, cracking the pack, tossing it aside, and slipping the sheath over his shaft.

"Close your eyes."

Jon did, and Lane must have moved the thing, because the next thing he knew there was the tight, slick, hot, snug sensation of slipping into a well-prepped asshole.

Jon moaned, loud, at it.

"See, I told you you couldn't tell the difference. Without a slick, you can, but with one…" Then he gave it a twist around Jon's shaft, and Jon shuddered. "Granted, real people generally can't do that." He grabbed Jon's hand, and put it on the cylinder. "Hold it, baby."

Again the sound of the bottle of lube clicking open. A wet, squirting sound, and then Lane's fingers slipping between his ass cheeks. "Do it slow, luv, easy. I don't want you spurting, okay? Just keep your shaft happy."

Jon made a choking sound. He barely moved it. Generally, especially with a slick, he had awfully good control, but… Here, in Lane's lap, with his fingers just stroking right now, but knowing where they were going, and this… thing, on him…

"Gonna have me coming and going at the same time," he managed to say.

Lane kissed his neck. "That's the idea, baby. I'll open you up nice and slow, and then fuck you deep and hard, and show you what it means to receive." And with that, the first of his fingers stopped dancing around, and began to ease into Jon.

Glide. He figured out how to play with the tube, so it wasn't quite so snug. And Lane held him, slowly fucking him out of his mind with his fingers, until he decided that Jon was ready. "Up baby. Over me."

It took Jon a minute to figure out how to orient himself, but eventually he got his feet under him so he could move.

And Lane got his shaft under him, so all Jon had to do was sink down.

He grabbed the cylinder, and said, "Right now, you set the speed. As you ease down on me, I'll ease it down on you."

Jon whimpered at that, feeling the head of Lane's shaft just rubbing against him, and the small dimple of the hole in the cylinder stroking over the head of his shaft. Then he began to ease himself down, slowly, letting his body adjust, and Lane followed it with the cylinder, taking him higher and higher with each centimeter.

* * *

Jon reaches for the cylinder, and pulls himself out of that fantasy. He's hard now, eager, and knows that if he lets himself finish with that memory, all he'll do is end up frustrated and sad.

Someone else… For a second, he thinks of Kylo, but… He's felt wrong about wanking to Kylo since he's met Rey.

(Well, felt wrong about it since Kylo told him about not wanting to want anyone else. He didn't stop doing it until he met Rey. He felt even more wrong about wanking to Rey, so he only did that twice.)

Kylo and Rey… Well… That'd… be… Shit… A lot of images go cascading through his mind. Kylo on his own is just… And Rey on her own… Gods… It'd taken every ounce of will power he'd had not to say yes when she asked him to measure her naked. (Which was pretty much why he _had_ to wank to her. She more or less _asked_ him to spend time with her naked.) But, no. It'd be like Unthar and his wife. He'd get to be next to that sort of adoration, not part of it. More sad and frustrated.

Unthar… He can imagine what they'd do… He might as well have paid for it then.

Porn… He's got a datapad, and access to everything… But… No, he wants this here, now, in his own body and mind. He doesn't want to pretend to be anyone else.

He's slowly stroking the masturbator sleeve ("It's got a terrible name," Lane had said. "I call it a wank rocket.") over himself, letting his brain wander around.

It's in danger of drifting back to Kylo and Rey, and then he realizes why. It's going to Kylo and Rey's house. And Poe.

He grins. Excellent-wank-fodder Poe.

Narrow as a filtration tube, never kissed a boy, easy with the girls and likely shagged a million of 'em, Poe.

It should be illegal for narrow-for-women guys to have an ass like that. Bloody things don't know what to do with one, and women, generally speaking, aren't equipped to take care of them… And it's just a shame.

But… Well… There's an idea.

Been a long time since he played with someone who didn't know what his body could do…

And that would be… He can see Poe in his head, looking a little nervous, and a lot intrigued.

Maybe, once, a long time ago, he kissed a guy, on a dare or something, and decided he liked it a little too much. Maybe, _maybe_ he let some guy pat his ass and thought about it, a lot, later, but… No. Men like women, and Poe likes women, so he just… occasionally… like maybe when he was _right_ on the verge of spurting, thinks about the guy who patted him, and then banishes those naughty thoughts and fills his head with large, round breasts and dripping, wet cunnies, and…

He'd just… be narrow. Because it's easier to be narrow. Really easy to be narrow for women, and moderately easy to be narrow for men, but… Just stay on the straight and narrow path, charm women left and right, who knows, he was wearing that ring on the leather thong with his Maji toaken, maybe he'd been serious about one, once.

But maybe one night they'd be working together, on something, late. Too late. So late they'd get tired, and move through tired to silly, and after that late, they'd be hungry, and a shared bowl of noodles, and a few glasses of… Vodka probably. Poe could certainly put it away at Ren's; he'd be game for a drink (or three) with dinner.

A few drinks, a good meal, whatever it is they're working on done for the day, and a look.

Jon sighs, he can feel that look. He pumps the cylinder a bit faster. His eyes hot; Poe's… hot, but wary. Hot, but unsure.

Hot, but about to leap off a cliff and uncertain if he wants to stay on the safety of the edge.

He can feel himself smiling at his imaginary Poe, reaching out, gently slipping his index finger against his wrist, and tugging his hand toward him. "Come on. If you don't like it, just say stop, and I will."

Poe flushes, and licks his lips. "Never done… this… before."

Jon's grin grows wicked, and his eyes spark, "Well, I've never done you before, either. It'll be a learning experience for both of us." He stills his hand, just holding himself. Letting the tension build as the drags out this moment of the fantasy.

"And… are you going to… _do me?_ " Poe asks, voice adorably nervous with a veneer of calm and self-assured on top.

"If you want me to."

"I… might."

Jon cups his hand around the back of Poe's neck. They're a few centimeters away, watching, breathing each other in. He can feel the heat of Poe's skin, smell… He thinks about it… hand stilling as he remembers. Real Poe. Poe in Kylo and Rey's house. There was… soap, a bit of some sort of mechanical scent, a little sweat… Like he'd gotten a shower recently, not more than a few hours earlier, but done some real work between then and now, too. As the night wore on… his own musk, a bit sharp, a little sour, very male. The kind of scent a lot of men who go for women try to hide with cologne or deodorant. For a second that perks Jon up, but he decides that might be a Rebel thing, though. Kylo doesn't cover his scent with cosmetics, either, and he's so bloody narrow for women individual hairs would have a hard time slipping through his trench.

Back to Poe. Leather jacket. Good leather, well worn, warmed by his body over and over, molded to it. Trails of brandy on his breath and skin. He'd have probably tasted boozy and sweet from the drink and cookies.

His hand begins a slow up and down again.

They're standing close, so close. Poe's hairy. He's got to be. The stubble went almost all the way down his neck. And… He's a good Resistance… Resister… whatever. Republican, though, apparently, he wasn't, just not from the same direction Jon wasn't. Anyway, poor boy's likely never even met anyone who waxes, let alone done it for himself.

Jon's fingers slip down his chest. Four weeks since he did himself last, and the hair is coming in fine and short.

There's an image. Grabbing Poe, shaving him clean, rubbing him all over with lotion or oil and slipping all over him. Jon grins at that one, giving himself a nice, long pull. Yeah…

Granted, he knows how that feels when it grows back, and that sort of crushes that fantasy. Again, poor boy'd likely never speak to him again if he had to have a full body of hair all grow back at once, based on Jon's recommendation that taking it off would be fun.

But it would be fun. And it's a fantasy, and…

Real Poe. Poe in the kitchen… Poe in the kitchen has hair, and it's real and it's him, and real Poe pops back into Jon's mind.

Real naked Poe. He's short and compact and has hips and thighs to die for, and a high, firm ass, and maybe he's not exactly cut around the chest or tummy, but… Jon doesn't need that. He's got the kind of muscles you'd expect from someone who does real work with real ships, lugging things around, maybe tossing heavy bales of whatever it is the Faviers eat around.

There's an image. Poe, sweaty, lugging around heavy bales of hay. A loose, unbuttoned shirt. Trousers hanging low on his hips. His skin is slick, glistening, hairy, yes, but good hairy. The kind Jon wants to nuzzle his face against, and lick.

Faviers have a stable. Right? They have to.

"You good at riding these?" he asks Poe.

Poe drops the bale, and glances at him… Wipes the sweat from his brow. He's eyeing Jon, in his perfect, tidy uniform. Then he pulls off his shirt, to… mop his brow again, apparently. Sure, why not? He tosses the shirt behind him.

"Never tried. You?"

"Not one of these."

"That implies you have ridden something." He's stepping closer to Jon.

Jon's looking down at him. At his chest, nipples peeking out through the dark hair, and the token he wears, and the ring on the string with the token, lower, his belly, lower yet, the dark hair getting thicker as it vanishes under his trousers. Then back up to Poe's eyes. "Someone." He bends a little closer, brushes Poe's hair out of his eyes. "But, I prefer to be the one to give the ride."

Poe licks his lips. "Uh huh. So, you saying you want someone to straddle you and ride away."

Jon yanks Poe to him, hips to hips, bodies flush, and kisses him, deep, hard, lots of tongue, his hand on the back of Poe's head, keeping him steady. He lets himself roll in Poe, in his scent and the feel of him and his mouth sucking around him, and…

"Fuck yes!" slips out of Jon's mouth. He speeds his hand, increasing the tightness on the sleeve just a bit.

Poe's sliding his hands over Jon's body, cupping his ass, grinding into him. "I've been wondering what's under this uniform."

"Good." He drops his coat, and begins to undo the belt around his jacket. "Because I've been dying to show you."

His body is tightening, stones drawing close, heart rate picking up. His hand speeds a bit, too.

Naked. They're naked. In his bed. Poe's on him. He's on his back, and Poe's straddling him, like he said he would.

And this is new. Poe's never done it before. But he wants it. Wants Jon to do it for him. He's… just rubbing right now, working on letting his weight shift, and "Ahh… Yeah… There you go sweet thing, just ease on down. Does it feel good?"

He slows the hand with the sleeve, matching his imaginary Poe.

Poe's not talking. He's breathing hard, eyes closed, fist clenched, body slowly easing down Jon's shaft.

"I know it does. Just take it nice and slow. Get comfy, and I'll make this so worth your while." He wraps his hand around Poe's shaft, and he shudders at the feel of it.

Poe starts to move. Slow at first, but more confident, find the pace he likes, and Jon matches it with the sleeve.

"Yeah… Just like that. Gonna hit all those sweet spots inside you, and stroke you 'till your mind whites out… Gonna make you feel so fucking good, baby…" He's babbling. He wants to babble, wants to say soft, sweet things, and mean them.

Gods, he wants to _mean_ them.

More than that, he wants to roll over, wants to feel hot breath on his shoulder and neck, wants sweet words in his ears while a warm body that adores him slips inside, planting kisses along his back and tells him how good he feels and how perfect he is and how much he loves him and…

He flips the fantasy, lets himself go there, in his mind at least. On his stomach, ass in the air, Poe between his legs, kissing along his shoulder, hands curled around them, rutting into him.

"Force, you want it, don't you? Been craving this, needing it." Poe says, his hand is drifting, slowly, from his shoulder to his shaft, pausing to play with his nipple.

Hot, wet kisses on his neck. "Just relax, baby, I'll give you everything you need. Always."

His head is pressed into the mattress, hips high, craving the feel of a shaft deep in him, arms around his body, a warm chest against his back.

"I've got you, Jon, just feel it, love. You feel me, inside you? I'll get so deep into you, you'll never get me out."

Poe hand closes around his shaft. "Feels so good in my hand, mouth, ass. I love this. Love you. Love you. Love you." He's timing his thrusts with the stroke of his hand, kissing sweet words to Jon's shoulders.

It's building, sweet and deep and warm inside of him. Jon yanks off the sleeve and uses his hand instead. It's his hand, but he can pretend. Pretend he's on his elbows and knees and a pretty pilot's behind him, loving him, fucking him, touching him all over.

"I've got you, baby. Just a little more. Wanna feel you ripple all over me. Take me over the edge with you, with that sweet ass clenching on me…"

His hand tightens as his hips snap, motions getting erratic. He's so close. He slips a hand behind himself and presses a lube slick finger in. Not deep, he's not prepped and anything more will burn, but just the hint of it, the idea, a little friction, and that's enough. His head is spinning, body thrilling, spurting, over the edge.

Jon pants, breathing hard, body quivering as he relaxes for a moment.

He rolls over, pulls off the slick, ties it, and tosses it in the direction of his waste basket. The splat sound of it hitting the floor tells him he didn't actually get it in. Won't be the first time one of them didn't quite land where he'd aimed it.

He can get it in the morning.

Sleep's pulling at him, tugging his eyelids shut, and making his limbs heavy and loose.

* * *

In the morning, as he finishes cleaning up, he's pleased to see he was right about Poe being excellent wank fodder.

Bloody fucking shame he's narrow for girls.

* * *

He's sipping his morning tea, in his pajamas, not necessarily feeling clearer about any of this, but… He is starting to get an inkling about what _may_ have happened to get his mother so on board with all of this. It's not impossible that she and Ellie Kinear had a heart to heart and her opinion shifted, but… There's someone else who knows that he'd rather like to be getting along with his mom, and who very much wants him to be happy, and he had mentioned his mom was causing troubles, trying to get him to leave, and…

Well, Kylo likely would _try_ to fix it for him.

And given exactly how bad his personal history of dealing-with-mom is, he likely doesn't actually know _how_ to fix it, and…

Jon's not exactly sure how well his 'Don't Force people without permission' lecture penetrated, or if Kylo would file this under: "It's good to be the king."

Sigh… He checks the chrono on his pad. If he gets dressed fast, he can likely catch Kylo before all of his meetings, and maybe, if he's lucky, Kylo can… undo whatever the hell it was he did to Mom.

* * *

Sitting on the tram, churning across the F-Deck, Jon's well aware of the fact that his mom isn't wrong. The transportation system on the _Supremacy_ is _slow._ It's mostly designed for vertical transport. They try to stick people above or below their stations. So, up and down is fairly efficient, but lateral is a nightmare.

As best he can tell, he's fourteen klicks from the elevator that'll take him to Kylo's rooms, and that takes fifty-five minutes. He pulls out a datapad, and writes a note to himself to locate whoever's in charge of transportation. They've got empty, or mostly empty decks, so there's got to be a way to stick higher speed lateral trams on them for people who need to make longer trips.

In a palace, people walk. Everything is contained and central. In a city… And this fucking thing is a city, it's just… right now… a much too empty one. But, in cities, people need a way to get from one side to the other with some sort of speed, so… Lateral, high speed trams through the storage areas, or something like that.

* * *

Finally, in the elevator that will take him all the way down to the AAA-Deck, where Kylo's personal rooms are, Jon thinks about the space above Kylo's rooms. He adds two stops to his trip.

The YY-Deck is, just like it was when he set it up as a staging area before the Last Night party, mostly empty. They've cleared out the party features he put in, tables, chairs, a bar, and put it back to the storage space it had been.

But, from here, right in front of the elevator that goes all the way down… He can see from one side to the other. It's a vast, cavernous space. Maybe three klicks long and half a klick wide.

One floor down, ZZ-Deck. Again, mostly empty space. He can't see the edges of the deck, because it's _mostly_ empty. When they're in fast transport, this is a hangar deck for fighters. Get them inside the _Supremacy_ so they don't have to try and keep up. Right now, they're just ambling along, so a lot of the fighters are out on training and patrols, but not all of them. Because it's one below YY, and one above AAA, he knows the general shape and size it's got to be. Just a bit smaller than YY.

One more down. Jon's got access to the whole ship, but to make the button that will give him access to AAA light up, he's got to insert his ID chit.

Technically speaking AAA is five separate platforms along the underside of the _Supremacy._ They were the personal landing bays of several generals. To the best of his knowledge, the other four are still in use. And all of them are carefully designed to only be accessed by ship or by the one, single, elevator that goes all the way down to them.

The elevator opens into Kylo's not-a-throne-room, which had been, in its previous life, General Ulnitor's landing pad. It's big enough for the General's command ship. Now, if Kylo so desired, his personal shuttle and TIE could rest here, with room to spare, but that's not what he uses this space for.

Jon spends a moment just looking. Black durasteel, black plasteel, black pillars, and black walls, and black floors, and more black space beyond…

It doesn't have to be black. Just getting the paint taken care of would go a ways toward making this space more conducive to working. Get some comfortable seating, and… artwork… something, anything in here… Even if it takes a while for the garden to get into place… It'd be better.

AAA, ZZ, and YY… They could be a palace. A spacious palace. Meeting rooms, functionaries… ZZ especially, like any landing deck, it's open to the skies on one side, so that too could be gardens, or parks, interspersed with flats and meeting spaces… Hell, he could keep some of that space as landing pads, let people who have business with the Master, from outside the _Supremacy_ land there, near him…

All he's got to do is find the people to put into it.

And the funds to spruce it up for them.

And Jon sighs, walking toward Kylo's office, ready to see if he can maybe get the man to fix what he did to his mom.

* * *

It's early. Too early. Kylo's still sipping his coffee and getting ready to deal with his meetings when he feels Jon stride into his office.

He doesn't even have to talk to C8; Kylo just gets up and opens the door.

He also doesn't get a word in, his mouth is almost open when Jon says, "What did you do to my mom?"

Kylo blinks.

"Oh shit, you did do something, didn't you?"

Apparently, he must have looked guilty when he blinked.

"Did you magick her? I thought we went over that. No Forcing people without permission, and she sure as shit didn't give _you_ permission to mess with her mind. Did you think I'd like this, or…"

Kylo blinks again. This time he manages to get out, "Uh…"

"Kylo! Look, I appreciate you attempting to make things better for us, but… You overshot better by a light year, and now… Can you… put her back the way she was or…"

Kylo blinks again, and this time manages to say, "I… didn't cast a spell on her, or anything like that." He gestures to his conference table. "Here, sit down."

Jon's eyes narrow. "You did _something._ There's no way she's just… like this… on her own."

Kylo flushes a bit.

Jon's eyes are wide. "Kylo, what the fuck did you do?"

"I… uh… She came to see me… And… You know she's not happy about my parents, right?"

"Everyone who's ever met or heard of her knows that. What did you do to her? Did you tell her you killed your father or…"

Kylo looks disgruntled at that. "No. I… well… She was talking about my grandmother. Apparently, back in the day she and Ellie got together to…" he shakes his head… "I don't know what. I think they were trying to put her and Skywalker into the position of the Empress and Emperor."

"Wait, what?" It's Jon's turn to blink. "She's a dressmaker, Kylo."

Kylo can feel a lot of pieces dropping into place in Jon's head, as he says, "And apparently a fuck ton more than that besides. Both of us should have known something was going on when she and Ellie knew each other."

Jon thinks about that for a moment, and sighs. That actually… makes a lot more sense than he wishes it did. He thinks a little more… The fact that he and his sisters kept going off world to work on different dresses is suddenly making more sense, too. Now, he's wondering what the hell it was they did while he was having a good time at parties. "Wonderful." Apparently, he's got another fun conversation coming up with Mom. "So…"

"So, have I told you the story of Vader… He was still Skywalker then, and Amidala?"

"No."

Kylo goes and pours Jon a cup of coffee, tells C8 to hold his meetings, and then offers the cup to Jon. He gets settled and then tells the story. "Anyway, apparently, your mom and Ellie were trying to work them from an entirely different angle, and… well, as your mom put it, it was going great until everyone died horribly."

"And… so, it's not just your parents, it's that she's already backed one Amidala who failed horribly at this empire thing."

"Something like that. So, she's questioning me, making sure I'm up for the game, and I mention that I don't intend to play the game forever, and—"

"Wait…" That draws Jon up short. They haven't talked about the eventual successor to Kylo, but… "What do you mean by that?"

"You know I don't want to do this… Be the Master… the rest of my days."

"Uh, no. I didn't know that. Speaking of things you need to _tell_ people. Again, I _can't read your bloody mind,_ Kylo."

Kylo sighs. "Okay. I do not want to have to do this forever. I thought that was abundantly clear. I'm doing this for as long as I have to make sure that me and mine, which most certainly includes you, are safe. Hopefully, at some point, Rey and I get to leave, go off, just, be us, and…"

"You want to retire at some point?" Jon's feeling like that's not actually a shock. Just, it would have been nice for Kylo to flat out say it.

"I really hope so. That's a policy right? Eventually, Masters retire and a new Master gets voted in?"

Jon blinks. "That's a policy, but…"

"So, your Mom was horrified by the idea that I might not want to do this forever, because she's sure that if I try to leave, everyone, meaning you, will end up horribly dying, and I told her that if this requires me personally to run it, then everyone, meaning you, are going to die horribly anyway, because I'm not fucking immortal, and… If we do this election thing, then… Well… Maybe one day, you might want to run this thing, and… Uh… Who'd be better placed to win an election to Master than you? I think she kind of fell in love with, well, not me, but the Order, because she's really involved in the idea of you running it."

Jon's not sure if he wants to bang his head against the table or scream.

He's not sure if he'd be screaming in horror or relief.

This is possibly the only thing _worse_ Kylo could have come up with than magicking his mom.

He's not sure if he'd want to get anywhere near being _The Master._ Let alone his mom trying to turn him into the _Master._

Kylo lets him set for a while, steaming in emotions, before quietly saying, "I… I wouldn't mess with your mom's mind. First off, I respect you too much to do it. Second of all, she'd put up a fight. I'd win, but… She'd know something had happened. She's got too much of her own Force to go down easy, so…"

Jon decides to latch onto that. Too much Force. That's very much a safer topic than… the House of Frakes ruling the galaxy. "Too much of… Kylo?"

"She's Force sensitive, too. Very mild. Completely untrained. The Jedi wouldn't have been looking her up, or anything like that." He shrugs a bit. "Seeing it in her, I could recognize the barest touch of it in you, too."

Jon just stares at him.

Kylo shrugs at that, too. "You've been telling me hints of it all along. Making people want what's good for them. Knowing what people want. Managing people. Hell, everyone _likes_ you. It's a skill, too, but… It's a skill you've got an easier time with than most other people, and your Mom has a much easier time of it. You've probably got a great-great grandparent who had a fling with a Jedi back when Coruscant was crawling with them."

Jon shakes his head at that idea. "I… didn't think that was allowed."

"Jedi could fuck all they liked. They couldn't get attached, want, or be passionate. A casual one off with someone you enjoyed would likely be the kind of sex they approved of."

"All of my family were… married… when they had kids. That was a big deal on Coruscant."

Kylo's nonplussed by that. "Well, if you were looking to have a non-attached fling, a married partner is likely the best way to go. Or maybe not. I don't know. The magic runs in my family. It didn't run in Rey's. Maybe your mom just has a bit more than average and passed a tinge of it onto you."

With that, Jon decides now's the time to start banging his head into the table.

Kylo just stares at him while he does it, and then says to C8, "You remember what kind of vodka he likes?"

"Of course."

"Bring the bottle."

That gets Jon to stop, but when he raises his head, he says, "I don't want to get drunk at an hour after second shift begins. I don't want to need to be drunk an hour into the day. Just… Kylo, she's fucking moving in. She's _never_ going to leave. She's building up a new branch of the business here, because the House of Frakes has always been at the heart of the Empire, and she's decided that's here, now."

Kylo winces a little. "Err…"

"She's going to build this fucking empire in _her_ image. Gods… She and Ellie Kinear and Thea Schiff…" He rubs his head. "We're going to be the toys in their play."

Kylo thinks about that for a moment. Then he says, voice steady, "Jon, honestly… Seriously, you here, now, in front of me. Just the two of us. Do we have a fucking shot of this on our own?"

"We…" He looks at Kylo, looks out at the stars beyond them… and sighs, loudly. They don't, just the two of them, have the connections. Kylo's got the power, probably, and he's got the eye for it, maybe, but… They don't know where all the bodies are buried, or even where to start looking for them, and…

On top of that, when it comes down to it, neither of them, _really_ know how to play the game.

And, Thea Schiff, Ellie Kinear, and apparently, Mirina Frakes _do._

Kylo nods. "Exactly. Look, I let Snoke write the fucking play for me, and he wanted a considerably less pleasant future than your mom and Ellie Kinear do. Best I can tell, they're going to try and resurrect some sort of shiny version of the Empire, and stick us at the top of it. Assuming we keep with our principals while were up there…"

Jon sighs at that. "Assuming… It's not like she's got bad ideas, but…"

"Yeah, I know. I know all about having a mom with ideas you don't necessarily love. And look, we're going to let them set the stage, give us ideas, help us shape the message, but… When it comes down to it, they aren't in charge, we are."

Jon's laugh is awfully bitter at that. "Spoken like someone who's never had to deal with my mom."

Kylo inclines his head. "Spoken like the man who was supposed to be Leia Organa's son, but I left her. Who was supposed to be Luke Skywalker's scion, but I left him, and destroyed everything he built. Who was supposed to be Snoke's enforcer, but I cut him the fuck in half, killed his guards, stole his empire, and am reshaping it in my image. I know I don't know how to make this… look nice; your mom does. So, let her. And if it gets too much…" Kylo shrugs a bit. Then he says, "If it ever does get to be too much, my Force will beat hers."

Jon looks at him, and then says, "You promise? She'll… I know how it'll work, everything will always sound reasonable, and right, and… Next thing you know you've turned into the Emperor."

Kylo shakes his head. "No. I won't."

Jon nods, at him, feeling the promise behind that. Then he smirks. "You know when we started this, I had significantly fewer images of nattering old ladies running things from behind the wings."

"You and me both, but… If they're good at it…"

Jon sighs. "Yeah. Wait until you see what she's going to start doing."

"As long as drive you completely around the bend isn't on the list, I'm looking forward to it."

"Yeah, well… She was talking to me yesterday, and… again… it's not like she's got bad ideas… Well… She likely does. Scratch that, she definitely does. That said, it's not like her plans for how to turn this place into… a palace, or capitol city, or Coruscant mark II, or whatever, it's not like those are bad, but…"

Kylo can feel the wave of… it's not pain, but… tiredness… maybe… exasperation… that's in there, too… futility… some of that… and a few more he can't name because he doesn't think Jon knows what they are, all go roiling through him.

"Jon, if she's ever… anything… more than you want to deal with, say the word and she's gone. Hell, speaking of saying things out loud, if you just think it loudly, I'll do it. I'm the fucking Master of the Order, and literally _no one_ will say anything if I ask a few people to escort a woman off my ship and return her to her home. Besides, she already doesn't like me, so me getting into a snit and booting her off won't ever reflect back on you."

"You say that now. Wait until she starts being useful to you."

"If there's anyone on this ship who is going to be sympathetic toward you not wanting your mom around, it's going to be me." And Kylo floods Jon with as many of the feelings he's got toward his own mother as he thinks Jon can take. "And I don't care how useful she is, I value you more."

Jon nods. "That's reassuring."

Notes:

One of the many very overlooked bits of Ayn Rand's writings is a line that goes something like this: "Show me what a man desires, and I'll tell you everything about him." And yes, she's talking specifically about sex. I'm not quoting in verbatim, and of course, the old girl would have an aneurysm at the idea she's been quoted in a *fanfic* but the point remains, and it's one that has informed a lot of how, and why I write sex scenes instead of just fading to black. (That, and, of course, I just like doing it. ;)

So, what do we know about Jon we didn't know before? Hopefully a decent amount.

And, I don't know if this is cheating on the slow burn or not, but... It felt useful, especially for framing what Jon's looking for at this point, and likely giving you some hints for why this'll be a slow burn.

Okay... I've also got a companion post to this one, with a few more things I'm thinking about Jon, and what happened here. keryl raist.w ordpress 2019/ 01/26/ thoughts-on-jon/ (take the spaces out.)

Happy Saturday everyone! I hope you all have a good one.


	8. OrganaSoloRenAmidala What's In A Name

1/12/2

Threepio may have thought he was joining the Order to set up a diplomatic corp.

And, to a degree, he's working on that. (Trying at least. Even the Resistance was better organized and more ready to go out the gate than The Order's "Diplomatic Service.")

But, from everything he can see, what he's actually doing is handling the new department of… Jon doesn't have a name for it yet. Whatever they're going to call The Order's offerings of neutral space, contract negotiation, mediation, and the like.

 _The Court of Ren._ He's heard Lady Kinear call it that. Threepio doesn't like thinking of it like that, but… That's probably what he's building. And, honestly, he's not going to come up with a better name for it, so he might as well jot the damn thing down and fly it past Lt. Colonel Frakes, and have him light up like an overtaxed puppy offered a yummy supper, because he does that _every time_ someone hits him with a good idea, which at first was rather gratifying, but it's getting to the point where Threepio's beginning to wonder if _Kylo's_ attempting to run this whole thing with just one other person because the Lt. Colonel, if he had a proper staff, shouldn't be so overtaxed that literally any even remotely good idea is a lifesaver for the guy.

(Or, as R2 says when Threepio remarks on it, perhaps it has been a while since he's been around someone who's been willing to actually _show appreciation_ for good ideas and he should just enjoy it.)

And, apparently, if you have the space, and the guns to back up the promise of security, people will come. And when they come, they get sent to Threepio, who does his best to chat with them, answer questions, and find out if they're serious about this, and what it is they want and need out of the situation.

(He also spends some time pondering the idea of… well… _them_ offering mediation and neutral space and… _courts…_ and if _justice_ is a concept he should allow to flit through his mind, and if he does, if _they're_ anything approaching near the right people for the job. He does his best not to think on that too often or too hard. Because there are days where he's sure he could do a better job at this _justice_ thing than any six humans, trying their hardest, and then there are days where Artoo pokes him in the hubris and reminds him he's a persnickety bag of bolts with too much affection for a long gone age.)

So, when he has a name on his list for his 15:00 appointment, he doesn't think twice about it.

That's not quite true. When he sees he has an appointment, he doesn't think twice about it. He has _lots_ of appointments. When he actually _looks_ at the appointment, and sees the name on it, he doesn't just think twice, he thinks 2,968,737 times.

After all, these days, seeing Organa show up on his to-do list is decidedly _not_ common.

* * *

Before he was Princess Leia's personal protocol droid, he was Bail Organa's protocol droid. And before that… Well, he's got a sense there was a before that, because sometimes Artoo makes comments that indicate there was a before, but he doesn't remember it. And, at this point in his life, he assumes that if he does not know about the time before that, it's likely for the best.

That said, there was a time when See-Threepio, lived (dwelled?) and worked, at the side of the Viceroy, First Chairman of Alderaan, First Senator of Alderaan, His Royal Highness, the Prince Consort Bail Organa.

And, though it is true that Bail spent quite a bit of time on Coruscant, he made sure to get home at least a few times a season.

And when he returned home, Threepio went with him. And when he'd return home, he'd spend time with his family. Of course, his wife and daughter, but also his brother, his brother's wife, and his nephews and nieces.

As best Threepio knows, on the day Alderaan was destroyed, the galaxy lost twenty-one of twenty-three Organas.

Leia's cousin Almath, who was fifteen at the time, and actually on Coruscant, an 'aid to the senator,' was spending his time 'learning the trade' but mostly he was getting coffee for his Uncle and his guests, and being introduced to important people, was the other one to survive.

Unfortunately, they didn't get him off of Coruscant quickly enough, and before the Rebellion even knew he was still alive, the Empire had grabbed him.

Five years in an Imperial prison did exactly nothing to make Almath think that politics was anything he wanted anything to do with ever again, and the minute a site for New Alderaan had been chosen, he promptly moved there, built a place to live, opened a fairly nice little bakery, and made it abundantly clear that they could not make him go into politics, even if his literal life, did in fact, depend on it.

It didn't.

So, as Leia joined the New Republic Senate as the First Senator from New Alderaan, as she batted aside taking her position as Queen of New Alderaan, saying that she was needed in the Senate more, and as Ania Antilles 'volunteered' to 'take the burden of the day-to-day tasks on New Alderaan,' (and plotted Leia's downfall), Almath got married, had a few children, made some awfully good bread, and did his best to forget that he'd ever been part of the royal family.

No one else on New Alderaan did, though, and when it became clear he could not be pulled from his kitchen, and when Leia fell… was pushed… from grace because of her birth father, the powers that were came for his children.

Samath and Bail Organa (he named his sons after his father and uncle) were barely out of their teens when they jumped into the world of Alderaanian politics.

And now, about twelve years later, Threepio sits in his office, on the ship that belongs to an Organa who has shunned that name (though maybe not that legacy, maybe, if this _justice thing_ is in the offing, if _Kylo Ren_ would know _justice_ if it walked up and bit him on the ass) as another Organa seeks an appointment with him.

Artoo chirps at him, and Threepio nods, saying, "You're right Artoo, this is a meeting I never expected to preside over."

* * *

Artoo, still claiming that Threepio needs to hire some staff, because getting drinks and seeing people in _is not his job_ , shows Samath Organa in. (And then fetches him a drink. But he complains vigorously while he does it.)

Samath takes one look at him, and sighs, nods, and then says, "When I saw who I had the appointment with, I did wonder." Then he crosses the room, and, confused, stops. "I… Do we shake hands? What's the protocol on this?"

Threepio stands up from behind his desk. He's getting fairly smooth at it, and is thinking it's likely time to see about an upgrade on his knee and hip joints. (He doesn't need to sit. It's not like he gets tired. And though he can sit, he was built to stand. But he has noticed that, in endeavors like these, _servants_ stand. _Equals_ sit. So General Threepio _sits._ Even if his body isn't ideally suited for it.) "Lord Organa, I'll have to admit, that in this particular case, I do not, in fact, know." He gestures to his guest. "That said, my hands are not particularly good for shaking. Humans find them cold, and the joints don't quite move the way they should."

"Then we'll pass on that." Samath takes the drink from Artoo. Then he looks at the droid more carefully. "Oh my. We've never met, but I've seen pictures of you, before."

Artoo makes his snigger beep, and tells Threepio that everyone and their cousin has seen pictures of him, so…

"Artoo says hello."

 _Liar._

Threepio doesn't respond to that. "Well, Lord Organa… You're the one who set the meeting… What can I… or the Order… do for you? I can't imagine you're in need of neutral meeting space, or you desire a protection contract."

"Three… General… Shall we be formal, or will you be Threepio and I'll be Samath, and we'll remember the few times I visited my aunty and you did your best to pretend you didn't disapprove of me playing in her chambers."

"However you like, Samath."

"Good. I am here, not, at least, right now, as the personal adjutant to the current Queen of New Alderaan, but as the head of the Organa family."

Threepio knows that's a lie, and Artoo beeps _liar_ again. If this were just about the Organa family, the only member of it who currently spends more than half of his waking hours with the Queen of Alderaan, who keeps him near expressly to bolster her own, non-blood claim, would not be here.

"Then I'd imagine the stories coming out about Kylo Ren has you… interested in him for those reasons."

"I'll admit, seeing you here makes me think they aren't just stories."

"They aren't. He is the son of Leia Organa and Han Solo."

"So… cousin Ben is no longer missing."

"I'd highly suggest not attempting to call him that."

"Ah… Yes, he has taken a new name." Samath looks utterly unconcerned by that.

"And, as best as anyone knows, has no interest in resurrecting the old one."

"Ah… Do you think…" Samath sips his drink. "Would he be willing to… Meet with me?"

Threepio pauses for a moment on that. Not to think. He doesn't need to pause to think. His own internal processing is a billion times faster than the average human's. No, he pauses, because humans pause when they want to indicate that something is important. Finally, he says, "About what? Not to be rude, but the Master is insanely busy, and family reunions are so far down on his list of things to do, I have a feeling both of you will be old and gray before he'd have what he'd consider a free moment for it."

"That is fair. A busy man likely doesn't have time for a cousin he's never met."

"That is true. I'm sorry you took the time to come here."

"It's only a few hours. Do you, perhaps, know what has happened to my Aunty?"

One of the great advantages of a metal face and an electronic voice is that when it comes to lying, Threepio has no tells. "When last I saw her, she had just disbanded the Resistance."

He nods, and looks at Threepio. "And now you find yourself a General in the Army you were Resisting?"

"I find myself a General in the diplomatic service of the Order, with whom I've never been at war." Threepio's not entirely sure if that's a lie or not. It's true enough. Maybe. For now. "When the First Order shut down, the Resistance shut down with it." That's not precisely true, either, but it will also hold, for now.

"The Order, that just happens to be run by a man who claims to be the son of Leia Organa."

"The man who _is_ the son of Leia Organa."

"Ah… yes…" Samath steeples his fingers. "And again we find ourselves contemplating Ben Organa-Solo."

Threepio would wince if he could, but he can't, and this is his job, so… "Master Ren. For all practical purposes, Ben Organa-Solo is and has been dead for quite some time."

Samath's eyes glint. "And what about legal purposes?"

If Threepio's eyes could glint, they would. "Legally is, of course, an entirely different matter, Lord Organa."

Samath nods. "Of course. And since I cannot get a meeting as a cousin looking to reconnect with family, how about this, as the legal and diplomatic representative of Heloise Talmash, the Queen of Alderaan, who is, of course, _concerned_ about stories indicating that there is a blood heir of Breha Organa, who has, as of this point, made nothing about his intentions toward us clear, other than, without notice, making a direct claim to our throne, I am formally requesting an audience with Kylo Ren, to ascertain if he is, in fact, Ben Organa-Solo, and if so, what he intends to do about New Alderaan."

Threepio nods. "I have a feeling that Kylo Ren has little interest in meeting long lost cousins for the sake of family ties. That said, Master Ren likely can squeeze some time out of his schedule in order to clarify his position in regards to the fact that he is the legitimate heir to the throne of New Alderaan."

Samath's eyes narrow. "He can't be. His mother laid down both her and his claim."

Threepio's voice is sharp. "And you know just as well as I do that she didn't have the power to lay his claim aside. If you're here to chat about this, it means someone finally looked up his birthday. He's _the_ legal descendant of the last _legitimate_ Queen of Alderaan, the last woman of the right blood, who properly observed the rites, and passed the trials, and should he decide to engage in the trials, he has a claim to your throne, and honestly, as I'm sure you and your queen know, a substantially better one than she does."

"He couldn't pass the Day of Demand trials."

"No, Lord Organa, he has no interest in passing them. I daresay he can and will do anything he chooses to do. But that is neither here nor there. I will speak to his adjutant, arrange a meeting with him, and if he deems you fit to see the Master, he'll arrange it for you."

* * *

Once Samath is gone, Artoo says, _It'd be easier if you just talked to Ben directly._

"I know. I don't enjoy speaking to him directly. I do enjoy speaking to Lt. Colonel Frakes."

 _You're wasting time._

"Fops like Samath consider anyone higher than me getting back to him quickly a sign of unimportance. I'll talk to Lt. Colonel Frakes about it the day after tomorrow. In the meantime, Samath can… get a sense of the scale and power of the _Supremacy._ "

 _You like this too much._

"Probably. Who's next on the list?"

 _How should I bloody know? I'm not your secretary._

"If I actually hired you, would you be?"

 _Of course not!_

"Of course. Well, whoever's up next, fetch them a drink and make them comfortable."

 _I don't work for you._

"Of course." Threepio turns to his datapad to see who's up next. "And while you're not working for me, would you be willing to put a trace on all communications that originate from Lord Organa? I want to see who he's talking to and what he's saying."

 _Not very diplomatic of you,_ Artoo says, sounding absurdly pleased with both himself and Threepio right now.

"And this isn't about diplomacy. This is about family."

 _I didn't think you considered Ben family._

"I don't. But his mother was dearer to me than any other human I'd had the pleasure of meeting and working with, and if those same… traitors… who forced her to give up her birthright are going to try the same maneuver again on her son, I am going to stop them."

 _You know, you're a lot more fun now that you're in charge._

Threepio inclines his head slightly. "Thank you?"

 _You're welcome. I'll have his communications soon._

And once he's alone in his office, he does have to admit, there is something to be said about owning the fact that he's the only one, really, he has to answer to. After all, if _Kylo_ doesn't like it, well… He can just…

Threepio is fluent in over six million forms of communication, and when using any of those forms with another sentient he's unfailingly polite. Usually.

It's probably good that fewer than fifteen humanoids are conversant in the hexagoric script used by drinary op mechs. That said, they've got a… colorful patois… well beyond most machines, likely because they spend a lot of time with mech operators who are… not the nicest people in the history of people.

Anyway, if any of them were to hear what it was Kylo Ren could just do if he didn't like what Threepio was up to… well, their audio processing organs might have melted.

Threepio, having thought it, feels perversely satisfied, and is beginning to understand why Artoo curses all the time.

* * *

1/13/2

"Lt. Colonel…" Threepio says as he enters Jon's office. It's an… interesting is probably the best word, space.

 _Technically,_ Lt. Colonel Jon Frakes is the officer in charge of the Order's Tactical Design Unit. That's what it says on the door. In that his office is in a bay that overlooks a horde of specialized mechs and droids who do nothing but produce the personal military equipment of every member of the Order, he's certainly in the right place for it.

And, inside his office, there are specs for armor, for uniforms, for boots, and hats, and ID badges, and even silly, boring things like socks. (Though proper socks, made of the right materials, keep feet warm, dry, infection and fungus free, and free up something along the lines of 36.2 million credits a year in medical expenses and close to 53,000 hours of lost time spent on light or no duty recuperating from said medical adventures. Now, multiply those benefits through each item, though said benefits are, of course, tailored to each item, and change by season and specialty, and… It's a complicated job.)

There are posters on the walls of different palaces.

There are books. Real, physical books, jumbled with page markers, of both ships and more palaces.

There are stacks of datapads, filled with all sorts of reports ranging from, again, extremely practical and easily overlooked issues, like how switching to a hydro-copper mesh in the filtration system on the Stormtrooper face masks cut down on bacterial infections among Stormtroopers, to full on transcripts of every conversation that all of those nifty blind corners he planted in the First Year party saw witness to.

He is, at least as best as Threepio can see, the most over-scheduled man in the Order.

"Lt. Colonel, would you be horrified if I said that you really need a secretary," he says as he sits in the chair across from Jon's desk.

"No. And you'd be right. It's on my to-do list."

"Do you not currently have a second-in-command?"

"I do, and she's currently running Tactical Design so I have time to do things like meet with you and have a chat about…" he shuffles through his notes, "Samath Organa… I should know that name, shouldn't I?"

"Likely, yes, sir."

"You really can call me Jon."

"It seems unfitting."

"Then call me sir all you like, but… I prefer Jon."

"Very well… Jon. Do you mind, I've never had a title before, and I prefer being called by it."

Jon smiles at that. "I don't mind at all, General. When I got my first stripe I had everyone nearby salute me until they got concussions."

Threepio's not sure what to do with that. He thinks Jon's joking, but his face is serious enough, he might not be.

"Well, General, tell me about this Organa, and why I should know… his?" Threepio nods, "name."

"What do you know of Alderaanian politics, Jon?"

Jon slumps back against his chair. "Just enough to know that if you're asking me about them, I'm not going to enjoy this conversation much."

"That is likely correct."

* * *

Jon stares at the ceiling of his office and blows out a frustrated breath. Threepio wasn't kidding. Alderaanian politics is a quagmire. "Just to make absolutely sure… He really is Ben Solo, right? I know it's a long shot, but…"

"I've known that man since literally the day he was born. I can run the retina scans against my own database of images of him which go back to him at seven hours old. He is absolutely Ben Solo."

"Okay, good. So… what is the issue? We've got a prince of Alderaan. They would prefer we didn't, but…"

"They are going to ask for a blood test." At least that's what Artoo had been able to uncover. Along with the fact that the internals of New Alderaan are, apparently, a tad shakier than they'd like to let on. The downside of a coup, is once you've run one, other people get the idea they can run one, too, and if your government is expressly non-violent, that leaves you a tad limited in ways to deal with potential usurpers.

The absolute last thing Queen Heloise wants is an actual blood (legal) heir for her opposition to rally around.

Jon nods. "All right. I guess… I mean I can see him not wanting to let someone else get a tube of his blood. No telling what they'd do with it."

"Jon…" Threepio's voice is as patient as it can get. "That's not the issue at play. At least, I sincerely doubt it would be." Though he does put a mental note in place. In a galaxy of clones, it likely is a good idea not to let the genetic material of anyone important to the Order to get out. "Breha Organa is, for very few Alderaanians, a living memory. She's much more an ideal than a person. But once upon a time, she was a girl, and to prove her worth as a potential queen, as all true rulers of Alderaan must," Though both Ania and her daughter, Heloise, did not. Things were 'different' on New Alderaan. "she set three trials for herself as her Day of Demand.

"And the first two she passed splendidly. But on the third she fell. A terrible fall. It cost her her heart and lungs. The doctors were able to set her up with prosthetics, and she proudly let them show. Many people would remark about the fact that she was so light and warm that her heart literally glowed. It glowed because it was mechanical.

"And though she survived the fall, she was unable to bear children of her own."

Jon's eyes close and then open slowly. "Oh."

"And I see you have sussed out the issue. Leia Organa, child of Anakin Skywalker, was _adopted_ by Bail and Breha Organa. It wasn't a secret, though it also wasn't openly discussed or mentioned, that Leia was not the natural child of Breha Organa. The Queen and her consort did not keep their many miscarriages a secret, preferring not to attempt to mourn in secret. Many people assumed, though, again, this was gossip, and not openly spoken of, that Leia was the child of Bail Organa by any number of women he was friendly with who didn't happen to be his wife. Given who her actual father was, it's entirely likely Bail, with Breha's consent and encouragement, started that rumor himself. Fifteen years ago now, Ania Antilles and Jaxon Talmash used the fact that Leia Organa was the child of Vader to force her out of her birthright as the Queen of Alderaan. And doing so, they were able to start the ball rolling on the strike that would eventually push her out of the Senate of the New Republic

"Officially, she signed away her rights to the throne of Alderaan, as well as Ben Solo's."

"Why are they even bothering then?"

Threepio back tracks in the story. "Because of the dangers… Ben Solo was barely walking the first time someone attempted an assassination strike against him."

"Why were people trying to kill Kylo… As a toddler?"

"Revenge, mostly." Threepio's voice is flat as he says that. "I'd assume you'd…"

Jon blinks.

Threepio decides that the young Lt. Colonel is in fact _young_ and likely does not know how many 'ex-Imperials' who lost 'everything' in the war decided that a suicide mission to destroy that which was most precious to Leia Organa, the face of the New Republic, was a worthwhile endeavor. "Incorrectly, apparently. Anyway, after that, Han and Leia kept details about him, like for example, where he lived, or that he even existed, quiet. He, like Orlac Calrissian, could have been born in the limelight and grown up in front of billions as a poster child for the New Republic. Han and Leia chose not to do that with their son. As such, when Ania and Jaxon came for Leia, they did not, apparently, know Ben's birthday. And, the last time anyone had seen him in public, he had been a child. So, it appears they were under the impression that Ben Solo was quite a bit younger than he actually was. Leia, once they were there, was able to play on their sense of 'fair play' and 'kindness to the vanquished' to let her have her position for one _last_ Concordance day."

Jon looks blank, but he can feel that's got to be important.

Threepio correctly interprets that look. "Ben was born on the original Concordance Day. By pushing the contract to the far side of the celebrations, she signed it days after he was legally an adult by the standards of Alderaan. Meaning she no longer had the ability to sign away his rights."

Jon's rubbing his forehead. "So, Kylo Ren tells the galaxy his birth name, someone on New Alderaan finally checked how old he was, noticed that he's still a going concern, and now they're going to ask for a blood test he can't pass, hoping that no one remembers the fact that he never could have passed it, and… they don't rally behind him?"

"Or some version of that. I assume they want his blood to discredit him and any claim he may have."

"The grandson of Vader thing won't be enough?"

"I have a feeling the son of Leia Organa, especially among the faction that did not approve of forcing her out in the first place, will carry more weight than the grandson of Vader."

"Assuming the ones who booted Leia out don't flash too many pictures of him in the mask, waving the red lightsaber around?" Jon asks, voice dry.

Threepio would shudder at that, if he could, but he can't, so doesn't. He can sigh though. "Well, yes, I suppose there is that."

* * *

1/15/2

Jon listens to Samath Organa, as he lays out the pieces of his concerns.

Namely, he doesn't want a self-proclaimed King of New Alderaan marching his millions of troops into the place and taking over. And, he'd also like proof as to if Kylo Ren is in fact, in the running for King of Alderaan, one way or another.

Jon nods. He looks to Threepio, and nods again, and says, "Yes… Those are valid concerns. I can assure you, Lord Organa, that the one thing the Order does not do is conquer. Kylo Ren will not be marching our men through New Alderaan to claim it for his own. People come to us. Not the other way around. That is an unalterable, bedrock principal of the Order. Beyond that… If you can stay another night or two, I'm sure I can arrange a time for you to speak to Master Ren directly, because he's the one who will consider the rest of your request."

Samath appears pleased by finally getting time with Master Ren. "Of course, and yes, I can enjoy another night or two of your hospitality, especially if I can get a promise of non-aggression in writing."

"I'm sure we can accommodate you, both as a matter of your physical body, and as a political reality," Threepio says.

"Thank you."

* * *

Jon looks tired when he sidles into Kylo's office moments before he'd usually head home.

Kylo can feel it off of Jon. He glances at the food in front of him. Skimpy portions for three, but they've got cookies at home. "Dinner?"

"Yeah."

Once there, Jon flops back into the blue armchair, loosening his collar, as Kylo says hello to Rey.

"What blew up today?" she asks.

"I don't know, yet," Kylo replies. "Do we want Poe for this?"

Jon shrugs. He can't, off the top of his head, think of any reason they'd need Poe for this, but he certainly doesn't mind him being here. Maybe he'll have some good ideas. "You got enough food to stretch that far enough for four of us?"

"We'll make it work," Rey says. "I'll get him."

"Tell him to bring a bottle, too."

Kylo's staring at Jon. "How bad is this?"

"I'm not sure."

Kylo puts the cookies on the table, and divvies up supper, a rabbit stew, into four bowls. "You feel… disconcerted?"

"Probably a good term for it."

"Your mom?"

"Fortunately, no. Not now. Hell, maybe I can use her on this. Have her wander over and have a chat…" Jon's pondering the angles on that. (And wondering if his mom already has found Samath, and what she might do with a genuine Organa if she found him… Maybe not a great plan…)

Kylo lets him ponder, as he checks the cooler to see if they have any greens. They do. He adds them to the table.

"What's going on?" Poe says as soon as he and Rey are back, and he spies Jon sprawled out in the comfy chair.

"We don't know, yet," Rey says.

"Well…" Poe says, putting his own supper on the table, and the bottle of Correllian whiskey. Kylo winces at it. His dad and Lando used to drink it, and he always hated the smell. And, of course, it was the first alcohol he and his knights got a hold of, so it's also eternally burned into his mind with the worst hangover of his life.

Jon gets up and moves toward the table as they start to divvy up the rest of the meal. "Threepio got a visitor recently. He gets a lot of them. Most of them are people looking to take advantage of what we're offering. Or at least ask about it. This one just didn't know the right way to get a hold of us, and figured that would be the easiest way to move up the chain."

"And it was?" Rey says.

"And it was," Jon replies. "Threepio listens, thinks, gets me, I chat with him, and now I'm here."

"Still not having told us what's going on," Kylo says, pointedly.

"Samath Organa, Bail Organa's great nephew, current secretary to the Queen of Alderaan, and if I'm understanding the bloodlines correctly, your cousin, would like to know, on behalf of New Alderaan, and her Royal Highness, Queen of New Alderaan Heloise Talmaash, if Kylo Ren would be willing to take a blood test to prove once and for all that he either is, or is not, the man who used to be Ben Organa-Solo, only direct, living descendant of the last, legitimate Queen of Alderaan."

The four of them think about that for a moment, and then Kylo tentatively says, "Uh… And this is an issue because?"

"Because, if Threepio is correct, you do not, in fact, have any direct DNA links to what used to be the royal family of Alderaan, what with your mother having been adopted, and unless they have your mother's blood on file, you _cannot_ pass a DNA test."

Poe's seeing it, remembering it, too. He was part of Leia's security team when they toppled her, using her father's name. "They beat your mom out of the running for Queen of Alderaan because she was Vader's child, so… Why are they trying to check you, and who are they intending to run your blood against?"

Rey looks to him, thinking of Kinear's lesson on Amidala, "And who might they actually find if they did that test."

Jon sees that and says, "Okay… Wait. I know that look," he turns to Kylo. "What skeletons are hiding in your DNA?"

Kylo half-shrugs. "Vader's wife was Padme Amidala, former queen of Naboo."

Jon groans. "Oh… That's a million messes all waiting to happen."

"So, just say no," Poe says.

"As soon as he says no, the claim that he's Leia Organa's son blows up. People will be suspicious as to why he's not willing to verify it," Jon replies.

"Well, it's a stupidly specific lie if it's not real," Kylo bites out, chewing a bite of his supper.

"Always, _always_ tell specific lies. Preferably of the sort you know check out. Vague lies look like lies. Specific lies, especially stupid, inconvenient ones, sound truer," Poe says.

Jon nudges his supper. "Are there… pictures of you with your parents?"

"Not that I have, and not ones that couldn't be faked." He shakes his head, and looks at Poe, "Did she still have the house in Chandrilla?"

Poe shakes his head. "Sold it a long time ago and put the credits into the Resistance."

Kylo shrugs. "The only place I knew of where she might have had things… Apparently sold a long time ago. They registered me as Ben Organa-Solo as soon as my eyes finished shifting from blue to brown. My retinas and finger marks will match."

"Okay, we can just go with that," Jon says, looking relieved.

Kylo and Rey don't.

Poe again notices that. "Out with it."

"A bit less than a year ago, Ben Solo became Ben Amidala, and gained a wife, Rey Amidala."

"In the official register?" Jon asks.

Kylo nods.

Jon groans and bangs his head against the table.

"So, you're saying, the only direct route between Kylo Ren and Leia Organa requires a detour through Ben Amidala, and you're thinking that'll cause _issues_?" Poe says. "Is Naboo really _that_ big of a deal?"

Rey shrugs. "The Kinears thought it might be. Not for us, personally, but if we have a daughter…"

"She'll pass the blood test, and someone will be jockeying for her to be the next Queen of Naboo," Jon says.

Poe shrugs. "So, this might be an issue, if a child you don't have, gets enough support from people who don't know you exist as an option, decide to make it an issue. I mean… if they get annoying about it, can't you just say, 'No?' My dad told me I couldn't do things all the time. 'No baby, you can't rule Naboo!' Problem done, right?"

The look on Jon's face, aimed at Poe, is best described as _fed up with amateurs._ "The easiest way to secure your rule is to make sure there are no other options. In blood monarchies, that's often done with discreet poisons. According to Threepio, that's the real reason why we've got Organa sitting in the _Supremacy_. Whether there's any chance of you taking the job or not, the existence of options is destabilizing, and Queen Talmaash is apparently already on shaky ground as it is. As long as you, or your children, can make a decent royal claim, there will be people trying to manipulate that," Jon says.

The four of them are quiet for a moment, and then Jon says, "How badly would changing back to Solo hurt?"

Kylo winces.

Then Poe sniggers, a bit, it's not happy, ironic mostly. "What was the last thing Lor San Tekka said to you? You cannot deny the truth of your family?"

Kylo rolls his eyes extravagantly. "Amidala is one of my family names. Of the lot of them, it's the only one I can stand."

Rey's voice is quiet as she says, "It's also the only family name I've ever had."

Jon's looking at both of them, feeling a lot of years and history, all aching through this name thing.

Poe's watching them, seems to feel how… intense the Rens are on this, and decides to not push it. He then says, "How good is you sabbac face?"

Kylo raises an eyebrow.

"Tell 'em to fuck themselves sideways if they ask. No blood tests, no proof, leave it at if they press it, you'll prove it, but make them press it. Unless they're dead certain you aren't the real deal, they won't, because their position becomes weaker if you prove you're the heir of Alderaan, right?"

Kylo glances at Jon, who nods at that.

Poe continues, "And if they're any good at this, they've got to wonder who Vader's Lady was, and are likely concerned about what that might come up with… So… Just leave it be and dare them to up the bet."

That response makes a _lot_ of sense. Kylo instinctively likes it, but… Well, it's also the answer that lets him ignore the problem that much longer. He looks to Rey. "Lady Amidala?"

She squeezes his hand. "Always."

"That said," Jon adds, "you know that as of ten minutes after you claimed yourself Ben Solo, at least twenty of the people who attended that gathering looked you up."

Poe waves that away. "Once you've done a name change, you've got to know to look through the alias search. Ben Solo turns up nothing, at least not on this one, anymore. Now if they're clever enough to put it into the alias search…"

Rey takes a bite of her supper, and then says, "You run the register, right?"

Jon nods. "The Order does."

"Can't you… lock certain people down? Make them unsearchable? Set it up so that if someone looks them up, you get a report, and then… I don't know, you feed them whatever it is you want them to know?"

Poe's grinning. "We… uh… did that on occasion. Had a few slicers slip in and… modify some of our member searches."

Kylo groans, pulls a datapad to himself, and then makes a note for himself: _Make sure register is secure._ "Why is it my to-do list _never_ gets shorter?"

* * *

It's a lot later that night, when Kylo and Rey are floating around in his bath, relaxing, getting ready to play, and then sleep, that he says, "I told you about Mirina visiting, right?"

Sometimes their minds are so close, he doesn't need to tell. Sometimes he does. And he's not always entirely sure if they've spoken about whatever it was, or if she just picked it up from him.

Rey nods to him. "Yes. And Jon being less than thrilled about her deciding to take over the Order and shape it in her own image. Which I don't disagree with, for the record."

Kylo nods. "Just, poke me, if it looks like she's doing too much directing and not enough taking orders."

Rey's skeptical of her poking ability in the face of Mirnia telling people how to do things, and they both sense it. Finally, she says, "Okay. So…"

"I was thinking about Amidala, and… How that's the name I gravitated to."

"Beyond it being the only one you knew…"

"I mean… Thinking about it… Organa, Antillies, Skywalker, Solo, and Amidala. I'm not short on family names."

"Antillies?"

"My grandmother's maiden name."

"You aren't kidding about not being short on names."

"Queen of Alderaan, Breha Antillies-Organa. There are probably entire libraries devoted to her as a ruler. We wouldn't have to scrounge around in a local library to find one book."

"She… ruled for more than fifteen years, right?"

"Yes, and she was the last Queen of a centuries long ruling family…" He pushes off the back wall of the bath, and shifts a bit, floating on his back, not sitting against the side. "She told me stories about her. A few of the nannies did, too. But… No spark there." He dips under the water, and splashes up a second later, pushing wet hair out of his face. "She didn't… capture my imagination the way Amidala did."

"Because she was real?" Rey's still at the edge of the bath, sitting against the edge, letting the water surround and keep her warm.

"I don't know that. The stories I got… She was… perfect. Effortlessly wise and just and calm and settled, ruling over a peaceful planet of peaceful people who got along in harmony and joy."

"How your mother understood her mother."

"Her idealized version of someone she loved. That was true. That was always true in those stories. So much love for her, so much loss. She stopped telling me them after a while, because they'd make me cry. She was projecting her own loss. I mean, I can't imagine I had that much empathy for a lost world as a six-year-old."

Rey tries to imagine six-year-old Ben. She can easily imagine him having that sort of empathy. She can also easily imagine him feeling his mother's sorrow for her loss. She steps off the side to stand next to where he's floating, resting her hand on his chest.

"Perfect didn't interest you?"

"Maybe. Or maybe I got too cynical about it."

She can see that.

"But… Padme… Amidala. I said it to Mirina. Didn't know I was saying it when I did, but… I told her that she got caught in a terrible bargain by the Force. Powers she didn't understand, couldn't control, pulled her about like a toy, and all she could do was her best." He shifts again, so he's kneeling on the base of the pool, and snuggles into Rey, his face against her belly. "I was… obviously, better equipped to deal with what came my way, but…"

She can feel the shape of but. She still thinks it's important for him to say.

"I asked Mirina if it seemed like they had two Padmes. One who was all in on moving the Empire forward, and another who wasn't, and she said that that matched her memory fairly well." He kisses her belly, and she pets his wet hair. "I feel like there were two Kylos sometimes. Snoke's toy, and your… my… Kylo."

She kisses the top of his head. "The real Kylo."

He nods at that. "There had to have been two Padmes. The real one, who… was a queen, and trying for peace, and didn't want an Emperor. Anakin said she was fond of Obi Wan, and… she was a girl once, so she had to have had wants and needs and friends and… And there was Vader's Padme, pulled to him, and his wants, and his needs, and…"

"That feels real to you."

"It does." He scoots back a little so he can look up at her, and her hands find his face. "I… feel good, settled with Ren. It's real, and it fits in a way Solo never did or could. But Amidala isn't far under the surface and," he's staring up at her, figuring out how to put these feelings to words, "that struggle, how you gave me the strength to pull out of it, triumph over it," he kisses her belly again, and holds her tight, "You're not dead. Padme is." He nuzzles against her. "Amidala triumphant. The story rewritten, and this time, we win. Love wins. He said he never loved her. When the time came, he didn't choose her." He holds her close, ear to her chest, feeling her heartbeat, listening to her breath, feeling her, real, here now, in his arms. Feeling the love between them, and seeing that moment, Snoke behind her, the saber in his hands, and the cliff he was about to leap off of. "You chose me, and I chose you, and it got off to a rocky start, but…" and for another moment, he just holds her. "We won, and… It's not just the only family name you've officially had, it's… Us."

She kisses him, sweetly, bending to reach his lips. "It's being better than the people who came before us."

He nods, kissing her back. "It's putting each other first."

"Then we'll lock it away. Keep it for ourselves and our children. Like Kinear said, we'll have our public name, shield, and this is… us."

He nods, holding her close. "This is us."

* * *

1/16/2

Kylo eyes Organa as he enters. There is, of course, _no_ family resemblance. That said they both have black hair.

Organa is darker-skinned, with a neat black beard, and, from the pictures he's seen, bares a strong resemblance to his grandfather. He looks about as much like Kylo as Poe does.

They go through the niceties, make some small talk while Kylo offers him coffee, and then spend a quiet moment just staring at each other.

Finally, Kylo say, "I take it we're cousins, then?"

"You're claiming we are. I'm here to see about finding out if you can back that up."

Kylo nods. "I'll admit, that's the bit I'm curious about. It wasn't a secret that Leia Organa was adopted, so… Who exactly do you intend to test me against? You and I shouldn't have any matching DNA."

Apparently, Kylo wasn't supposed to know that. That said, Samath's got a cover lie. "The rumor was, she was Bail's."

Kylo can't believe that he's going to try that line. "Bail Organa and Darth Vader… The Force works in mysterious ways, Lord Organa, but I've never yet heard of it allowing two _men_ to make a baby with each other. Likewise, absolutely _no one_ was under the impression that Darth Vader was a woman."

"Under the mask and armor, who could have possibly told?" Though Organa has the grace to look mildly chagrined after trying that line.

Kylo catches the annoyance in Organa's mind. Given how far outside the circles of Alderaan that Ben Solo was raised, they were hoping he'd be completely ignorant.

"It's true that I was kept out of Alderaanian politics. I didn't know I was in the running until after she signed away my rights. It's true that she hid me away and out of eyes of the galaxy at large. That said, even I paid enough attention to know who her _father_ really was," Kylo says. "So, let's try this, what, exactly do you want my blood for, then?"

That gets a minute flicker of an eyelid.

"Ah… You didn't. You know I wouldn't match any other Organa, so you'd toss the vial aside, and loudly tell everyone on the planet I didn't match up, never specifically claim I'm a liar, but hint at it, and hope most of the people who knew Leia Organa was adopted either forgot or kept quiet."

That gets the barest hint of a glare. Kylo's not sure if he could have read that without the Force.

"I take it you will not be offering up a blood sample, then," Samath says.

"No. I will not."

Samath nods to him. "We, of course, expected that."

"Of course."

"I've talked to your underlings, they tell me that, here, ruling over a massive pile of weapons, among them guns big enough to blow a planet to pieces, the grandson of Vader sits, and intends to do nothing about New Alderaan."

Kylo cocks his head. He wouldn't have put it that way, but all the particulars of that sentence are correct. "I have no interest in New Alderaan. In time, I may get recruiting stations there, but that's as far as I want to go. I understand New Alderaan has free travel, and your citizens may come and go as they please. Thus, any Alderaanian who wishes to be ruled by me, knows how to get to me. Satisfactory?"

Organa nods slightly. That's not satisfactory, none of this is satisfactory. That said, getting a blood sample to thoroughly discredit Kylo Ren and put this whole thing to bed, would have been tolerable. But this is, realistically, as good as he's going to get. He's staring at Kylo, really looking at him. "I expected more of your grandfather in you."

Kylo shrugs. He knows that Bail Organa isn't the grandfather Organa's talking about. "And I've been doing my best to be my own man for years now."

Organa nods. "Your…" His lips purse, he's not exactly sure what Jon is. Obviously more than the Lt. Colonel his rank suggests. "Friend, told me that a non-aggression pact could be arranged."

"Easily. Like I said, I have no interest in New Alderaan. That said, Alderaan has a long and glorious history of not exactly being as politically neutral and uninvolved as it claims to be, so you'll forgive me if I seek independent verification of your non-aggression."

"And will you blow us out of the galaxy if we take sides?"

Kylo smiles at him. "No. I'll find the ones of you who are fighting against me, and punish them directly. Then I'll destroy that military you claim not to have, cripple your economy, and offer you 'protection' while you rebuild, then recruit freely among your best and brightest. Have a chat with Ambassador D'Vrys of the Qualee if you'd like to see what I do to people who fight against me."

"She's Prima of the Council now, and I already have."

"Wise man. My legal department will likely be able to draw up terms in a month or so, and I'm sure in less than a year, we'll have them settled to both of our liking."

Organa smirks.

"Or at least to the level where it's tolerable to both of us."

He nods. "You're not what I was expecting."

"I hear that a lot."

"I'd imagine you do."

* * *

It's dinner time, again, and this time Kylo's expecting to have supper with just Rey.

But expecting isn't getting, and just as they're sitting down, he feels Poe come close to his door, and Rey opens it before he can knock.

Poe just stares at where the door was, hand up about to knock, and then steps in. "That's unsettling."

"Didn't want you in the cold any longer than you needed to be."

"Thanks." He puts a plate of mixed veggies on the table, next to the rolls, and then takes his coat off.

"Getting comfy?" Kylo asks.

"Yes. Don't worry, I'm not planning on crashing all of your meals." He grabs a plate, and fork for himself, and then pours himself a cup of water.

"But you're crashing tonight."

"Yeah. I figure when you see why, you'll be okay with it." Then he pats the corner seat. "Tonight, you go here, okay, Ren?"

Kylo raises and eyebrow, but switches places with Rey, so he's sitting between Poe and Rey.

Once he's in place, Poe clears off a bit of space between them, and lays a small holo projector, the kind with just a tiny display, maybe ten centimeters on a side, in front of them.

"You'd just… well, killed the First Order, I guess. Or gave birth to the Order. Or however you saw it. And we'd met on the beach. Here actually. To talk about what was next. And I knew, going into it, I just _knew._ When she called the meeting her voice was… resigned. She'd been off with Chewie talking to people we owed money to, paying off old debts, and… I knew what was coming.

"And I wasn't wrong. She said her bit, and then left us to squabble in the sand around the fires, because most of who was there didn't want to give up. And for a while, I was mostly fighting with them, taking the position that Leia said we were done, so we were done, and that was that, but…

"Eventually, the arguing was getting more heated, and then Chewie just _howled._ He'd been away from the fight, on the edge of the beach, watching the water. And I realized I hadn't seen her in hours.

"I…" His eyes are bright. "I'd gone to the Falcon, because I'd seen her get on it, and… Uh… I found her clothing." Poe blinks. He's not crying. Not yet. His eyes are wet though. "It was so stupidly small. She was such a big personality, that… Anyway… they felt like doll clothing, you know?"

And for a moment, Kylo really wishes he could say yes, but… "The last time I saw her in person, she was still taller than I was."

"Oh."

"Yeah," Kylo bites his lip, hard. "My… uh… mental image of her… it didn't really update."

Poe sniffs a bit, and Rey holds both of their hands. "Anyway. Asking about the house in Chandrilla reminded me of this. Chewie and I… gathered up her stuff. He was her official next of kin. And, there was this. She kept it with her, and… He gave it to me. Said it hurt too much to look at, so I guess he knew what was on it, but…

"I didn't… look… until last night. Just kept it, because it was hers, but… Do you… want to see?"

Kylo's turn to blink. "Do I?"

"It's a party. I don't know the people in the background. I think Chewie's the one who took the picture, because I can hear the howling, and your Dad is talking to him."

Kylo nods. He's fairly sure what this has to be. "Yeah. Uh… Am I a little guy? Seven-years-old?"

"Can't tell by looking, but probably. You're bigger than Rugh and smaller than Opal."

Kylo closes his eyes slowly, and he can feel how much Rey wants to see this, but she doesn't want to push him, and…

He turns it on. Like any holovid the image is translucent, but it's the three of them, with people in the background Kylo doesn't know. The image is jerky, and it's fairly clear that Chewie just got handed the camera because once it stops moving, he's taking the picture from above them.

"Make sure you don't cut our heads off!" Han's saying.

 _You're the one who cuts people's heads off in pictures._ Chewie replies as the camera nudges up just a tad. _Got you!_

Han's holding Ben, has his arms around him, and he's riding his Dad's hip. Leia's next to them, arms around them both. They're ready for the wedding, all dressed up. His mother's hair in the most elaborate braid he'd ever seen, before or since, and she's draped in a long, flowing rust and scarlet dress. Alderaanian colors of luck and joy. Both he and his dad are dressed up in tidy suits. Han's got a flower on his vest, and looks a bit rushed. Like he's got to get moving, fast.

"Hey, Lando! They gave us cameras and told us to record something for you," That's Leia.

Ben's voice. It's so high and tiny. "Happy Wedding Uncle Lando! We got to see the cake already and it's ENORMOUS! It's bigger than I AM! They say it's chocolate and coffee and vanilla and there's a strawberry tier and there's supposed to be a layer with lemon curd, and I LOVE lemon curd and…"

Leia's laughing. "And we're looking forward to sharing the dessert with you. Everyone's starting to go in now, and Han's got to head off and find you, so… All of our love, and best wishes today and the days to come!" She makes a little kissing gesture at the camera.

The picture goes flashing away, and they hear Chewie saying, _Shit, we've got to move. He's going to skin us alive if we're late for this thing._

They get a somewhat blurred image of Han putting Ben down, and kissing Leia, running his fingers through Ben's hair, grinning at both of them, and then it goes dark.

Kylo's biting his lip, hard. After another moment of just looking at where the image used to be, he finds enough of his voice to say, "Is that the only image?"

Poe nods. "Yeah." He's not sure what to say, so he starts to eat, and watches as Kylo just stares at where the image was.

"That was the last happy time," Kylo eventually says. "Less than a year later, it'd gotten so bad they shipped me off to Luke."

Rey's stroking his back. "What's bad?"

Kylo swallows… "She was gone, a lot. This meeting, that meeting, this other meeting. The house was outside Chandrilla, and I don't know how long it took to get home, but a lot of nights she stayed in the city. He… he was with her. Or with Chewie. Or sometimes with me, but mostly away.

"And I was stuffed in a house with a cook, a nanny, and a tutor.

"And a malevolent spirit in the back of my head.

"And too much power.

"And no control.

"And Dad was coming home soon. They'd been telling me that for days, to try and keep me in a good mood. He was supposed to be home that afternoon, but… Something… happened. And he was going to be delayed. I don't know if I ever knew what the holdup was. But… I got into a fight with the tutor. My math was wrong. My math was always fucking wrong, and it was fucking wrong again, and… The voice was telling me math was for peons. Math was for clerks and dullards, and I had a bigger, better destiny, and he was trying to hold me back, shackle me to some sort of meaningless job as a bureaucrat, and I was so angry, and the voice kept telling me to let the anger go to, to use it, to show them all what I could be and do and… And then the tutor wasn't breathing, and he was turning blue, and he fell to the floor, and he wasn't moving, and I was screaming, and the nanny came and saw, and then she was screaming, and I was sure I'd killed him, so I ran away and hid, and… And he wasn't dead. I didn't know that for hours and hours because I hid so well they didn't find me for close to a full day.

"Dad found me. And he gave me some food, because I was so hungry and tired and angry and thirsty and… wrong… So fucking wrong. I could see it in the way he was looking at me. Like I was fragile and broken and evil and dark and just _wrong._

"Like he was afraid to touch me.

"And he and mom had been arguing about sending me off to Luke. He didn't want to send me off. Didn't think all Force all the time, off in the middle of nowhere was the way to go. But… Mom had been saying I had too much power to go untrained and I had to learn control and…

"And he was back. I'd been having trouble with math for a long time, and we were going to work on it together. But we didn't. We never did. Mom got home a few hours later, and they packed up my stuff, and took me to Luke. And I never got to go home again." He touches the holovid. "And, I never saw, both of them, at the same time, after that. I was fifteen the last time she visited. Nineteen the last time he did.

"They'd write and call, but I'd duck out on the calls, or not read the letters." He touches the holovid projector again. Watching the images, blinking back the tears. "That's who we were supposed to be. Who we were never lived up to the image."

He bites his lip. "That's Ben Solo. Sad and hurt and… broken, wrong. Untouchable." He looks to Poe and Rey. "And I absolutely cannot go back there." He hands the holocube back to Poe as Rey gently strokes his back.

* * *

Notes:

Hey All,

So I know some of you were wondering where the Dynamic Duo went, and well, here they are. And they're the main actors for the next... oh seven or eight chapters, and then we'll have some fun with Jon and Poe and Co.

Meanwhile, thank you for the patience. We're about 160 pages into this now, and finally have our major players into position so that, in the next two chapters, we can start laying out where we're going to go with this installment.

(Woo hoo! With a side of, wait, you wrote 160 pages of set up? Just to get things into place? Loves, I really wasn't kidding about EPICS.)


	9. Lessons

1/20/2

Ellie is unreservedly pleased to join Rey and Kylo in what is, hopefully, the first of their, How-To-Be-People-In-The-Political-Realm lessons.

Hopefully.

As she heads into their private room, where Rey and Kylo are already waiting for her, it occurs to her that she's seen men face execution looking less perturbed.

"This really isn't going to hurt," she says. Then she holds her hands out. "See, no ruler."and Rey glance at each other, dumbfounded because not only do neither of them know what a ruler is, they also have no idea why she'd have one.

Ellie shakes her head, and sits at their dining table. Rey and Kylo join her. "Back, a million years ago, when I was a school girl, there were flat, plexi-plast strips with marks on them used to measure small distances or draw straight lines. They were also good for whacking misbehaving little girls across the fingers."

"Your teacher hit you?" Rey asks. There have been times she's wanted to smack one of her students, but she's never _done_ it.

Ellie half smiles. "Not very often. And generally not very hard. It was mostly to help focus attention, rather than a way to enforce behavior through pain. Master Loonia, on the other hand, would raise welts with his ruler, but I wasn't in his class."

Kylo and Rey both wince.

C8 comes in a heartbeat later with a gently rattling tray. It's, as close as can be had on the _Supremacy_ to a proper, Imperial high tea. After all, if they're going to do this, they're going to do it in style.

Ellie smiles at them as they both look at the four layer tray, with pastries, fruits, little sandwiches, and on the bottom level, a teapot, three cups, tiny plates, and a collection of condiments.

"Thank you, C8," Ellie replies. It's the first time she's ever thanked a droid for anything, but unlike her students here, she is _good_ at this, so when she noticed that Rey thanks serving droids, that immediately joined her arsenal of manners.

"You're welcome, Lady Kinear. Anything else?" he asks Kylo.

Kylo shakes his head. Then pauses, and says, "My next appointment is in two and a half hours, a ten minute warning would be nice."

"Done, sir."

Then C8 leaves Kylo, Rey, and Ellie, along with high tea, and a lesson, or maybe planning session.

Ellie eyes the teapot, and then Kylo. "Hightest ranking host serves, and this is one of the few parties where I'm not it. So…" she gestures to Kylo and the tea pot.

Kylo looks at the tea pot, and looks at Rey, and then sees Ellie shake her head. "Today it's you, Kylo. We'll talk about when and where it'll be appropriate for Rey to pour when you are present, but not today. To start off, though it's considered an immense honor to be served, by hand, by someone on your level."

"What is this?" Rey asks. She's never been to a meal with rules this formal, or what to her, looks like a pyramid of desserts.

"This," Ellie says, "is Imperial, and before that, Galactic High-Tea. People of a certain political level would have breakfast upon waking, luncheon between eleven and noon, high tea at four, supper at nine, and if you're really with the game, nightcap at midnight."

"That's a lot of meals," Rey says, trying to imagine eating that often.

"Why my mother was never home for meals is making more sense," Kylo says.

Ellie nods at that. "The New Repbulic didn't quite play by those rules. They tended to think things like high tea were a lavish waste. Still, meals were certainly a tool in the political arsenal more than a way to fuel the body. In many social situations, food is the equivalent of lubricating oil. It helps everything glide easily against each other. With the exception of a high banquet, social meals tend to be small, and there are that many of them, so that you have several opportunities per day to have small, private meetings while doing something genuinely pleasurable."

Kylo's eyeing the tea cup, which feels stupidly tiny in his big hands.

"To start this off, the tea is already brewed. If we get to the point where you're looking to really impress, we'll bring out the actual leaves, and you'll pour the water over them. For right now, we're starting on the basic level. Leave room for milk, sugar, cream, or whatever your guest might want to put into it. Say a centimeter and a half from the top."

He shrugs and pours.

"In the world I grew up in, these sets would be made out of the finest and most expensive minerals or porcelain the family could afford. The number of snacks, the rarity of the tea, or coffee if you were really looking to lavish luxuries on someone, were all ways to show your guest your status, and how much you valued them."

The set on Kylo's table appears to be common black plasteel, but… Again, there's no such thing as a proper Imperial High-Tea, not on the _Supremacy_. Meanwhile, there is a lesson to this set, so Ellie's set, made of a platinum-silver alloy, and handed down through her family for the last nine generations, is tucked away on her ship.

She takes her tea from Kylo, puts a block of sugar in, and adds a wedge of citronen. Rey, who's never had tea, especially not like this, follows Ellie's lead. Kylo takes his plain. It's hot, he registers the temperature of the liquid more than a flavor, but after a few seconds he notices there's some sort of herbal, cinnamon-y thing going on there. It's not bad. He prefers coffee.

Ellie takes a sip, and then says, "Fifty years ago, you serving, by yourself, from this set, would have sent your guest into a panic. Care to guess why?"

Kylo and Rey both look at the set.

"It's cheap?" Rey finally says, after a moment. She might not know tea sets, but she does know materials. If she'd found this and brought it to Plutt, it'd have been worth a few drops of water at most, so…

"Exactly. When your leader values you, when you are pleasing to him, he won't serve you with cheap goods." Ellie takes another sip, looks at Kylo, who stares at her, blinks a bit, and then gets it.

"Right," he grabs one of the little plates.

"Good, top down, use the little tongs."

"Okay… Uh…"

"One of the rabbit comfit sandwiches," Ellie says, but there are five kinds of little sandwiches up there, and Kylo has no idea which is which by sight.

"The little one with the yellowish bread and the brown middle."

He puts it on her plate, and looks back at the tower of treats.

"You eat your way down, and once the first round has been served, guest serve themselves, though it's polite to offer to grab something for everyone else when you go for another of your own."

He wiggles the tongs toward the top level, and Rey shrugs. She also doesn't know what's up there. He plops one of each on her plate, and does the same for himself.

"We don't have to eat all of them if we don't like them, right?" Rey asks.

"Not here. And you're better off trying everything because variations on the theme of this will show up often. That said, if you're a guest, unless you will literally throw it up, eat whatever it is you're offered, or learn to hide the fact you aren't eating it."

Rey looks confused, and Kylo's remembering some very unsuccessful attempts at hiding food under his plate as a small child.

"We'll get into that lesson before you're actually a guest at one of these things. Now, assuming we could locate a somewhat decent tea set, what would serving tea today mean?"

Again, neither Kylo nor Rey really want to hazard a guess, but… Ellie doesn't look like she's about to hop in and rescue them by answering, so…

"I'm actually attempting to live up to the Vader-fetish they whisper about?" Kylo tries.

Ellie sniggers at that. "Well, I suppose that's one possible read on the subject, though to the best of my knowledge Lord Vader never presided over tea, or anything else that involved eating in public. Rey?"

Rey eyes the tea, eyes Ellie, and it'd be so easy, she could just read the feel of it off of her… And then she gets that's part of the point of this. She's _supposed_ to read Ellie.

"It's… about signaling that we're out of the war years. That… the galaxy is ready to move back, or forward, I guess, to a time where people can do things like sit down and have tea. It's… prosperity. It's… showing off that we're… genteel…" she lifted that word right out of Ellie's mind and isn't sure what it means. "The New Republic didn't do things like this because they thought it was a lavish waste, and looked too Imperial." There's another layer in there. "This is a palace… Or supposed to be one… And palaces have things like pretty meals to set people at ease and provide them comfort."

Ellie's smiling at her. "Exactly. And, of course, there's more. Always more." She pauses to sip her tea before saying, "The art of politics is fairly simple, at least at first blush. All you need to do is figure out what you want, and what the people around you want, and then use their wants to get your wants. And you two," she flashes Rey and Kylo a knowing look, "have, shall we say, an _advantage_ when it comes to figuring out what the people around you want." Ellie smiles. "So _use_ it. Get people together, get them comfortable and relaxed," she takes a bite of her sandwich, and a sip of tea, "and _learn._

"Most people act like politics is a complicated and obscure mire of hints and nuance. And it is, _if you can't read minds._ But, since you two _can,_ the game suddenly shifts, and all you've got to do is figure out how to manipulate the wants of the people around you to get what you want.

"And once you know what the people around you want, manipulating them is _easy._ "

Ellie can see both of them are at least mildly horrified by her putting it that bluntly. She sighs. "Alderaan… That's your image, isn't it? Perfect, peaceful, rational, reasonable people working together in mutual accord for a greater good?"

That's not exactly Kylo's image, but it's close. He can't quite see it through his mother's rose-tinted glasses, mostly because it's her view of it, and he knows not to trust it. And Rey, who didn't grow up with a fairy tale version of a world lost, still has that ideal of it, because, even though Kylo doesn't trust the image, it's _still_ his image of it.

Ellie sighs. "Child, if your grandmothers were here… I knew Padme. Not well, but enough to chat on occasion. And I knew of Breha. Queen of Alderaan. Everyone knew of her. Breha would tell you mutual accord and the greater good are not real. She knew they were goals, something to be worked toward, not obtained. Padme didn't know that, but she learned, and learning it broke her heart, I think. It certainly killed her. So, just delete those concepts from your mind. They do not exist. There is no Force-ordained perfect system. I'd assume, you two, of all people would know that, but…"

Kylo rolls his eyes. "I do." And Rey nods along, too. They've both gotten the beyond shitty end of the Force stick in the past.

"So first and foremost, what do you want? That's where this begins. You can be as lofty and fair as you like at this point, but keep it firmly in mind, this is what _you_ want. There is no God behind you pushing and pulling you in the right direction. Or if there is, it's the same God that rose up Snoke and Palaptine, or at least allowed them to rise, so keep that in mind. For all practical purposes, all there is is _your own, personal_ sense of right and wrong, your own definition of justice, your own tolerance for pain, and what you're personally willing to do, and who you're personally willing to sacrifice, to get it. That's it. No more, no less, and this will fly or fall entirely on the strength of your own will.

"That said, most of the people around you _can't read minds,_ which means they're watching your every move, nuance, lifted eyebrow, the cut of your clothing, everything and anything for any hint of what you're doing." She touches her sandwich. "Does rabbit comfit over jam make a statement? Maybe? There'll be people trying to decide if it does.

"So, for you two, you're learning to speak the language of power more as a way to manage the message you send to those around you, than to pick up the messages they're sending to you.

"For example, Kylo, _no one_ has missed that you have no guards. This tells them two things. One: you are _very_ confident in your ability to defend yourself and your home. Two: you don't, not really, care about anything around you." Ellie sits back as she says that, and then says, "Now, tell me, is that an accurate description of the situation?"

Kylo blinks. "I… absolutely can defend myself against pretty much any and everything that could be coming my way." Then he glances at Rey, and she shakes her head.

"I am not being trailed by a horde of guards. I don't need them."

"The only person I won't live without can take care of herself, and if need be I can be at her side in less than a heartbeat."

Ellie takes note of Kylo's phrasing on that, and then nods. "But they don't know that. And I assume you prefer it that way." Both of them nod. "And, if I understand correctly, you do have another home, hidden away, that no one knows the exact location of, and almost no one has been to."

They nod.

Ellie smiles a bit. "So, you do understand the need to guard that which is precious. That said, the people around you see the lack of guards, especially on Rey, and think you may be reckless. You storming in, personally, to lead the attack on Qualee, cemented that idea. Whether you are reckless or not, you can use the fact that they see you that way to your advantage. By shaping the message you send, you also shape the ways they'll try to interact with you."

Rey watches her, and takes a nibble of her sandwich. Ellie only takes tiny bites, so she takes little ones, too. It's yummy, lightly sweet and braced with some sort of acid. She thinks she's got one of the jam ones. Then she says, "And you've got a message you're thinking we should try to send?"

"Since we talked about Amidala at the First Year party… I have an idea, and Pat thinks it's something we can capitalize on… that you two are ideally set to fill, should you want to do so. Though, I can certainly understand why you may decide not to."

That gets an intrigued look from both Kylo and Rey.

"People have shapes, stories in their minds, narratives, and if you can take advantage of them, you can gently push them into directions that might be more to your liking than where they would otherwise go." Ellie takes one more sip of her tea. "Over the course of the Last Night and the First Day parties, one thing Pat and I noticed is that there's a narrative we can… use… to our benefit.

"Do you remember me saying that people like the idea of a God or Force-Ordained ruler, someone touched by the hand of the divine and given dominion over them?"

Kylo and Rey nod; they remember. They also remember Ellie saying, less than twenty minutes ago, that that was also not a thing that existed in the real world.

"People do like that. In addition to that, many, many people have a story in their minds. A tale of a handsome prince, and his beautiful lady, and the many trials and tribulations they go through in order to win each other, but in the end, they do, and they get married, and they rule justly, to the benefit of all they rule, and everyone lives happily ever after."

Kylo _immediately_ sees where this is going, because he did have nannies who told him those stories. He even liked them, as a child. Probably because, in several cases those stories were supposed to be about his Grandparents: Breha and Bail Organa.

Rey's getting the idea, too. She didn't have those stories, not growing up, because she didn't grow up in a world of stories, but she understands what Ellie's saying.

"You want us to be… The Handsome Prince and his Lady?" Kylo asks. He gets the idea, but he's never even come close to thinking about applying it to him… them.

She looks to Kylo. "You're pretty enough for the job." Kylo looks skeptical about that, and Ellie brushes it away. "You outed yourself, so you are, and the galaxy knows it, a _literal_ prince. Of Alderaan. And given how the New Republic spent thirty years covering the galaxy with pro-Alderaan propaganda, just about everyone thinks it was practically Heaven, unjustly destroyed by those monsters in the Empire, so _many_ people automatically associate it with justice and honor, and good government. You have the birthright for this. You have the _ideal_ birthright for this. Pat and I could have spent years setting this up, and we could not have come up with a better background for this plan if we tried. And believe me, we _did._ "

She looks to Rey. "Again, you're more than pretty enough for it. Normally, it's the Prince who does the rescuing in these stories, but… If we let it out that you were part of the Resistance, and he was the First Order, and we shape it as an epic romance, finding each other on the battlefield or something like that, pulling together, entwined by destiny, you bringing him to the light, him bringing you dark, the fall of the First Order and the Jedi, and bringing about something new, The Order of the Maji…

"If we shape it right, people will flock to you, just to be near that story. To wear our colors and be part of the romance of a love story so powerful it changed the entire galaxy. They'll write stories and songs and holovids about it. You'll be celebrities."

And that's where Ellie stops, to let those ideas seep in, and to her credit she does give it time, as Kylo and Rey sit there, next to each other, contemplating the idea of being… _famous._

The first flush of contemplating is both of them just looking at her, somewhat stunned expressions on their faces.

That then settles down into what Ellie would consider an _is this possible?_ sort of expression, this one aimed at each other as they contemplate the idea further.

And they do contemplate. Long enough to munch through several of the tiny sandwiches, and a few of the… Rey's not sure what they are, savory pastries that get rubbed with creams and jams, on the level below them.

It's Rey who says it, and Kylo's grateful for that, because he doesn't feel like he can. Though it's clear that Ellie's surprised to see Rey's the one who voices the question.

"How would we… do that?"

Ellie looks around… "I'm not sure if we'd start here, because, of course, this is the real world, and we are on a budget, but it's the thing that's glaringly obvious to me, because we're sitting in the middle of it." She gestures to the room around them, and the _Supremacy_ at large. "Kylo, it's _all black_. You look like you asked for a torture dungeon, not the hub of a new political regime. Even the Emperor, who wasn't exactly _subtle_ when it came to décor schemes, didn't live in an _all black room_ on and _all black_ _ship_ with an _all black wardrobe_."

Kylo does lift an arm, showing off that Jon's latest version of his command blacks does in fact contain some gray on the sleeve.

Ellie loudly thinks _smartass_ at him, before saying, "The fantasy prince and princess live in a palace. A place of beauty, and learning, art, music. It's smack dab in the middle of the most prosperous, beautiful city to ever be built. Now, there's not much we can do to make the _Supremacy_ look, at least on the outside, beautiful and nonthreatening. The inside is a different story."

"Jon and I talk about building palaces. And, we've got dreadnoughts in process. New ships to scale down some, and built to be beautiful."

"Good. That's a good start, but you're what… ten years out on them?"

"Four and a quarter."

And while that's better than Ellie was thinking, that's also not _now._ "Much better, but _something_ has to happen with any parts of the _Supremacy_ you intend to work/entertain in."

"What kind of something?" Rey asks.

Ellie thinks about it for a moment. "I could probably describe all day and not really get the idea across. I know he's at least seen some examples of what an attractive, elegant, functional sort of place looks like. I don't know if you have.

"I have my own ship, and free time. If you want to take the lesson further, how about we go visit some palaces?"

"How?" Rey asks. "We don't just… go, right?"

Ellie smiles at her. "That's _exactly_ what you do. You are the Lady Ren of the Order, Mistress Rey of the Maji, and I'm not exactly yesterday's waste. If we request a visit, we will be offered the height of hospitality." She shifts focus to Kylo. "You have to have people you want to get to know better… Places that could use a visit from the queen of the Order…"

Off the top of his head, he's got nothing, but… "Wait. New Alderaan. We're delivering a non-aggression pact to them. Rey and you delivering it… That would… look good right?"

Ellie smirks a bit. "Sending your Queen to visit your Mother's people, who are a matriarchy famous for peace, with the first draft of a binding peace agreement in her hands? Yes, Kylo, that looks good. Would you like to do that, Rey?"

Rey's still wrapping her head around the idea of this. "Just… Go to New Alderaan? Just the two of us?"

"Normally we'd have some people to tend to us, and a few guards, but we can likely get away with the two of us, and assuming he's a Grand Marshal by the time we leave, Jon, or better yet, General Threepio, who I believe has been there before on more than one occasion…"

"Threepio," Kylo says, understanding what they're doing here. "You're going to absolutely convince them that I AM the heir to their throne, and then we're just going to… leave them be?"

Ellie smiles a little. "Well, you do happen to have a policy in place encouraging anyone who would wish to join you to do so. If they want Prince Ben of Alderaan," Kylo winces a bit at that, and Ellie pointedly ignores it, "they know where to find him, and how to join his service. You have a program for acquiring planets. If they decide taking advantage of it at some future point would be to their benefit, who are you to tell them 'no?'"

She's not wrong about that, and if New Alderaan ever does decide to move into the sway of the Order, he won't tell them no.

"So, go, look, see, get an idea of what palaces look like, and… then what?" Kylo asks.

"Well, is there an epic romance hiding in there somewhere? Do we have a Prince and Princess to stick in a palace if we build one? Pat tells me the two of you killed Snoke together. Jon tells me she's the one who put that scar on your face. You've told Mirina that he kidnapped you… So… I have the feeling that there's a story we can…" she gestures elegantly, looking pointedly at the two of them, "polish a bit, and make people want to get close to."

Both Rey and Kylo glance at each other.

"How?" Rey says. "Not how do we polish it… How do we spread it around? More than five or ten people at a time."

"Good question. Lots of people will want to know more about you, so… We have interviewers and channels that play news, if you were to _talk to them_ other people would watch those things, and get to know more about you."

Again, they both look at each other. Just sitting around talking about themselves is uncomfortable and somewhat off-putting.

Ellie continues on. "People love a great love story. It draws them in, makes them want to be part of the drama, makes them see you as _people_ , so… We can work with this."

Kylo's rubbing his lips together. He's not sure if the two of them qualify as a 'great romance.' At least, he doesn't remember some of their experiences ever popping up in the stories he saw as a child. His sarcasm comes up to go with, "And do we leave out the part where I blow up her home planet, or she cuts my face in half…"

Ellie's unfazed by that. "That's going to be up to you. I think the real question is: do you want to create a version of the past that's engaging and optimistic, preferably with a sense of great passion and purpose, and then use it, and when you're in public, _be it,_ as a way to encourage people into feeling like joining you is a moral imperative?"

Rey and Kylo glance at each other, and Ellie continues. "Let's take Jakku. Everyone who is paying attention knows that you blew Jakku to pieces. Fewer than ten know why. The official story is that Hux used it as a test of concept for the City Killers, and in that it was out of the way, didn't have too many people on it, and had housed a decent number of Resistance members over the years, made for a good target.

"That is _not_ an unreasonable story. It may even be a good one. It's _absolutely_ a _believable_ one. And as long as where you come from, Rey, never gets out, that story will hold."

Rey and Kylo can both feel the unspoken: _How long do you think it will hold?_

Rey shrugs. "Maybe ten people know I'm from Jakku."

"And are you certain they can keep the secret?"

She winces. "Tasha Spiner?"

"It'll be out in a matter of years. She doesn't talk freely, spreading secrets around willy-nilly, but there will be a situation where it will be to her advantage to pass that on. That's just the nature of the game. The only way to neuter the value of a secret is to spill it. So, you know it will come out, which means now you get to sit down and figure out how best to shape the story to your liking. What provides you with the greatest benefit?"

Neither of them are entirely sure about that.

"How would you shape it?" Rey asks.

"Let me make sure I understand the truth, at least the way you do. Tell me the story…"

They look at each other, and Rey begins, "Shortly before the battle of Crait, we noticed that we could sense/see each other through the Force."

"From light years away. Snoke claimed he was bridging our minds to each other, but neither of us believes that, and the bridge didn't falter when I killed him… so… If he set it up, he set it up better than any Force spell before or since," Kylo adds.

He holds her hand, giving her a little squeeze, letting her have the next bit. "Because the Force has a sense of humor, it thought that linking us to each other when he was somewhat naked would be fun." Ellie smirks a bit at that. "The issue is, though, at that point, I wasn't exactly fond of, or comfortable with, somewhat naked men." She bites her lip, but just says it, banishing some of the power the words hold over her. "I was raped, several times, over the years, when I lived on Jakku. My parents sold me there, proceeded to run off, and then drink themselves to death, and the man who bought me cared for nothing other than the junk I could bring in. He offered no protection, and when I got old enough to be interesting to some of the men, they took advantage."

Ellie blinks and nods.

"I didn't tell him that story. Likely wouldn't have, not for a long time, but, our minds are bridged, so when the Force flashes us to each other, and he's butt naked in the refresher, shaving, and he's getting annoyed because I keep asking him to put clothing on, and he doesn't want me to think he's repulsive…"

"It wasn't quite that. I could live with you not liking the things I'd done. I didn't like a lot of the things I'd done over the years, too. But you were comfortable with me when I was dressed, but not naked, and… I didn't think there was any shot we were going anywhere like where we are now, but… I didn't want my body to be monstrous to you."

Rey's expression indicates she doesn't think that's much of a distinction. "He snapped out something like: 'It's just skin; you've got it, too,'"

He glances to Ellie to explain. "Because I was tired, and annoyed, still drowning in dark, and it was one of the few moments of the day when I got to be something like a human, and that bothered you…"

"And I didn't answer, but the memories came streaking back, and he felt them."

"And immediately put on a shirt."

" _Only_ a shirt."

"You only asked me to put on a shirt! I didn't know how much you could see."

"All of it."

"Well, then you should have asked me to put on some pants or something."

"Once you had a shirt on, there was something I could focus on other than kilometers of white skin."

Ellie is continuing to happily smirk away at this exchange. She's sure if she can get an interviewer with them, the public will eat this up.

Kylo half inclines his head, and then takes over on the story, "She flashed back out, I was alone in my refresher, and being the calm, reasonable person I was a few weeks after the battle of Crait, I got Hux and some engineers together, had them wire battering ram cannons onto bombers, and blew the planet into chunks, shooting every ship that tried to leave down in the process."

Rey hadn't known that part of it. "No one got off?"

He shakes his head. "No one." There still some savage satisfaction in his voice as he says that. Then he looks to Ellie. "So, how do you spin that? I went into a completely inappropriate homicidal rage because a girl I had spoken to maybe half a dozen times was abused a decade before I met her."

Rey's also curious to see Ellie's take on the matter.

Ellie meanwhile studies both of them. She doesn't curse, a lot, but when she does it carries that much extra emphasis. "Well, I'd set it up like this: Do not _fuck_ " she enunciates it clear and sharp, "with Master Ren, or anything he cares about. I'd keep two things in play, no regrets. Everything you have ever done is something you intended to do and it worked out _exactly_ how you wanted it to. Regrets are for your private life, and your memoirs. And two: you are the ultra-protector and you will utterly _destroy_ anything or one that has ever done you or yours wrong.

"There's a substantial portion of the population that is small, terrified, lonely, and _craves_ the idea that somehow, someone will care enough about them to rage for them. We are selling a _fantasy_ version of the two of you, and every year _billions_ of stories get sold about great romances where one of the two of them goes on a stupidly over-protective binge of murder and mayhem to avenge or protect the other one. _As a fantasy,_ people _adore_ the idea of it. As long as you don't then go out and do _more_ of it, using it as a way to build the image of an eternal, undying, passionate, attached love will work just fine.

"And, if we set this up, people who are 'realists' will decide that this is you two being 'romantic' and 'prettying' up the image of the great Kylo-Rey relationship, making it more dramatic, and that, in reality, you were likely just looking for a good spot for a weapons test, and you're probably lying about being from Jakku anyway." Ellie glances to Rey, "Do you know your family? At all?"

Rey shakes her head.

"And you haven't searched yourself in the register?"

"No."

"Do it. Information that exists, that you don't control, is a problem. As soon as it goes wide that you are an orphan, your 'parents,' siblings, cousins, all manner of long-lost family will come out of the ethers. In the case of 'parents' some of them are going to be heartbroken people who had a tiny, brown-haired, brown-eyed girl stolen from them, and they _desperately_ want her to have grown-up strong and pretty, married a prince, and now helps to rule the largest military in the galaxy. That's the _best_ possible outcome for these people, and they will come in _droves_ to try and prove you are theirs."

Rey sighs. She wants that, too. Just the idea of it lights her up. Somewhere, there are people who weren't useless drunks, who loved their little girl, and some idiots took her and sold her on a backwater in the middle of nowhere.

Kylo squeezes her hand, then kisses it, feeling how much she hopes there are some people out there who have been looking for their baby girl for decades now.

Ellie can see it, too, and gently says, "And if the registers turns up nothing, you're going to have to decide what you want to do with the people who are begging the gods, the Force, and the Universe that you are theirs. Because they are going to come. And so are the status seekers, the con artists, the scum of the universe. Some of them will just be happy to talk to the local tattle sheet, and claim whatever they can about you. I'm sure Kylo's aware of the fact that every year for the last decade there have been stories about "I'm Kylo Ren's birth mother…"

Kylo's staring at her blankly.

"No?" Ellie's genuinely shocked by that.

He shakes his head. "No." He swallows. "People have been claiming to be my family for years?"

"Not as much before you became the _Supreme Leader,_ but after, quite a bit."

He blinks at that. "I didn't know that."

"Ah… Well… the Leia Organa's son story is circling, so that's starting to quell the other rumors. Though I'm sure a _lot_ of stories about who your father might be are going to start up soon."

"My mother's husband?" Kylo asks, voice dry.

Ellie offers him a lop-sided smile. "Honey, your mother never publically claimed Kylo Ren as hers. Not that I know of. The only legal child she ever had was Ben Solo. He vanished from the public eye more than twenty years ago. He's been gone for so long, no one knows if you're him or not. On top of that, your father wasn't exactly tied at the hip to your mother. If memory serves, he dropped off the scanners more than a decade ago, and even before that, sightings of him were rare. Honestly, without you saying it, I didn't know they were married."

That makes Kylo blink, because as best he can tell if a thing can be known, Ellie Kinear would have known it.

"Part of it is that you don't exactly look much like either of them. If you _really_ look, and you also _really_ looked at Organa and Solo, you can see a bit of it, more in how you move than in your actual physical features, but… I'm certain stories of the bastard love child of Senator Organa and whomever else in the New Republic with black hair and dark eyes will be flying through the galaxy soon. She had a lot of friends over the years and many close confidants. And, unless you wish to _publicly_ reclaim the name of Ben Organa-Solo, which our Alderaan trip should start to do, they aren't going to stop."

"And is this where you tell me that retaking that name will be complicated, too? Beyond looking good for Alderaan."

"See, you're getting the hang of this," Ellie says with a smirk while Rey pets Kylo. "At the most basic level, Han Solo is, I believe, still wanted in over 200 systems. And I have the feeling that he still owes money to an army of people, who will likely be interested in trying their luck with you."

"And I suppose if I grab them, toss them in my brig, and hold them for bounty hunters, my 'neutral space initiative' will suffer?" Kylo says, voice dry.

"It's likely people will be somewhat less interested in coming to do business with you. Of course, if you have a find them, grab them, hold them and release to the highest bidder policy, that can get you into an entirely different line of work. Which I understand is lucrative as well."

"I have a feeling _The Supremacy_ can offer more value by letting anyone come here to deal in whatever it is they like." If Kylo's right about this, there are more scoundrels than scoundrel catchers out there. And scoundrels need a place to do business.

Ellie sips her tea. "I suppose if you just grab the first few who are stupid enough to try you for settling Han Solo's debts, word will spread fairly quickly that when the last song is done, all debts are settled."

Rey glances to Kylo and thinks: _Or we could actually settle them, assuming we can afford them, and it buys Chewie his freedom._

 _Assuming Chewie says they actually owe those people. If it gets out we're paying off Han Solo's debts,_ everyone _in the galaxy is going to show up claiming he owes them._

Rey smirks. _And about half of them will be telling the truth._

Kylo snorts a quick laugh.

Ellie shakes her head. "Don't do that in public. It's rude to have private conversations in front of another person. So, either keep your thoughts in place until later, or school your faces so others don't know you're mentally chatting."

"We're working on that," Rey says.

"Work faster," Ellie replies. She nibbles a cookie. "That probably brings us to the next big issue. Everyone knows that Kylo is some sort of Force user. Between the fact that you have, apparently, in public," she sounds exasperated at this, "told people you can read minds, to the battle on Qualee Prime, where people watched you stop blaster bolts, to your pulling out chairs with the Force trick, they _know_ you can use the Force.

"They don't know that about _you_ ," she says to Rey. "They do know, or will, about the Maji. Speaking of things an interview or two could help spread… But since what you've said about it doesn't confirm that it require Force skills, or if, like the Church of the Force, it's open to everyone, they are less certain about you. So, this is your opportunity to decide how much of your own skill set you want to let shine."

"And you would suggest?" Rey says.

"Absolutely _do not_ let people know you read minds. Keep that secret to your grave." She looks to Kylo, "I would have told you to do that, too, and if you have the opportunity to hedge that story, do so. Most people don't know that's a Force skill period, so shut up about it, and use it as subtly as you can."

"Hedge it how?" Kylo asks.

"Suggest you can read feelings, or only if you really concentrate, or anything you can think of to make it clear that you cannot eavesdrop on someone's thoughts like you're sitting next to them in a restaurant while they're having a conversation…" It's clear from the look on Ellie's face, she's curious as to what Kylo actually can do in that regard.

"I can feel strong emotions. And I can't _read_ minds or hear thoughts. It's… very much not sitting next to someone in a restaurant."

Rey keeps her face clear and thinks to him _liar._

He also keeps his face straight, and thinks back, _I'm hedging._

Ellie rolls her eyes. "Honey, don't even try it on me. You are _not_ a good enough liar to pull it off, even if you weren't having a little chat with Rey about it." Both of them are looking irked at her. "Okay, homework assignment. Sit in front of a mirror and _watch_ carefully what you do with your faces when you talk to each other. Then watch what you do when you're not having a conversation. Yes, both of you did a good job of not looking like you were having a conversation, but both of your faces went flat, which was too far of a correction in the opposite direction."

That gets more sighing.

"Also, if you know any good liars, and for the record that is absolutely Pat and I, listen, feel, and _watch_ what we do. We can have lessons where both of us will intentionally lie to you, and I know both of you can _feel_ the lie, but I want you to watch how we tell it. People who can catch one of us in a lie are very few and very far between, and likely either have _some_ Force skills, or are professionals in interrogation, politics, trial law, or gambling."

"Mirina Frakes can tell when you lie, can't she?" Kylo asks.

That stops Ellie short. Her expression shifts, and for a second they catch her _this is valuable information_ face. "Interesting question there. Why do you ask?"

"She's mildly Force sensitive. All unconscious, all untrained, but I'm sure people have an easy time chatting with her, and Jon says a good chunk of what she does is giving people what they want, or if what they want is a terrible idea, making them want something good. That's extremely low level Force coercion."

Ellie grins at that. "Oh, she'll be… interested, to hear that."

"Good interested or bad interested?" Kylo asks.

"Well, you could go have a chat with her about that yourself. And… I would suggest that as long as she is here on your ship—"

"You mean the foreseeable future?" Kylo asks. "She and Jon have been around to talk about this."

Ellie nods.

Rey can feel what Ellie isn't saying. "Status isn't the only thing Mirina has on offer, is it?"

"Only if you're not smart enough to attempt to make an ally of her."

"We talked," Kylo says. "She might be warming up to me, because of what I can do for Jon. But she hates me because of what she thinks I did to her husband."

Ellie gives him a non-flustered look. "Change her mind. Or take advantage of the fact that you," she's talking to Rey, "and her have a clean slate. You have enemies, Kylo, nothing can be done about that. You do not, Rey, at least not ones that matter. There will be times when sending Rey in will be the better course. This may be one of them. Still, if you can, get Mirina Frakes on your side. She's got an unparalleled eye for the details, and is better at getting people to open up and talk about things they shouldn't than anyone else."

"Like I said, she's warming up to me because of what I can likely do for Jon, or set him up for. We'd likely get along, other than the fact that she holds me responsible for the death of her husband."

Ellie's utterly un-fazed by that. "You are responsible for the deaths of billions of people, Kylo. You need to be able to figure out how to get people to look past that and work with you anyway."

"I didn't blow up the Hosnian system!"

Ellie sighs at that. "It really doesn't matter. Get this firmly in your head: you will be blamed for any bad thing the First Order, the Empire, the Rebellion, and the Resistance _ever_ did. The fact that you are somehow the literal heir to _both_ side of the war that's been going on for the last seventy years means that there are trillions of people who will hold you personally accountable for _something_ someone did that was entirely outside of your power, and possibly occurred before you were born.

"Learn to use it."

"How?" Kylo sounds exasperated at that.

" _That's_ why we're here. And that's us wrapping back around to our handsome prince and his lovely lady. You are the heir of all the problems in the galaxy, Kylo. More or less. And you're nobody, from nowhere, completely outside the drama, Rey. And one day, somehow, you two found each other, and you rescued him from the dark/light/power/corruption… fill in the blank however you like, and together, the two of you are breaking with the past, shattering it, and starting fresh and new. That's the promise of the Order, a fresh start to anyone who wants it, and you two, personally will be the symbol of that. The idea that love frees us from our bonds, gives us the strength to break away from what's dominated us, and then gives us hope to conceptualize a better life, and the will to go get it. That's the fantasy we're going to write up and sell to the entire galaxy, if you two want to claim it.

"And the best way to sell that fantasy, to pick it up and work it for all it's worth, is the biggest, brightest, most lavish wedding anyone's ever seen.

"Spruce this place up, make it glitter, and both of you, inside of it, sparkling away, glowing and lovey the way you were at the Last Night dinner. That gives you plenty of reason to tell the story, more reason to show where the story leads, and it will cement the idea of this as a glittering palace in space, centered on the most fabulous love story ever, where people will come to work with each other, and reach peace and accord. You'll be the living embodiment of conflict turning to love turning to a flourishing society with a vibrant future. We can build this story, and we can sell it, and if you are willing to put yourselves on display like this, we can cement the power of the Order with a minimum of bloodshed."

Ellie knows that's a lot to take in, so she takes one more sip of her tea, then then says, "And now I want both of you to get out of here, and do something that you, personally, find enjoyable. Don't think about this, don't mull on, don't talk about it. Just go do something fun, with each other. And tomorrow, start thinking and talking. Tonight, have a good dinner, go see a show, walk the promenade, read a fun novel, make love, whatever it is you enjoy, and then tomorrow, have a good think and a chat."

That's the first time either of them has ever been ordered to have a good time. But Ellie's not quite done. "Except for the Alderaan thing. Don't think about that. We're going to do that. It's not up for debate, because that's a really good idea. And I'm thinking, that in the not wildly distant future, Rey and I are going to spend a bit of time touring Naboo, too. We'll think of some official reason to go there that doesn't have anything to do with Padme Amidala, but we absolutely will go.

"As for the rest of it, think about."

Then Ellie grins, and gestures to the door of Kylo's rooms. "Go out there, do something fun, and let them see you doing something fun."


	10. Fun

1/20/2

"So, what's something _fun?_ " Rey asks as they wander across the _Supremacy._

Something fun. Go out. Let people see you. Have _fun._

Well, they eat. There is food on the F-Deck. So, they're off in search of step one of Mission: Have Fun. Namely, they're going to eat, together, in public.

It's one of the handful of times they've been out, Kylo without his do-not-recognize spell, just walking. He's in his casual blacks, and she's in one of her hanyifus. This one is beige with bits of green on the cuffs and hems. The fabric is shinier than anything she'd have picked for herself, but it's also _really_ soft, and obviously Jon thought it looked appropriate, so…

Go out, have fun, look like… Lady Ren, or at least a spiffier version of Rey… or something.

They're holding hands. And people are definitely _looking._

Kylo smirks at her. _I know what I consider fun._

She rolls her eyes a bit. _Yes, well we were told to do something fun,_ in addition _to that._

His smirk widens. Then he says, with his voice, since this is a conversation other people can overhear. "I guess, we could go see a show."

"Do they have shows here?"

"I can't imagine she'd have suggested it if they don't."

"Fair point."

He's looking around them. Shops and restaurants line the halls. In between them are benches, tables, and chairs, throngs of people seeking dinner, and small carts selling drinks and snacks. He doesn't see what he's looking for, but… "I think they have at least one cinema somewhere on the F-Deck."

She glances up at him, curious. "I don't know what a cinema is."

Kylo purses his lips. He hasn't actually seen one, either, though when he and the Knights got to the _Finalizer_ , Kammun sought one out and told him about it. "Kind of like a play, but instead of live in front of you, it's recorded on a holo or sim projection, and you sit back and watch it."

Rey thinks about it as they walk, both of them aware of the eyes on them. Kylo nudges a bit closer to her, draping his arm over her shoulder, not caring if it looks like he's trying to protect her. Maybe sending the signal that there is at least one thing on this ship he adores is worthwhile.

She gives him a little squeeze, her arm wrapping around his waist, and then she pauses for a second, raising her face to his, and he gives her a quick kiss. It might have been a longer one, but they can both feel the wave of shock, and they hear the people around them going silent.

 _It's not_ that _shocking, is it?_ Rey thinks to him.

He half shrugs. They can both feel the people around them responding to it. _I think it's more that it's_ me, _as opposed to this isn't something couples do in public._

She nods at that, looking around, and it's true, they aren't the only people close and touching as they walk. She also notices, as she really _feels_ the people around them, that a lot of them, even the shocked ones, _approve_ of this.

 _Do you think there might be some version of the sort of story Ellie's talking about? At the cinema?_

He doesn't physically shrug. He's not looking at her at all, working on his mental conversation without giving it away face. _If she's right about billions of them being sold a year, I'd imagine there would have to be, but… Again, I'm not even entirely sure if we've got a cinema._

 _Any idea how we'd find out?_

 _I'd imagine that's information C8 can access._

 _So… shall we see a show?_

He smiles at her, and kisses the top of her head. "I'd like that." They take a few more steps, and then Rey says, "Dinner?"

Kylo nods. "Dinner."

* * *

Dinner is easier said than done. As of this point in time, they've had exactly one meal, in public, as Master Ren and Rey of the Maji, and not only did they host that one, but the menu was chosen ahead of time, and it was served to them by a slew of droids.

This is not that.

In the kilometer long market section of the F-deck they're currently in, there are forty-three sit down restaurants or cafes, another sixty-eight stand up places, and close to a hundred food carts.

Just _picking_ something is a daunting task.

A daunting task made somewhat trickier by the fact that every time they try to get close enough to a place to see a menu, one of two things happens: if it's the sort of place people are standing in line, they go sprinting away. After all, it wouldn't do to be the person to make Master and his companion to have to wait in line. Or, if it's a sit down place, everyone goes silent and stares, and both of them can feel the manager/owner/chef whomever is in charge, silently begging them to either come in or run away, depending on how good they think the food is that night.

At the fifth place where the man at the door is more or less begging them to come in as they look at the posted menu and the patrons who are already seated are all watching them, Kylo thinks to Rey, _Being_ seen _is overrated._

She makes herself not smile, makes herself keep reading the menu. _You're right about that. I have a feeling that whatever fun is for us, it doesn't involve being recognized._

 _Amen._

 _Amen?_

 _It's how Wookies end prayers. Means something like, so let it be._

 _Amen, then. So, we going to make the… what is he?_ Rey eyes the man watching them intently from just on the other side of the glass door. He's all but vibrating with desire to see them enter.

 _Owner, I think._

 _Really happy and eat something here?_

The menu looks fine. If it were coming to his room and he could eat it in private, Kylo'd even be enthusiastic about it. Out here with everyone else, he's feeling tepid at best.

"Sure," he opens the door, and a beaming smile spreads across the owners face.

"Master Ren! Mistress… Welcome!" He ushers them to a table toward the front windows, and then pauses, "Do you prefer to be seen or something private?"

It's a fairly small place. Only a dozen tables and a bar at the back. Kylo's not sure what private may be here, but…

"Private, if you have it," Rey says.

And a moment later, the owner is leading them back, behind the bar, to… "Oh," Rey's looking at a tiny space off of the kitchen. There's a table and some sort of shelf with plants on it and not much else. The table isn't set, and Rey's getting the idea that part of the reason the man was so eager for them to come in is that this room is empty.

"We occasionally do private parties, or intimate dinners here," the owner says with a smile. "Please, sit, be comfortable. We'll get it set up in a heartbeat," and then he's out of there, leaving the two of them in a small room with a table and four chairs.

"Okay, this isn't bad," Kylo says, sitting down. Rey nods, looking around. There are paintings on the walls of a place she doesn't know, and unfortunately there are no words on the paintings so she can't figure it out.

Kylo can feel what she's wondering and shakes his head. "I don't know, either. I'm sure he'd be happy to tell us about it if we asked."

Rey joins him, sitting on his lap, letting him stroke her back. She closes her eyes and rests against him for a moment. Then she says, "I bet asking about it is the sort of thing that goes with being _human_ and _approachable_."

He kisses the top of her head. "Ellie would probably approve."

"Probably." She sits up so she can look at the pictures easily. "You know what the annoying bit it?"

He knows, but he asks anyway. Sometimes _talking_ matters. "What?"

"I would have asked without thinking, but now I can't not think about it, so I've got to decide if this is something I'm supposed to do, instead of just doing it."

He holds her close, and kisses her again. "Welcome to my life."

"I didn't get the sense that was part of it you enjoyed."

"Not particularly." He sighs a little. "According to Luke, this is part of being aware of other people. Knowing that they have wants and needs and desires all their own. Not knowing immediately what you're supposed to do is part of taking the people around you into consideration. He thought it was a good thing. Something about only cocksure fools think they're doing the right thing all the time."

"He was thinking about your dad when he said that, wasn't he?"

"Mom actually, and he was really trying not to." Kylo says with a bit of a smile. It wasn't funny at the time, but now… He's about to expound on that a bit more, when two people rush into the room, one with a bundle of… stuff… and the other with a bottle of something, and a plate with some sort of food on it.

They both stop the second they get into the room, like they didn't believe their boss when he said the Master and his lady were in the private room. They do now.

Then the one with the bundle gets to work, fast. She says something, also fast and under her breath. Neither of them can really hear, but they get the idea. Rey stands up, and Kylo pushes back from the table.

She lays out a cloth, and cutlery, and glasses, and small plates, and… "I haven't seen one of them in years," Kylo says. He knows Rey's never seen one. It's an actual wax candle that she lights, setting a small flame dancing on the table for them.

She nods, fast, and then darts away from them, blushing.

The other lady has the plate with the food on it, and places it on the table. "Appetizer salad. This is a collection of nibbles from the chef to whet the palate while you decide what you want." Then she uncorks the bottle of… it's got to be wine by the scent, and pours each of them a glass, unasked. "Valkierian Garnet Hyssop, BB… Uh…" It's clear she's fumbling with translating the date into Order standard.

Kylo waves that away. "Neither of us drink enough wine to be able to tell one planet from another, let alone harvest year."

Rey's looking at the deep red, almost black liquid in her glass. "I take it this is special?"

That puts the server at ease. "Yes, Mistress. Myrkle's," that has to be the name of the boss, "family ran that vineyard for more than three hundred years. This is one of the few surviving bottles."

"What happened to the vineyard?" Rey asks.

Kylo has a pretty good idea. The date on the bottle is from the Old Republic Era.

"It was nationalized by the Empire, my lady. Turned to… food production. They didn't see any reason to let good land 'go to waste' on 'fripperies' when grain prices were too high."

"Oh," Rey says. She turns to the pictures on the walls around them, and some of them are of vines on sloping hills. "Is that Valkieria?"

"It is."

"And the food?" Kylo asks.

"As much as can be had here." She jerks a little, "Oh," and scurries out, and is back a moment later with the menus. "I'm so sorry."

"Don't worry about it," Rey says.

Kylo doesn't look at the menus. "Have Myrkle make us whatever it is he enjoys eating. Whatever means home to him." He touches the bottle of wine. "Something that goes with this."

The waitress smiles at them. "He's going to like that. Can I get you anything else?"

Rey shakes her head, and Kylo says, "Not right now."

"Okay, I'll be back in a bit to check on you," and then she leaves.

The food on the plate is not what Rey thinks of as a salad. There doesn't appear to be any fresh vegetables to start with. Though there are cured meats, some sort of cheeses, dried berries, a paste of some sort, small bits of bread, and pickles.

Rey's looking at the wine, nervously. "Do you think we'll insult him horribly if we don't finish the bottle?"

Kylo hadn't thought of that. "I hope not." He picks up his glass and takes a sniff. "Smells good."

Rey's skeptical of that. Every wine she's smelled has made her think of rotting grapes.

"No, really, try it," he says as he takes a taste. "Tastes pretty good, too."

A tentative sniff tells her that this doesn't smell like rotting grapes. Doesn't smell like alcohol, either. "It smells… red."

That's as good a word as he's going to come up for it, so why not. "Smells like it's color. Deep, brilliant garnet."

"Black with a glowing heart," she touches his hand, and wonders idly if this is intentional or not. Then she tries a sip. It's not unpleasant. It doesn't taste like the few swallows of wine she's had before. It actually doesn't taste like much of anything. It's more a _feel_ in her mouth, round, supple, almost dry yet somehow wet, and again a glowing red dulled through a veil of black.

Kylo nods, feeling her taste it, and then he picks up one of the little pieces of bread, and puts a bit of cheese and some of the dried fruits on it. "I've seen my mother do this. I think. It was a long time ago."

"So, little pre-dinner sandwiches?"

"I think so. Just one piece of bread, though."

Rey lays a thin slice of some sort of meat on one of the little, hard, dried breads, and then takes a nibble. It's another bite of food she more feels than tastes. Salty and rich, that's the first hit, then a sort of soft, supple fattiness as the meat… melts… but it's meat so it can't really melt, but it feels that way, on her tongue.

It's good with the wine.

Better with a bit of cheese and one of the dried berries on top.

Rey looks at the bottle. She can read the date on it, but doesn't know Old Republic to Imperial to New Republic to Order. "How old do you think it is?"

Kylo just shrugs. He tries a piece of hard cheese with some of the honey. That's good, too. He gives her the other bite of it, and Rey nods.

As she's chewing, he says, "If it was vinted by Jedi monks, and they put their old dates on it, I'd have a shot, but… I don't remember what the Old Republic calendar was at when they turned to Imperial Era 1."

She swallows. "At least fifty years old."

"At least fifty years old." Kylo glances around at the images on the walls. Rolling hills, vineyards, fat and happy animals lazing about in the sunshine, nibbling the grapes. Maybe they're the source of the meat and cheese. "Luke talked, a little, about the Empire nationalizing farms. Once, he mentioned that if Artoo hadn't shown up, and kicked off his quest for Leia, and then that kicked off the Rebellion finally winning, he likely would have still been on Tatooine, waiting for the Empire to show up."

"Why were they doing it?"

"Supposedly too many people, and not enough food. Part of what the Rebellion was rebelling against was starvation conditions on a lot of worlds. Mom would have told you that the way the Empire was nationalizing the farms made those starvation conditions worse. I'd be willing to bet that Pat would tell you that those people were already starving, and getting the farms up and producing took time, and the Rebellion just capitalized on an inevitable situation."

And both of them are willing to bet that the truth was likely somewhere in between. Getting farms up and producing likely does take time, and a starving population is a population that's not causing too much trouble.

They feel, more than hear, a presence behind them. It's Myrkle, with a basket in hand, and some very good smelling bread in the basket.

"I'm sorry to intrude."

"You're not intruding," Rey says. "I was wondering how old the wine is."

Myrkle smiles a little at the question. "This bottle. Two hundred and fifty years old." He places the bread on the table.

"And the pictures on the walls? Is this where the wine comes from?" Rey asks.

"As best my grandmother could remember. These are copies of the paintings she made of their home…"

As Rey's asking Myrkle about Valkieria, Kylo's thinking, mostly about his mother, who always seemed to do this effortlessly, and what, in this position, she would chose to do. What would be warm, and friendly, and personable, and…

"…after they lost the farm, they went to Coruscant, and started up a restaurant. That was where my father grew up."

"How did you get here?" Rey asks.

There are six chairs at the table, and they are, obviously, only taking up two of them. Kylo pulls one of them out. "Join us? We're not going to drink the whole bottle ourselves, so… unless you're personally cooking the food, share your gift with us?"

He can feel Rey smiling at him for that.

Myrkle looks stunned, and almost alarmed, a little nervous at messing this up, but… He does sit, for a moment, then he's up a heartbeat later, getting a glass, and pouring some for himself. "This was from the heart of the vineyard. Wines that were bottled and stored for celebrations."

"And you'd give it to us?" Rey asks.

He takes a long swallow, eyes closed, feeling it on his tongue, and then smiles. "Well, my lady, how often do I have the Master and his…?" He lets that dangle before saying, "Will you forgive the question… none of us know exactly what you are to each other… Just that you are."

"Wife," Kylo says. "Kylo and Rey."

Myrkle's beaming at that. "How often do I have the Master and his bride, in my restaurant, sharing a glass with me? If this is not a celebration, what is?"

Kylo smiles genuinely at that. "Indeed. So, tell us about," he gestures at the food in front of them. "How are you supposed to eat it? We made little sandwiches, but…"

And Myrkle, very pleased to be sharing some of his favorite things with two people who are both insanely powerful, stupidly in love, and apparently genuinely interested in his food, has a very good time doing so.

* * *

Two hours later, they're beyond well fed, fairly tipsy, in possession of more information about Valkieria than they ever expected to have, along with plans to visit at some point, and directions to a cinema, which, according to Myrkle absolutely should have at least three romances playing tonight.

(Apparently, there's some sort of service on the datapads, that not only has a map of F-Deck, showing where everyone lives, all the businesses, and what they sell; there are also listings of every show playing at the cinemas, what those shows are, and when.)

So, having borrowed Myrkle's datapad for a bit (He's very nice about not being completely stunned to see the Master of the Order didn't know that the _Supremacy_ directory was a thing.) they've located a promising looking romantic comedy, and head off, in a somewhat more giggly and looser than normal sort of way.

(Myrkle will later report, that even though he only had two glasses of wine, that just being near the two of them made him feel tipsy. Apparently, the Master or possibly his wife, maybe both, can, if they're in their cups… cup, Kylo had two glasses, and Rey one… project mild inebriation.)

* * *

Unlike dinner, they decide to attend the cinema in stealth style. They just want to watch the thing, not attract attention, so a few steps away from Myrkle's they just vanish into the crowd, and become two random members of it.

Which works better because they don't have to Force wrestle the attendant at the cinema into taking payment from them. (Which they absolutely had to do with Myrkle.)

And then… It's a big dark room with a lot of seats. Kylo decides that he's tall enough he's not doing any favors for anyone who might sit behind him, plus he's generally not comfortable allowing people to sit behind him. Granted, he'll know if they try something before they try it, but it still makes him itchy in a way he doesn't generally like. So they go to the seats in the far back of the room, and wait.

Eventually, more people shuffle in, sit down, talk quietly.

Eventually, the lights turn off, everyone shuts up, and the movie begins.

* * *

It's a romance all right. Probably. They've been in it for about ten minutes and… okay, other than the fact that everyone in this thing is stupidly attractive, not much is happening. Romances are supposed to have plots, right?

 _Bored?_ He thinks to Rey.

She's not exactly fidgeting, but it's clear this isn't doing it for her. _I'm mentally going over tomorrow's lessons with the kids. Do you think people really enjoy this?_

Kylo stops focusing on the movie and starts focusing on the people around them. Rey does likewise, answering her own question.

 _Apparently, yes._ He thinks to her. There is a general sense of anticipation among the other cinema-goers, but what, exactly they're looking forward to isn't abundantly clear.

 _Apparently. What are they getting out of this that we… oh…_ Rey's eyebrows have risen. The characters on the screen are getting significantly more interesting by the second.

Kylo's have, too. _Ah… Well… Yes… That's… Uh…_ He's _not_ blushing. Rey's leaning forward a bit, her interest in the movie picking up rapidly.

The very pretty people on the screen have gone from verbally sniping at each other to kissing, and petting, and more kissing, and… Okay…

Both of them are rapidly coming to a conclusion as to why people might want to watch something like this.

 _People watch this in public…_ Rey's thinking.

 _Not that I knew of, but…_ Well, they're very pretty, and the kissing is intense, and the lady isn't wearing a whole lot of clothing. Everything Kylo'd prefer an uninterrupted view of is currently covered, but the man is moving his hand toward her breast, and about to get her shirt off, and… the lady's leg is crooked over the man's hip, so…

 _This could be promising,_ Kylo thinks to Rey. He'll admit, that when they looked for a _romance_ this wasn't what he thought they were going to get, but he's not averse to watching attractive people get naked and fuck. (He is a little surprised to see this is a thing people do in large anonymous groups, though.)

 _Fuck!_ Rey thinks it to him, frustration pounding off of her.

Kylo's not thrilled with this twist in the plot, either.

The… annoying comic relief just walked in, and is standing around, supposedly oblivious to what's going on, and the pretty people are now pretending nothing was up, badly. The Handsome Man has the Pretty Lady's lipstick on his face. And then, they're back to snarking at each other.

 _Apparently not,_ Kylo thinks back.

Comic Relief makes a joke, but neither he nor Rey get it. Everyone around them is sniggering in a sort of dirty amusement, so it's got to be a sex joke, but…

 _I take it you don't know what a dildo is,_ Rey thinks to Kylo.

 _Other than something that appears to make people laugh, and feel vaguely naughty about it, no. I suppose if we focused in, we could find out._

Rey continues to feel the general mood of the people around them. _I'm not sure I want to get that close._

 _Me, too. I'll ask Jon if I remember._

 _Good._

The snarking is kind of boring, and Comic Relief, who genuinely is funny, has wandered off, taking the guy with him, and… Well, Kylo was at least vaguely interested when the woman was on screen, but Handsome Man and the Comic Relief snarking with each other is doing exactly nothing for him, so… He starts to pay attention to the other people in the audience.

 _They like it._ He thinks to Rey.

She nodding along… _I liked the kissing. This is dull…_ The tenor of the snarking is shifting and now Comic Relief and the Handsome Man are _really_ looking at each other and… _Or maybe not. I might be starting to like this,_ Rey thinks to Kylo. She doesn't mind pretty boys kissing each other, at all.

He rolls his eyes. _If there's a sequel, maybe you and Jon can enjoy it together._

 _You're just annoyed the lady isn't on the screen right now._

 _Well, yes. Neither of the men are even remotely interesting to me._

Rey spends a moment really watching the Handsome Man and Comic Relief. _I like them._

 _I know, I can feel it._

 _Well, ride it off of me. You'll probably enjoy this more._

He half-inclines his head, and then slouches down a bit, resting his head on her shoulder. He lets his mind settle onto hers, and… it's an odd sensation, because as himself, pretty boys snogging away (and for _them_ shirts go flying. There are four hairy boobs on screen now, and Kylo wanted to see exactly none of them… more eye rolling on that) just doesn't do anything, but he can also feel Rey _vividly_ enjoying it, so…

That's something. It's more than a bit surreal, because his personal body isn't exactly equipped with the bits of hers where she's very concretely enjoying this, and normally, when he's riding the sensations off of her sexual experience, his own bits are very involved, too. If she's hot and wet and ultra-sensitive, he can feel it through her body and generally _on_ or at least _with_ his. But the part of his body he usually experiences sexual arousal and interest through is currently located in his own trousers, and hasn't exactly gotten the idea that anything is going on, yet. Though if this keeps up, and if he keeps watching it through Rey's experience of it, it likely will.

He tries to feel what Rey likes about the guys, but… He knows it's real, he can feel her enjoying it, and if he wants to, he can ride her pleasure in it, but he can't empathize with it.

Then the girl shows up, and apparently she's not a fan of the pretty boys kissing, either, because she gets upset at them.

Handsome Man appears to be confused by this, because though he's certainly pretty, he's also dumber than a bantha, and…

More talking.

Comic Relief and Pretty Lady storm off in a huff, another dildo joke that gets a _lot_ of laughing, and Handsome Man looks annoyed.

Rey thinks to him. _You think this is going to have the solution I'd expect?_

 _I'm honestly not sure._

Comic Relief and Pretty Lady head off, together, and get talking, and a _plan_ is born.

 _I'll admit that's not what I was expecting._ Rey thinks to Kylo a few moments later when bitching about Handsome Man turns into a plan to get caught 'making out' ( _Have you heard that term before?_ Rey thinks. _Not since I was fifteen.)_ with each other, to show him how it feels.

 _Is this supposed to be funny?_ Rey thinks.

 _Who cares, she's taking her shirt off, finally!_

Rey snuggles into Kylo, thinking, _She has really nice breasts._ They're high and round, and a pretty caramel brown color with mahogany nipples, and Comic Relief is squeezing one of them.

Kylo's caught, stuck between appreciating Pretty Lady's now topless state, and the fact that he can feel Rey enjoying it, too. Just like the pretty boys. Well… no… not _just_ like it. It's a bit less intense, and a little more longing than when she's watching the boys, maybe a bit of a sense that she'd also like some very high, round boobs, but… It's very much not how he's responding to it.

 _She does._ Those are lovely, and there are a whole lot of things he wouldn't mind getting the chance to do with them. He can feel Rey's interest in that, too. What he might want to do, and how it might feel to watch or play along with something like that.

A really vivid image of the two of them with the girl between them bursts into Kylo's mind, and he's got no idea of if it's his or Rey's. Kylo's not sure what to do with that. Then he nuzzles at Rey's shoulder and cups her breast. _I like yours better._

 _I know._

 _I_ really _like what's attached to them better._

She kisses him, sweetly, before whispering in his ear, "I _know._ "

He smirks at her, and then nudges her a bit, so she settles into his lap. _Okay, this is improving things._

She wriggles pleasantly against him. _Yes, it is._

* * *

As Pretty Lady and Comic Relief planned, Handsome Man walked in on them before they could do much beyond get her shirt off, which was… Expected but somewhat disappointing.

What's not disappointing is Rey in Kylo's lap.

This is warm and nice, and she's rocking against him in a very pleasant and distracting sort of way. (Which he appreciates because apparently getting walked in on has resulted in _everyone_ getting completely dressed and more talking, which is not, in either Rey or Kylo's opinion, improving the film.)

He's playing with the hem of her skirt, thinking… It is a dark room… And… well, it's not like anyone is going to look at them… And it would be… _fun._

Rey wriggles a bit against him. _You hoping to put Jon's fun with blind corners to the test?_

Kylo's honestly not sure. Part of him is really enjoying the idea. _Really enjoying the idea._ And Rey is deliberately rubbing up against that part with her exceptionally sweet little ass, and he's very fond of that sensation, along with the other sensations she's not exactly promising, but is certainly suggesting could be coming his way.

Part of him is very aware of the fact that they're in a theater with a whole lot of people, and… well, he's just not _that_ drunk. Two glasses of wine is actually really nice. He's feeling pretty relaxed and calm and just… good. But not… reckless.

He nibbles her ear a little, and thinks, _Maybe?_ He thinks about the movie a bit. _Wanna make out?_

Rey giggles out loud at that. Which, fortunately isn't completely out of line because the actors are talking again, and comic relief said something vaguely funny, so…

 _And how do we do that?_ Rey thinks to Kylo.

He glances to the left and right. They're the only people in the back row. The arm rest thingies between the seats can be pushed up, so he pushes the ones on the seats next to them up, and shifts a bit so Rey's sitting across his lap, instead of in it.

Then he gently pulls her lips to his. _I understand it involves kissing and groping._

She traces her lips over his, following with her tongue, just lightly stroking it along his bottom lip. _Uh huh. And how do you understand that?_

He catches her tongue with his lips, sucking it gently. _It's possible I may have overheard a story or two back when I was young._

Her hand traces down his chest, and is about to settle in his lap when he grabs it, and redirects it to his chest.

She breaks the kiss and raises an eyebrow at him. _No groping there?_

He grins at her, traces his hand from her toes to mid-thigh, and then lifts off, skittering to her waist, and up her torso, settling on her bosom, before tracing up her shoulder to the back of her neck. _Groping here. Anywhere else is out of bounds._

She takes his hand in hers, and begins to lightly stroke against his wrist. _This game has weird rules._

 _I don't disagree._ He takes her cheek in his hand, and begins to lightly trace her lips with his tongue. _But maybe it'll be fun._

 _And, tonight, we're all about_ fun, _right?_

His fingers slip from her cheek to the nape of her neck, and he draws her closer as he deepens the kiss. _All about fun._

* * *

Making out is _different._

It's not that they don't cuddle or kiss or pet or… Anything they're doing right now. All of it's familiar. (Though Kylo's mildly surprised to see how sensitive his nipples actually are. Rey generally doesn't play with them _this_ much, and… he's actually rather liking that. Granted, it could also be that he's got her to the point where she's full body quivering each time he draws the pad of his fingers over one of hers, and she could be projecting that onto him. Either way, he's enjoying it.) It's just _different._

If they were home, in their bed, or the pool, or a hotel room… or anywhere private, they'd be _done_ by now.

Wet, tired, blissful and sated.

And right now they are most decidedly _not._

He's starting to come to the conclusion that the other young Jedi he heard talking about this were lying about the rules, or were punishing themselves more effectively than he ever did with his almost complete abstinence and occasional wanking.

This is _torture._ He can feel his pulse in his shaft. He can feel Rey's pulse in her lips and under his fingertips. The fingertips lightly, so, so lightly slipping over her nipple, making her writhe against him, her body across his lap _almost_ giving him just a bit of pressure and friction where he needs it, but not _quite_ there.

* * *

In his later years with Luke, when he was past the erection-on-legs stage of life, after he'd _learned control,_ Kylo didn't exactly have a sex-life. He had… a sort of anti-sex life.

As Luke had said, trying to be calm, and only slightly blushing, that, 'Once mastery of your sexual desires has been obtained, your body will regulate itself and take care of any needs it might have."

It was clear Ben, who was twelve when Luke said that to him, and had not yet woken up sticky and confused from any "intense" dreams, had no idea what Luke was talking about.

So, again attempting to be calm and not exactly meeting Ben's eyes, Luke explained about nocturnal emissions, and how the Force, in It's wisdom, had designed their bodies to meet their needs if they'd just let them, and that waiting would often _feel_ difficult, but that the Force would reward them for mastering themselves, and the experience was generally rather pleasurable and worth looking forward to.

Years later, Ben hit the point where he could, just by the feel of his body, know when said _reward_ was coming.

Right now, with Rey in his lap, _not_ touching his shaft, which is so hard, it's almost vibrating with need, and thrumming with each heartbeat, he feels like he's getting ready to sleep on one of those nights. He's letting her feel the sensation of it, sharing the memories.

If it was warm enough, he'd strip off his sleep trousers, and pull his night shirt up so it wouldn't brush his shaft. Just the rustle of his clothing and breath against his shaft was… _almost_ enough. It couldn't… quite… do it, so it was mostly just torturous frustration, but… _almost._

The brush of her hip, _almost_ where he needs it. The thrum of electric pleasure of his fingers on her nipples, or hers on his, it's _just, almost_ there.

As a younger man, he'd lay on his hands, so he wouldn't be tempted to cheat. He'd wait, not patiently, because he was never good at patient, but he'd wait, and fall asleep, and have _very_ intense dreams. They weren't even wildly explicit, because at that point he didn't exactly have enough information for his imagination to come up with explicit dreams, but the sensations were _intense._

He'd wake up soaked, and each time, he'd be proud of, finally, having done something _right._

After all, good Jedi submitted themselves to the Force, and let It take care of them.

Rey licks his neck, sucking a gently, pulling the blood to the surface, and even more pleasure through his skin.

 _How do you feel about submitting to me?_

His whole body quivers with the answer. _Yes!_

* * *

Rey's kissing his ear, hand stroking over his stomach, fiddling with the button on his pants. She's not opening them, yet. She is teasing him, because each brush of her fingers over the button on the fly sends just, barely, a hint of friction to his shaft. She's winding through his memories of those nights, laying there, quivering, just the feel of the air, and his breath, the occasional brush of his pubic hair against the base of his shaft if he shifted a bit, and how days, weeks sometimes of denial make _everything_ so vibrant. She threads through his memory of the dreams, mostly the feel of them, playing with the sensation of being _so_ ready and needy and _hard._

She sucks on his earlobe, fingertip gliding over the metal of his trouser button, and then thinks at him, _No more waiting._ Then she slips her hand down, cupping him through his trousers, and Kylo groans a whole lot louder than he'd intended to, full body shuddering at the feel of her hand, warm and firm, cradling him.

He feels her smile against his ear. _Maybe you can wait longer, but I can't wait another fucking second to get you inside of me._

He turns his face to hers, cupping his hand against the back of her head, and kisses her, deeply. _Yes!_

His fingers slip under her skirt, and his lips ghost over her neck. He traces the tips of his fingers over the seam of her leggings. Light, delicate touches, enough to make her squirm, pressing against him, looking for more friction.

 _Kylo, don't tease. An hour was_ more _than enough._

He pulls her lips to his. They're plump, hot, swollen from so many kisses. _I've waited weeks, eighteen days once, an hour is nothing._

She scoots, so she's facing him, pelvis flush to his, and begins to rock gently, _Kylo!_

His hands find her hips, and he encourages her motion. It's just… _so good._ It'd be better if they weren't wearing leggings and trousers, but…

As soon as he's thought it she's caught it, and thinking at him, _How…_ his shaft is keeping just enough pressure on her pearl… _good…_ it's hard to stay focused on what she's trying to keep in mind… _is the do not look spell?_

He can feel what she wants to do next. Stand up, pull him out of his trousers, and settle back onto him, and right now… He's sober now, stone cold sober, but he's so wound up he wants to scream, so…

Fuck it, He's the Master of this ship and if they're a whirlwind romance, let them whirl.

 _Good enough._

She's up, pulling off her leggings, and he's undoing his belt and fly, fishing his shaft out of his trouser and hissing in relief at the feel of _anything_ touching him. He can feel her magic, redoubling the do-not-look. Everyone around them, though the closest ones are a few rows ahead of them, are all staring straight at the screen.

Once he's out, she sinks onto him, and doesn't groan, but they both want to. It's do-not-look, not do-not-hear.

His lips are pressed to her neck, just below her ear, so she can hear and feel his breath, and the _oooo fuck_ that purrs from her mind to his shivers through him.

 _Exactly._

* * *

It's just so _wrong._

This isn't out in a secluded alleyway. They're in the back of a theater, with at least fifty other people around them, and…

They won't look.

But they could.

And again, it's _Do not look,_ not _do not hear_ and even with the sound of the movie, which is fairly loud, they aren't silent, and that wet, slick, slide squish… She's _so wet_. They played with each other for so long, and she's just _soaked_ , and he's been leaking, adding to the wet, and they're just _gliding_ , wet and supple and swollen and so sensitive, and… everyone around them… hidden but not… and they could get caught, and she's easing back up his shaft again, and there's this soft, wet little kiss sound as she pulls all the way off of him, and his head hits the back of the seat with a dull thud, and he hopes no one noticed that, and… _fuck_ … she's just _rubbing_ against his tip, and…

And _fuck_ he suddenly knows _exactly_ why Jon likes this because it's just so _fucking wrong._

Rey's shifts her angle, sliding all the way down him, and rocking on him slow and deep, mostly to keep the sound down, or to kill him slowly, either, possibly both.

She's creeping up and up and up then grinding her pearl on the tip of him before slowly, so fucking slowly sinking _all the way_ onto him, and Kylo's gripping the armrests so hard he's in danger of cracking them, except, that would make too much noise.

His head is against the back of the seat, and his eyes are closed, shutting down one line of information to make it easier to focus on another, her body, and that slow, easy glide. Her wet and slick and snug and…

And it's a terrible thought. So wrong. Luke's head would probably explode just at the idea, and every other Jedi to ever Jedi are all rolling in their collective graves, but… He doesn't fucking care.

He shifts the magic of the choke hold. He's certainly done that before, and with great success. That's just focusing his hand, and what he'd do with it, to a place where his hand isn't. His hands are on the armrests, but his middle finger starts a slow, steady circle.

Rey gasps, loud. Fortunately, the pretty lady, comic relief, and pretty boy are fucking, too, so they likely thought it was one of them.

Kylo smirks, for a second, and then… Holy fuck, she's doing it back to him. Her Force is gently, easily tugging on his stones, and… They're still in his trousers, but…

He doesn't groan, out loud. He does fill her head with a loud, enthusiastic _FUCK!_

He can feel her grinning, as she adds a delicious little roll to go with the way her hips are still _slowly_ easing up and down him.

 _You're killing me!_

She's high up, just the top few centimeters cradled inside of her, and she gives him a gentle squeeze. _That's the point._

He can't stay still. His hips rock up to meet her, trying to get more friction, faster. His jaw clenches as he feels the slide of her body on his, and the wet embrace as he slips deeper into her. _Fuck, Rey! FUCK!_

The chair under them gives a loud creak, and they both go completely still. There's no way that was a scene in the movie, so… Some people look around. They can both feel a few of them sniggering, the idea that some people are really enjoying this movie doesn't seem to be too shocking to them.

Kylo's hands land on Rey's waist, pulling her completely down on his lap, burying himself in her wet, hot, rich, suppleness. Another groan makes it out of his lips as she squeezes around him, then light, soft flutters, and she's starting to rise again, and if she keeps this up, she's going to toss him over the edge.

 _Stay down_ he thinks to her, pinning her hips to his. He scoots forward and leans back a little, getting a deeper angle. Getting as far into her as his body and this position can go. Then he starts to quietly rock his hips, trying to bump that spot inside of her that really likes a bit of bumping now and again.

That gets a soft groan out of her. He's got the angle dead right. He slips his fingers between her lips. _Stay quiet._

She sucks his fingers, and he groans in his head, rocking his hips just a little more. Just enough to get a little more pressure on that spot. Not so much as to make the chair creak again. This gentle up down, he can do this all day. It's not enough, not if he's not riding her good time, to get him over the line.

His other hand finds her pearl, circling fast and hard. But he can make it enough for her. _Here, now. I'm going to fuck you through your spurt, then I'm taking us home where I can really move and fuck you through mine._

He feels her mental whimper, and her lips pursing on his fingers, and her delta clenching against his shaft.

She's breathing harder as his fingers fly, and the sound is soft, but not silent. Her breath. The wet slickery roll of his fingers on her pearl.

His mouth is on her shoulder, biting gently, helping to keep himself from following over her edge.

She feels so good on him, wet and plush and snug. Her head is back, throat long and white in the dim cinema lights , and he can feel the soft vibration of an almost moan cresting in her throat.

 _Quiet, love, quiet._

Another quivering almost moan as his fingers move faster and Rey grinds on his lap.

 _That's it. Take your pleasure on me, love. Let me feel you clench._

She's so close. Her pearl is slick and stiff, jutting out under his fingers. Her body is tight, thighs, back, butt, delta, all quivering just on the right side of her release.

 _Going to make you pulse, take you home, ass high in the air, and_ move! _Side in hard and deep, hitting all those places you like, fast, so fucking fast, feel you ripple on me as I bury myself in you over and over, keep you twitching while I hit my spurt._

 _KYLO!_ That does it, she's pulsing against him, and he's ported, pulling them through space into their bedroom.

He doesn't want to pull out, but he's got to get them in a better position. "Elbows and knees!" He's skinning off his trousers, _fast._

And she's on them, and he's on the bed, flipping her skirt over her back, pulling her onto him, deep, deep, deep inside, thrusting hard and fast, and she's still rippling against him, he call feel it, her spurt is easing off, but she's riding his which is building fast.

"FUCK!" he shouts it, because _now_ they can be loud. His body is slamming into hers, wet slapping sounds filling their room, and Rey's moaning, deep, vibrant sounds of pleasure, and he's so fucking close, and so deep, and her body's hot and soft and wet and gliding over his.

"FUCK, FUCK, FUCK," he's chanting it with each slap of his hips against her ass, and there, right, fucking there, it's growing, a hot, tight tingle of need and want, and he's clenching against her, grinding as the pulse shatters and everything goes just a hair tighter before every muscle in his body releases and his spurt spurts, washing through both of them in a glorious series of tingling waves.

He's draped over her, panting, head against her back.

He feels her giggle.

 _Funny?_ he thinks as he feels her back rising and falling against his chest, and both of their hearts starting to slow.

 _Just thinking. If we let them turn us into… The handsome prince and his lady… And Ellie's right, and they make stories and movies and the rest of this… Do you think one day there'll be some other couple sitting in a cinema doing this to a version of us?_

Kylo buries his face in her hair and groans. He's not sure if that idea embarrasses him horribly, or is halfway to getting him hard again. "That's so wrong." He loops an arm around her waist and flops both of them onto their sides. He doesn't want to pull out, yet, but he's sure this isn't terrifically comfortable for her, and really, he doesn't want to support his own weight anymore, either.

She wriggles against him. "Not all of you seems to think so."

"I'm sure I've said it before, or at least thought it, that part is stupid."

She laughs at that, too. "That part likes me."

He snerks. "Well, I never said it had bad taste."

"Nice save, Ren."

He gives her a little bit of a squeeze and kisses the back of her neck. "So, did we have fun?"

She offers up a soft half-laugh at that. "Yeah, I think we did."


	11. The Handsome Prince

1/21/2

Waking up in Lirium, after their "fun" night, Kylo and Rey are still facing the issue they were trying to avoid with said "fun" night.

It's not exactly the proverbial bantha in the room, but it's still there, threatening to poke through the quiet morning of making breakfast and getting ready for the day.

Kylo decides to nudge it from the side. "What's on for your day?"

She smiles at him, sitting down on the bench next to him, and forking over half of the scrambled eggs onto his plate. "As Jon would say, 'Force stuff.' Got a few hours cleared to spend with the teens to work on applied focus."

He nods at that. "Bending them into weird positions and then making them think hard about things?"

"I tend to do the bending into weird positions for everyone all together. This is more sitting comfortably, and then trying to really feel it and settle into it. Magiit wants to join in, too, and… I don't know what she'll get out of it, but I don't see why she can't come, so… It'll be interesting."

Kylo shrugs a bit, and eats a bite of the eggs before saying, "I can't image it'd hurt her. Just seems sort of boring and frustrating if you can't really touch the Force."

Rey nods a bit at that. "I'd think so, but… We're not low on room. It's not like there's any reason she can't sit in."

"Is she… okay, with just being there?"

"So far. I don't get the sense that she's jealous or frustrated… I think… I don't know exactly what she gets out of it, but I think she wants to get closer to her friends, try to understand them and what they're doing better."

"Okay."

She eats a bite of her eggs, and reaches for the salt. "How about you?"

"Still clearing out my backlog of everything I didn't do while gearing up for the First Year party. Meetings with Kinear and Schiff… Probably a half dozen other things that C8's keeping track of and I'm not."

Rey nods at that. "New Alderaan?"

"Maybe? Supposedly my legal team is getting things into place, but they've never gotten a first draft of a contract back to me in less than a month. Sometimes two." He adds a little jam to his porridge, and notices it's the last of it. "Need to get more of this."

She nods. "Finn and Chewie are due home with fresh fruit and veg soon. Once they're back, it's cooking time."

He nods at that, and then takes a bite of his breakfast. Finally he says, "Do you… want to do that?"

That also, touches, sideways, what they're not exactly talking about.

"Take the treaty to New Alderaan…"

"Yeah…"

She bites her lip, thinking. "That'd probably involve getting dressed up and looking regal and…"

"Being Lady Ren…"

She nods, still chewing on her lip.

Kylo strokes her hand. "You know, my mom was their actual princess."

"Until they booted her out."

"True… But… I mean… They didn't boot her out for her manners. They booted her out because someone else wanted her job."

"But she was good at the manners stuff, right?"

Kylo shrugs a bit. "I imagine she must have been, but… Poe's got stories of her cracking dirty jokes, and when Luke and Dad got her out of that cell, the first thing she did was grab a gun and start shooting. She wasn't exactly _polite_ to them. I think the first thing she ever said to Luke, and bear in mind she was still in an Imperial prison when she did this, was, 'Aren't you a little short for a Stormtrooper?'"

Rey smiles a bit at that.

Kylo nods and continues on, "So… It's not like they aren't used to someone who's willing to speak their mind, or shoot first and ask question never, when they feel like it."

"But they're also used to someone who knows which fork to use, and how to… I don't know… what's a big deal on New Alderaan?"

He half smiles, a little. "Love, I'm the last person you want to ask about that. I know what I was raised with, but it's not like she ever pointed it out. This is Alderaanian culture, and this isn't. Threepio knows. He could tell you."

She sighs at that. "He could. He'd probably like doing it, too."

Kylo smiles at that. "Yes, he would." He takes another bite. "You want me to speed this up? Explain to legal we want that treaty sooner rather than later?"

"Ellie would probably like that."

"Yes, she would. That doesn't tell me if you'd like it, though."

Rey look frustrated. "I don't know. If I screw this up, it's going to go _so_ wrong. This isn't just… I don't know… Some tiny little thing. This is 'go take a treaty to a bunch of people you don't know, and try to get them to sign it,' and… It's _big._ It's planet-spanning _big._ "

Kylo strokes her hand again. "Yep. That said, there should be absolutely nothing in there, at all, that'll raise even the most finicky of eyebrows, and they did _ask_ us for a non-aggression treaty, so…"

"So… This should be… playing on the kiddie level or something?"

"Well… Taking a non-aggression treaty to a planet known for pacifistic governance probably has an awfully low chance of backfiring on you. I mean, they're not going to respond while you're there. You deliver it, spend some time with their people, their legal people will go over it, and eventually send a marked up version to my legal people… I think you go just to look pretty and make some sort of… Image… while offering it."

"Reminding them all that if they don't much love… Who's actually in charge there?"

Kylo thinks about it. "You know, I'm not sure. Not Organa. He's attached to the royal court somehow, but not in charge of it."

"That's the sort of thing we're supposed to know, right?"

He sighs. "Probably. You were saying?"

"I'm going there to hand this thing over, and remind them that you're still an option, right? They don't like New Alderaan the way it is, they can come to you."

"Probably. Granted, that's true if you show up or not. That's true for everyone in the galaxy who can get to a recruiting station."

"True…" She stares out the window. "It's not quite the same for New Alderaan though, is it?"

He half inclines his head, and then kisses her shoulder. "Probably not." He ponders for a moment. "I suppose part of what you could be bringing over is me officially dropping myself out of the running. They'd probably like that, too."

"Probably… I mean… You never actually want to rule New Alderaan, so it's not like you need the birthright…"

"Not like I'm used to thinking of it. She signed it away before I really knew it was a thing."

Rey raises an eyebrow at that.

"I knew she was the first senator of New Alderaan. Dad would tease her with 'Your Worshipfulness' or 'Your Highness' so I knew she was Princess Leia… I just… never put that together with the idea that it meant anything for me. Not like I grew up in a palace with people calling me Prince Ben. I was probably intentionally not raised on New Alderaan for that reason. So, the first time it was real, that it mattered, was Snoke whispering in my head about how she'd struck me from the succession. How I wasn't good enough to be Prince Ben, how…" He's looking far away, at the snow pouring down outside their window. She can feel what he doesn't say, that he was _never_ good enough, for anything. Even as a baby he wasn't ever Prince Ben. "That was one of the few times I called her, and yelled at her, and… And instead of anything useful, she got all huffy about how I could have known that had happened, like it's my fault she's got to explain to me that apparently Darth Vader was her father, and oh, by the way, we're actually, really, royalty, and yes, there's this community which used to be a planet and she's kind of their Queen, or would be if she bothered to sign up to do it. Instead of even touching that, she's getting into my dark voice again, and…" He shakes his head. "And then Luke's hovering around, pestering me about shutting the voice up, and no one thinks I'm being remotely reasonable because I'm angry I wasn't even consulted about her throwing my birthright away, or not mentioning who my grandfather was. They're all focused on how I could have known."

She rests her head against his shoulder. Then quietly says, "Do you want to be the… handsome prince? Play the role?"

He kisses her forehead. "I… maybe… Or…" There are so many emotions swirling around him right now, it's hard to pin down any given one of them, but eventually he manages to snag one. "I'd like to at least have people not outright laugh at the idea. I… want to be worthy of it? Or… turn it down for myself?" He didn't quiet mean for that to be a question, but she gets what he's saying.

"You never got to be Prince Ben, for reasons completely outside of your control, and now it might be back, and…"

"And if I toss it aside, I want to toss it aside for me. Because I choose not to do it. Not because it's being ripped away from me."

Rey nods at that. "Control. That's always going to be a thing for us, isn't it?"

"At least for me. Probably. You?"

"I think so, but from the other side. It's easier to just get swept up and flow along, you know?"

He kisses the top of her head. "Dark and light. No, on that front, I really don't know. But a lot of the things I've been swept up into also weren't attempting to take me anywhere I needed to be, so there's that, too." He fiddles with his eggs. "Maybe it's easier to get swept up if the current takes you where you need to go." He eats a bite. "Luke talked about that. Letting go with the Force. Sliding into it. Letting it carry you and take you. I didn't want to just be some sort of passive thing floating around bound to a destiny I couldn't control."

Rey looks out the window. Waiting on Jakku for… years. Finally going with Finn, joining the Resistance, going after Luke, coming here… How much of that had she chosen for herself instead of just floating along?

"If I don't want to do this?"

"Then don't."

"That's easy to say."

"It's easy to do, too."

She looks away, and pokes her breakfast. "I feel like I'm letting you down if I don't."

He closes his eyes, and kisses the top of her head. "Love, you made it abundantly clear that ruling the galaxy with me wasn't part of the deal. I'm dense about some things, but you pulled a lightsaber on me when I suggested it, so I got the message. If you do this, I'd love it. But you don't have to. I… want it, but I don't expect it."

She touches the Order of the Maji pendent on her throat. "You asked again when you gave me this."

"I know. And you didn't knock me out then, which I appreciated."

She snerks a little at how dryly he says that. "Sometimes it feels right, and sometimes it feels wrong, and sometimes it's terrifying, and… I don't like feeling… unsure about everything all the time. Like I don't know what I'm doing, or if I'm doing it right, or not knowing how things will turn out, and… It's just scary."

He smiles at that, and snuggles in closer to her. "Yeah, it is."

"And I feel like I should be certain about this. Like I should just do it or not do it and once I've made the decision feel settled and ready and… It doesn't feel that way."

He kisses her ear. "Nope. Luke told us Yoda said 'Do or do not, there is no try.' And I guess from a how things work out perspective, that's true. Either you do it or you don't, but from a thinking about things, and working toward them perspective, it's not really helpful."

"All black and white."

"Or light and dark… It's okay not to be certain, or immediately feel like this is exactly what you want to do, or not do."

"And is it okay if one day I want to do it, and the next it's too scary?"

He kisses her again. "Yeah, it is."

And neither of them mention that the Handsome Prince needs his Lady for the story to work. That this is either an all-in or not-at-all sort of thing.

Though they both feel it.

* * *

Rey feels like she should have a better name for this "class" than "Somewhat More Advanced Force Stuff Than What I Teach The Little Guys," but, well, that's exactly what it is, so…

It's after lunch. Right now Rose and Poe have the aforementioned little guys, and they're all working on making sure the rope lines between the cottages are in good shape and the Faviers have a lot of feed on hand. Cassie says a big storm is coming tonight, so… They're making sure they're good and ready for it.

Meanwhile, Rey's got Jacen, Critt, Elias, Savarah, and Magiit. Right now, they're in her cottage, because the chapel's just too cold most of the time, and it's not like they need a lot of room for just the six of them.

Sitting in the main room, on the floor, some of them cross-legged, some lying down, (Though Rey poked Jacen when he stretched out, reminding him this was thinking time, not napping time. He rolled his eyes at that.) they're settling in to just flow with the Force.

Rey's cross-legged on the floor, back resting against the comfy chair, letting her eyes close. "So the point of this is to just reach out and let yourself feel it. Sky above, ground below, life within and out, death waiting, feel all of it, feel the balance. Let it cradle and support you, and find your own spot in it, where you balance with it."

Some of the kids, like Savarah, slide into it easily. Critt has a harder time calming his mind down. It's bright and jittery in still moments like this, so Rey touches his hand, and quietly says, "If it's easier to move or bounce around when you do this, try moving around. It's probably easier for me to do this still, because I bend more light. You might need to move or pace or something, and that's okay."

He stands up and jitters a bit, while pacing, and she can feel his mind settling easier into the flow. She makes a mental note to mention that to Kylo, and ask more about how it was easier to meditate when he was writing.

Once she feels them all, even Magiit, and that surprises her, she's not sure if Magiit's riding the experience of the others around her, or if… normal people… (she doesn't like that term…) non-Force-sensitive people… (that one is clunky… finding something else to describe the difference between her and Magiit goes on the to-do list) can meditate that deeply, or… Maybe she's just imagining it very intensely, however it's working, Magiit's falling into it, too.

But once they're all settled, Rey lets herself settle, too.

* * *

The first time she saw the line of a billion versions of herself stretching into infinity… or at least the mirror, Rey wasn't really paying attention to where that line was.

She remembers the smell though. The feel of damp air. Everywhere on Ahch-to was damp.

The line is gone. She looks behind her and sees the billion Rey's behind. The line _ahead_ of her is gone. The air, the damp, the grayish non-distinct background, that's the same.

She doesn't remember the cave. She couldn't draw it from memory, or describe it for a story. None of that matters, she knows she's there again.

She looks behind herself, and behind, there are a billion Reys all turning to look behind them. She looks ahead… The mirror appears again. And like last time it's grayed out, blurred, useless. She doesn't need a mirror, she needs a… Rey's not sure what to call the thing she needs, but she knows it's not a mirror.

She turns away from it, and the billion Reys behind her start to turn. She rolls her eyes at them. She doesn't need the visual, she gets that right here and now there's only the present and past, and the future is not yet written. The billion past Reys vanish.

Rey sits down, glances at the mirror again, even if it were to clarify, she knows what she'll see, just her.

Luke sits next to her. "I never came down here."

She shrugs at that.

"I had my own cave. On Dagobah."

"Did you find it enlightening?"

"Scary mostly. At the time. Eventually it became enlightening. Or I became enlightened. Or… Enough time passed and I grew up some, and developed some perspective."

Rey nods. "What did you see?"

"Myself. I was there to face Vader, and under his mask, it was me. I went looking for purpose, and I killed him, and for a second I felt like I'd vanquished all my demons, lived up to the man I was supposed to be, and… The mask burst off, and my own face was underneath." He looks around the cave. "What did you see when you were down here?"

Rey gestures to where the line was. "Myself. A billion versions of it, stretching on through time. I begged the mirror to show me my parents, and where I belonged, and what my purpose was, and… It just showed me, me."

Luke nods. "According to Obi Wan, there was a dark Force well under the Jedi temple on Coruscant. All of the Padawan would go, visit. Sooner or later they'd feel pulled. It… always showed you yourself. He thought that it was a warning, of what could happen if you let the dark inside take over."

"You don't think that, not anymore."

"Not anymore. When I first saw the vision, I thought it was telling me that if I killed Vader, I'd become him. Now… I can see what that vision literally showed me, that if I had killed Vader, I would have destroyed myself, too. The… things… that make me myself would have died if I'd ended him. My survival as myself was tied to finding a way to go to Vader that didn't involve destroying him."

Rey nods. "Okay."

"You looked for purpose, meaning, family, and found only yourself. What did you take that to mean, at the time?"

"That I was alone. Just me. Always just me." She shoots Luke a withering look. "It's not exactly like you were leaping up and down to offer me any assistance."

"I ended up hiding out, alone, on an island in the middle of nowhere, cut off from the Force, having attempted to kill my nephew and, by doing so, putting a future into motion where he then turned around and murdered all of my students-"

"One."

"One?" Luke look surprised by that. He'd been unconscious when Ben went after the rest of the school, and when he came to, everything was on fire, and he was the only living person on the planet. Of course, they didn't leave corpses. But some of the clothing he found was burned or cut by lightsabers… And… well, he knew who had a saber, and the skill, to have done that.

"Tash. The only one he killed was Tash. Some of the others joined him. They fought alongside him. They killed the others, who were attacking them, because when you went down, Tash made the same decision you did, and rallied a number of the rest, but apparently she didn't hesitate to strike."

Luke's eyes are tired. "No, she wouldn't have. Still, the larger point, namely that I'm _not_ someone who was in any position to be giving anyone any sort of life advice, stands."

Rey inclines her head. "So…"

"So… What do you take from it now? It's been a few years. You are, clearly, not alone. What was the cave showing you?"

Rey sighs. She inclines her head a bit, and looks to the mirror. "It's always going to be me. My purpose, my power, my… destiny… It's me. I've got to find it for myself."

Luke nods. "You have others who will help you, and support you, but… It's always going to be you." He shrugs a bit. "Now ask me about figuring out who you are?"

"Really?"

"Yeah, it'll be _fun._ "

She rolls her eyes at that. "Tell me about figuring out who you are?"

"It's not easy."

"Really…" The snark coming off of her is strong enough to push Luke slightly back. "I could have never guessed that."

He sniggers a bit. "Yeah, this part of it is so much more fun. Yoda knew what he was doing. Mentoring Force Ghost is a blast. Yeah, it's _hard._ " Luke chuckles. Then he grows a bit more serious. "Especially if, say, you grew up in a world where no one had any actual plans for you, including yourself, and all you did was sort of drift along from one set of someone else's expectations to another."

Rey inclines her head and sighs. "That, I know."

"Uh huh. And then you get swept up, and everyone has an image of who you're supposed to be, and everything is immediate, right now, has to be done, and they keep talking about _destiny_ , and…"

Rey's nodding. "Who were you supposed to be?"

Luke makes a dismissive sound. "Ask me again in a century. Maybe I'll have figured it out by then."

"If it's going to take you a century, how the hell am I supposed to figure it out, now?"

"You're not. None of us are. You just keep trying new things, and eventually, one of them will likely stick. That was something I always envied about Han. If something didn't work, he just dropped it and moved onto the next thing."

"But he kept trying new things?"

"Thief, pod racer, scavenger, scoundrel, smuggler, that was the one he liked best, I think. General, he dropped that one as fast as he could. Respectable businessman, Leia and Lando dragged him into that for a few years, and he got out of it pretty fast, too. Gambler. That was a good one."

"Father, husband?"

Luke half-smiles. "I knew a lot less about Han as either of those things. Possibly because, unlike Lando or Chewie, who he could talk with about that, I was neither of those things."

Rey's eyebrows narrow. "I know he's out there, but… You still haven't talked to him, have you?"

"No. It'll happen, eventually, but… The _first_ lesson Obi Wan taught me was that he got too cocky, decided he could train Vader on his own, and failed miserably at it. And… I walked _right_ into the same trap. I know I heard him say it, but I didn't _listen._ I was so sure that if I could just… get Ben, that I could understand him, and guide him, and show him where and how he belonged in the Force, and… Especially once I had Tash… I mean… she just _flourished_ , soaking every lesson up like a sponge, and… Ben… He was _Ben._ How could it not work?"

"But Kylo was a person, not an extension of your will, or a mirror of your successes."

"A person with his own wants and needs and… I was going _hard_ on Han about how he needed to be trained, how leaving him to his own devices, or Han's, was just setting him up to explode, and… Then I pretty much built the bomb and set it off, so…" Luke looks chagrined at this. "We'll talk, eventually. All angers cool, eventually, but… Probably still got a few more decades to go."

"Ah…"

Luke shrugs. "The one thing we've got is time." He nudges Rey's shoulder. "You've got time, too. You don't have to figure it out. Just… keep trying. Maybe it sinks in and works, maybe it doesn't. The worst you can do is fail, and… well… It's not like you won't have plenty of us to keep you company if you do."

Rey sniggers at that. "Uh huh." Then she grows more serious. "How many people die if I fail too badly?"

Luke offers her a half-smile. "Rey, _everyone_ dies. You can't save _any_ of them. Push it back some, pull it forward maybe, but _you cannot save anyone._ There is a perfect one to one ratio of births to deaths and you are not going to change that, nor should you try."

"That's not what I mean…"

"I know, but it's important to understand that. The universe, the Force, has immutable laws, and we are not above or beyond them. Sooner or later you will fail. It may, and given the scale we play on, probably _will_ get people killed. Sooner or later you will succeed, and that may, and given the scale we play on, probably _will_ get people killed. What was my greatest success?"

Rey shrugs. "Turning Vader?"

"I like to think so. You want to guess how many people died because of that? Arguably more than if I'd failed, he'd cut my head off, and the Emperor crushed the Rebellion then and there. Thirty years of civil wars, the rise of Snoke, and the destruction of the Hosnian system likely _all_ flow from that moment. All of it ripples well beyond us and… There's no way to control the wave, no way to foresee where it's going to go, no possible way to even begin to contemplate how many people any one of your actions will touch, let alone _how_ it'll touch them. So, yeah, you'll fail. People will die. You'll succeed. People will die." He sighs. "Unless you want to curl into a petrified ball of indecision, it's probably better to just take responsibility for the ones you are directly responsible for, and lay the rest of them on the Force."

"Uh huh, and did that work for you?"

Luke looks out over the pond in the cave. She's not sure what he's seeing, but her guess is those ripples from saving Vader, or destroying the Death Star. "Some days better than others. That said, I did absolutely no one, including myself, any good hiding off on Ahch-To, so… I have some experience on the petrified ball of indecision side of things."

"I suppose so." She pokes at the floor of the cave. "I'm afraid that if I fail, I'll hurt him. Make his job harder, discredit him... something. So many other people have hurt him, and… I don't want to be one of them."

Luke nods. "Han sung that song a lot, too. I don't recall Leia ever being particularly sympathetic to it. She wanted the harder road with him. Not the easier road on her own. I think Ben feels the same."

"I know. It's still terrifying."

"Yeah. It is. But like pretty much everything else, the more you do something, the better you get at it, the less scary it gets."

"Does it?"

Luke nods. "At least in my experience." Luke nods toward… Rey's living room. She can see it from where they're sitting. "They're stirring. Time to get back to them."

"Okay. Thanks."

"You're welcome."

Rey's pulling herself back to her body, when Luke catches her attention one last time. "Rey. The Guardians of the Whills. Chirrut Imwe. Look them up, and give Magiit what you find. She'll like it."

"Okay." And then she's back in her living room with a collection of kids, all slowly getting their feet under them and brains back in their heads.

* * *

1/23/2

It'd be easier if the decision just… went away.

She can feel that Kylo sees the value in this. Or at least wants to explore beginning to try it. She can also feel him definitively not pushing it.

It feels a lot like hiding who he was. He won't tell her to stop. He won't fuss at her for it. He will make it clear that this is something they're doing for her, though, and that he's not sure it's the best plan.

Granted, the timeframe on this feels a lot narrower. She's sure they don't have to make a decision on this _right now_ but she does get the sense that the longer they don't do anything about it, the less effective eventually doing something will be.

She's between classes right now, an hour in which she's supposed to be reading and thinking about how the Divine Accord of Sepulchina understands the nature of the Force (though they call it Spirit) and why it does what it does.

The text in front of her is dry, boring… Written in dense verbiage likely to keep outsiders away.

She flicks off her datapad, closes her eyes, breathes deeply, and settles into the flows of the Force. She knows who she's looking for, though she's also a bit nervous about seeking her out.

When she opens them, the light blue glow of her… mother-in-law… though thinking of her as such feels odd, is filling the room.

Leia looks… wryly amused. That's likely it. She settles back so she's leaning against the workbench opposite Rey in the comfy chair.

"It's been a very long time since I used to imagine family chats with a daughter." She smiles. "And let me guess, having the mother-in-law over for a heart to heart is nothing you ever imagined."

Rey would have to admit that was true. "I didn't even know it was a thing when I was younger."

Leia nods. "I can imagine. I was raised with grandparents, who genuinely liked my parents, so… It was part of my map of what a family looks like." She holds her hand up, looking through it to Rey. "Granted, I was expecting to be a tad more solid when I did this. Maybe coffee or wine would have been involved."

Rey shrugs. "You're the one who chose to go."

"Maybe. The Force knew my time was over." Rey's not sure if that's true, but she also doesn't want to debate it. "So…" Leia leads. "Tell me about it."

And Rey does.

Leia listens, and nods, and winces from time to time, and nods some more, and asks good questions, and after about half an hour says, "So, in an effort to make the First Order—"

"The Order. It hasn't been the First Order for a while now. And in time it'll be the Order of the Maji."

"Uh huh…" Though Leia appears pleased that Rey's corrected her on that. "So, in order to get people to want to join, and go along with whatever it is your Order is going to do, which, as of right now, you don't yet know, you and…" it's only a second's pause, and Rey likely only notices it because she's listening intently, "my son," once she's said that, Rey supposes that's better than the Ben that was attempting to go tripping off her tongue, "will package yourselves as a pretty, shiny, storybook version of yourselves and try to win a public relations war before any shooting actually begins?"

Rey's not sure if that's right, but she can feel Leia's intent behind it, so it's close enough. "Yes?"

Leia thinks about it for a moment. "Honestly, I've heard worse plans. I've made worse plans. I've executed worse plans, and I've won with worse plans." She pauses. "And, really, it's not like we didn't… uh… try. For a while there… I mean, Luke was young and pretty and kind of like a Jedi, and… well, we didn't mind shining cameras on him when he wasn't paying too much attention. Granted, when he did, we had to stop, because he'd run away, but… There's probably footage of the awards ceremonies lurking around somewhere. And those were intentional to try and garner public support for the Rebellion.

"When we were trying to set up the New Republic… Well, it was _obvious_ to any of us who were actually _Rebels_ that restarting the Republic was the way to go. But… That wasn't obvious to a lot of other people. Just because they didn't love the Empire didn't mean they saw any reason for an overarching mega-government, didn't mean they thought democracy mattered a whit, and didn't mean that they didn't want an Empire, just run by someone else.

"And, looking back, the biggest thing I wish I could change was doing a better job of making them _want_ a Republic. Power…" She rubs her lips together. "When I was young and stupid, I thought power was something we could vanquish, and then by coming up with the _right_ answer, everyone else would just immediately see it was the right answer, and they'd all happily come skipping over to me and mine, and we'd just rule and it'd be great."

"And that's not how it worked."

"At all. I'd put so much into Rebelling, I, and most of the rest of us, didn't have much of a plan for what to do when we won."

"Did you think you were going to win?"

"I'd certainly hoped so, but… Judging by the lack of plans beyond: Restart Republic, it does appear very few of us thought we would." She taps her fingers on the workbench. "That said, we did win. And we were young and pretty. And I know some people joined us just for that. Especially after the victory over the first Death Star. People came to be on the winning side. It was enough to get them in the door." Leia inclines her head. "It wasn't enough to keep them. So, as a way to intrigue people, as a way to get them to want to know more, being pretty and lovey, the living fairy tale, that's not a bad plan, but you're going to need something of substance to keep them there.

"Which gets us back to power. Power is eternal. Maybe it shifts about some, wanders here and there, but at the absolute best you might smooth it out a little more, and make it a bit less concentrated, but you're not going to get rid of it, or end up with a situation where everyone has an equal amount. Force alone knows we tried, but…

"So, the question is, what do you do with your concentration of power? How do you get people to join you so you can keep said power? I suppose, if you get them to keep joining, your power grows. How do you defend that power? What do you do with people who don't want you to have it?

"You and Kylo can be as pretty as you like. You can make the galaxy want to be near you by using charm and good looks. It certainly never hurt Lando that he was pretty, smooth, and instantly likable. But, like Lando, and unfortunately, unlike the New Republic, you've got to have a plan of what to do with that power."

She stops there, thinking, and Rey can feel her imagining her 'old friend.'

"Lando had a great advantage over the New Republic. Two of them really. First of all, he was it. What he said, went, and if you didn't like it, you could leave. Or he'd fire you. The second one was he wasn't trying to run the entire galaxy. He had the Corporation, and it had its sub corps, holdings, shell corps, and, of course, the ghost network that didn't, officially belong to the Corporation, but we all knew it did. He was big enough that others didn't try to take him out, not directly at least, and he was small enough, and everyone working for him was working for one goal, that he didn't have to try to get everyone in the universe to go along with one plan."

"What was his plan?"

"He started with mining, and then moved into refining, and then moved into the engineering to make the things that do the mining and refining, and then shipping to get the stuff he mined and refined around, and then his miners, refiners, engineers, producers, and shippers all needed stuff, so he started to buy up the things that made the stuff they needed. He didn't have a perfect vertical monopoly, but only because every step of his operation needed _so many_ things."

"Sounds easy to abuse."

"It is. History is littered with people who abused the hell out of that sort of a setup. But, scoundrel he was, he also needed to be adored, and didn't need to be any richer than he was, so not abusing it mattered to him. He made more money than a thousand people could ever spend in a thousand lifetimes, and well-paid employees tend to like their employer, so there was that, too. Plus… Scoundrel that he was, he was also part of the Rebellion, and he learned that lesson well. Even the Empire, backed by a trillion guns, two Death Stars, and a Dark Force wielding monster, couldn't keep an unhappy population tied down forever."

"I wish I had known him."

"I wish you could have known him, too. He was… One of a kind."

"You miss him."

"I do."

Rey's brows furrow. "Is he… not out there, somewhere?"

"If he is, we haven't found him, yet."

"Oh."

"He wasn't any sort of Force sensitive, Rey. I… Don't know, but I don't think they get to be here."

"I've talked to Han."

"I know. I have, too. I've… been thinking about that, a lot. Since… He's here. And so many others, just… aren't. And I don't know if he's here because he's not done, or if his constant, 'I've got a bad feeling about this' was a very low level of Force sensitivity. Maybe we missed his low light, because ours was so bright. Maybe he spent enough time in close contact with other Force sensitives it rubbed off. I don't know.

"Luke says no one is ever really gone, but… There are some people I'd like to see again, and as of yet, I haven't found them."

"Your parents?"

"Yes. Very much so. But that's not here or there. You're here for more than my opinion on if The Handsome Prince gambit can work."

"I am…" Rey looks shy. "How do you… be the Pretty Lady?"

Leia grins at her. "However the fuck you want to be. Don't let them change you, just… be a shinier version of yourself, and if that means telling a bugger to fuck off when a bugger needs to fuck off, well, you tell the bugger to fuck off, and you make sure your eyeliner is perfect while you do it. The people who want you will say you're forthright and honest, and the ones who don't will call you rude and uncultured. But the thing is, you will never, ever, no matter what you do, please the ones who don't want you to be there, so you might as well just be whatever version of you you want to be for the ones who do want you."

"That doesn't sound like being the Pretty Lady."

Leia waves that away. "There's a reason why so many people wanted me to be the face of the Rebellion, and it's not because I was the best strategist, sharpest pilot, or the highest ranked general, or anything like that. I'm… or I was… pretty. And a princess. And Alderaanian… And… That made an attractive image of a downtrodden, horribly abused people rising up to fight injustice and right the universe. And then we won. Sticking me in front of the New Republic was a PR victory all in and of itself. The little guy won, and I was the perfect 'little guy.' I was me, too, always me, but I was also an image, and ideal, a face stuck on posters, and twenty-second sound bites on news holos, and…

"And, if you are in public. If you chose to be… Mrs. Ren?"

"Mistress Rey of the Maji."

Leia curls her lip a bit at that. "You might want to work on that, people like catchy titles, and I'm not sure if that is one. Anyway, if you are The Mistress on any level, people will warp your image to fit their needs. There's nothing you can do about that. You will be all things to all people in all ways."

"And the only way to avoid that?"

"Is to hide. Han did an… okay… job of it. Once I stopped making him come to public events, he more-or-less faded from view. People eventually forgot about him, stopped asking about if he was going to be the Prince Consort of New Alderaan the way my father had been."

Rey feels that. "You're still annoyed by that."

Leia shrugs. "Politics is a difficult game, and… You can't do it alone. You need a partner. Someone who's got your back and just as committed to it working as you are. Someone who shares your vision, and will back your plays, or come up with even better ones.

"I had a great staff. Threepio was more of a chief of staff than anyone could ever ask for. But… I needed Han to be someone he wasn't willing to be and… Force knows trying to make someone be something they aren't is always going to be a losing battle, but… I lost, and it still burns."

Rey nods at that, noting Leia both saying Han wasn't willing to do it, and that he also wasn't who she needed. She decides part of the anger is that Leia hasn't yet let go of the idea that Han just _wouldn't_ do it for her. Not that he was incapable of it.

Granted, Leia was married to him, and Rey'd spent eight hours with him, so she doesn't know if he _couldn't_ do it, or _wouldn't._

"Did he… have your back outside of the spotlight?"

"All fifteen minutes I was out of it? Yes." Leia rubs her temples. "There really wasn't an out of the spotlight. The New Republic needed more and more and more, and in a lot of cases, apparently I was the only one who could do whatever it was, and if I was doing it, people were watching."

Rey feels the regret at that. "That's something you would have changed if you could."

"In retrospect… The whole bloody thing wasn't going to implode if I, personally, didn't handle every third item on the list. But… I was always shit at delegating. Not being in charge makes me itchy in a way I don't like."

"I can see that."

"It doesn't make you itchy…" She thinks about that. "Never bugged Luke, either. He could just go with the flow."

Rey's about to say 'Light side versus dark' but she gets the feeling that calling Leia a darksider is _not_ a good idea. "Will he fail without me?"

Leia shrugs. "I don't know. I do know going in lukewarm and resenting him for it will make everything worse. Either all-in or all-out. Maybe… I don't know… If Han hadn't tried at first… Hadn't gotten my hopes up that maybe he… could… have been my Prince Consort… Maybe it would have been easier. Or maybe I would have always been annoyed by it. I don't know.

"I do know what we did do, didn't work."

Rey nods. "Okay. Thank you."

Leia smiles a bit. "You're welcome."

* * *

It's later that night, after dinner, when Rey asks Kylo, "If I wanted to talk to Ellie, on my own, how would I do it?"

He beams at her as he hands over his comm. "I'll get you your own. Just hold the button, say who you want to talk to, and it'll connect you."

Rey nods. She doesn't say anything else about what she's been thinking, and he lets her hold her peace.

* * *

1/24/2

This time, they're on Ellie's ship. Part of, apparently, learning what a functional, attractive, politically feasible space looks like. And also, part of it is knowing the conversation will be private. Ellie doesn't know how secure Kylo's rooms are. She _knows_ hers are airtight.

Rey sees the tea tray, and the pile of nibbles.

Ellie pours and serves her. "Rank isn't an issue in a situation like this. For private, friendly meetings, one serves in one's own home."

Rey nods. She's not sure if she likes the idea of eating with every serious conversation, but it does seem to help her settle her mind and nerves. She sips the tea, nibbles a cookie, and says, "Tell me more about the Handsome Prince and his Lady."

Ellie grins at her, a wide, warm, unreservedly pleased smile on her face. "The story varies from place to place and time to time, but the particulars tend to be the same. The Handsome Prince, who may or may not have taken a dark turn, depending on the story, is born to a good, pure, and most importantly _just_ birthright. In some of the stories, he's the prince in hiding. His birthright stolen by whomever he's going to conquer."

"Bartered away by his mother?"

"Only if she's the evil-stepmother in the story. Otherwise, Mum'll be the long-lost, but well-remembered pillar of feminine good and honor."

Rey's got a wry look on her face as she says, "Well, reality is already biting the story."

"Hush. First of all, almost everyone in the galaxy thinks of his Mum as the well-remembered pillar of feminine good and honor. Secondly, we don't have to recreate the story beat for beat, just… give the impression of it. No matter what, the story begins with the Kingdom in ruins and some sort of evil sorcerer, king, tyrant, merchant, whatever has stolen control from the Good King and Queen.

"Now, our handsome prince is either actively trying to regain the throne of said kingdom or he's being held in sway by the Evil Tyrant."

"And that's the version of the story we're going to go with?"

Ellie sips her tea. "I'm thinking that's the one that will most readily mesh with reality."

"So, what is the Handsome Prince, who's currently part of Team Evil, going to do?"

"At some point, he's going to meet his Lady. Something about her, often how pretty she is, but not always... her looks, purity, goodness, _light_ catches his interest, and he decides maybe he doesn't want to be the henchman of Evil Incorporated."

Rey flashes her a wry look. "All of his ambitions waylaid by his shaft?"

Ellie chuckles. "We tend not to put it in those terms. Especially not in the versions we tell to children."

"Ah."

"Now at some point, the Handsome Prince rescues his lady love from some terrible fate, winning her adoration and affection, and proving himself worthy of her. He will, of course, in the process of doing this, cease to be the puppet of the Tyrant, and reveal himself as the true heir to King and Queen Good and Merciful." Ellie smiles again, sips her tea, and says, "What can or will you do with that?"

Rey shrugs a bit, and takes another bite of her scone. "I mean… It… Fits. It's not like we'd have to… lie about what happened." She picks at one of the dried fruits on the scone. "The Pretty Lady sounds kind of passive."

"Yes, well, these are often tales told by men. We can, and will," there's a sharpness to Ellie's look, "make sure no one thinks you were just hanging about waiting to get rescued. Likewise, we'll make clear that any rescuing on the Handsome Prince's part wasn't just about… satisfying the desire of his parts."

Rey nods. "I certainly didn't. I bloody well shipped myself to the _Supremacy_ to rescue his ass. And then he rescued mine. Maybe? He rescued me, that's certain. He killed Snoke… Maybe for himself… Mostly for me. Dark has a hard time staying put. Loyalty requires enough light to find getting into a pattern easy, and getting out of it hard."

"And of course, both Anakin, and your Kylo, were Jedi once upon a time. Enough light to take the training and succeed at it."

"Barely, but yes. I was facing Kylo. Snoke was going on and on about how he couldn't be betrayed, how he owned Kylo on every level there was to own him, and… hate, rage, jealousy, pain… Force, so much pain… All of it was boiling through his skin, and I was sure he was going to cut my head off. I was kneeling, begging him not to do it, and…" Rey's remembering that moment. "He has that very expressive face."

Ellie's nodding. "Everything he was feeling was right on it, I'd bet."

"The only bit he was hiding was who it was aimed at. That might have been the only time he's ever tried to bluff, and he pulled it off, perfectly, cut Snoke in half instead of me… But… Is that your rescue? I sent myself to the _Supremacy_ to get Ben back. Threw myself into the path of the monster, because I was sure, like Luke with Vader, I guess, that he wouldn't sacrifice me to Snoke. And he didn't."

"But you didn't get… Ben?" Rey nods. "Ben back. You thought you were in the story—"

"I'd never heard the story at that point."

"Well, there's a reason they're archetypal narratives. Almost everyone has a version of them somewhere in their minds. In the story, your act of bravery should have gotten you the Good Prince back, or in this case, your Jedi?" Rey nods. "But you didn't get your wayward Jedi back.

"That's the story they told all of us, that when Vader killed the Emperor, that he returned to Anakin. He freed himself of his master, and the name of Darth Vader. You'll forgive that that might have been the official story, but very few people believed it. They were willing to give it lip service, because, after all, he was Luke Skywalker, and that was his father. And it didn't do to rub the unlikelihood of that story in the face of the only living Jedi.

"You'll note, though, Kylo's mother didn't breathe a word of being Leia Skywalker to anyone, until they forced it out of her. She understood that no one, really, believed that Vader died redeemed. Or that _Vader_ could be redeemed by one last minute act of murder… or love… Your Kylo though, because he didn't die a minute after taking out Snoke…" Ellie sips her tea and corrals her thoughts.

"Redemption is a lifelong arc. Kylo has a lot of history to pay for, both his own," Ellie makes a bit of a face at that, indicating that Kylo's own, personal history isn't exactly as well-shined as she would have liked, but it's also not nearly as bad as it could be, "and a lot of history that he inherited from his family, his associations," which Rey takes to mean Snoke, "and grudges held against him for no good reason," Rey can feel Ellie thinking of Mirina Frakes, though she's a symbol of those who would hold the entire Rebellion against Kylo, not just his family.

"If he stays in the roll of the Handsome Prince, and continues along the path he seems to have settled on for right now, he'll go down as one of the great redemption stories. We can sell the idea of your love as the motive factor behind that story."

"I'm not sure if the love of me motivated this…"

Ellie just looks at Rey. "Honey, he cut the most powerful Force wielder the galaxy had ever heard of, in half, for you. He spent eight years taking everything Snoke dished at him, then you show up, and six days later, Snoke's been bisected by a lightsaber. Yes, Kylo benefited greatly from doing that. Yes, given the fact that you didn't immediately jump into his arms, and," she delicately clears her throat, " _reward him_ for his service, amid the pile of corpses, it may have ended up feeling more like something he did for himself, but… He cut Snoke in half for you. His part of the story, where he saves the Princess from the Evil Dragon and proves himself worthy—"

"Saved. He didn't prove himself worthy… Well… Until he started freeing slaves and… R'Leah… They were giving him crap about the taxes, and… He wanted to just blow them out of the sky. It would have been so easy to just take them out, send a clear message to the rest of the galaxy. Your 'Do not fuck with Kylo Ren,' message. But… I told him I'd abide what he did, or not, and… He knew that was something I couldn't abide, so…"

Rey rubs her lips together. "I took the leap of faith before he'd 'earned me.' And he made sure I landed soft."

Ellie gives Rey's hand a little squeeze. "That's any good relationship. You'll take your leaps of faith, and trust your partner to catch you, and he does. Pat and I have leapt more times than either of us can count, and we've always had the other's back."

"He had my back. Literally and figuratively. And I've had his. And… I guess I got myself into a situation where he found the motivation to get out of a bad situation, for both of us. And then we spent about a year just sort of… growing up, I guess. Together, sort of. We'd talk. He was getting the Order into play, and I was figuring out where I didn't want to go, which isn't necessarily as good as where you do want to go, but is better than not having a plan at all."

Ellie grins at that. "Knowing where not to go is _almost_ as good as where to go, and in many cases it'll save you even more trouble."

Rey shrugs. "Okay."

"I've been told you're the motivation for his slave-freeing idea."

"When he killed Snoke, he asked me to rule with him, and I… well… uh… pulled a lightsaber on him, and ended up knocking both of us out."

"Ah. So you turned down his first proposal."

"Technically, I think that was the second. He told me I needed a teacher before, and that he was offering to be said teacher was unspoken, but I knew he was talking about him."

Ellie continues to grin as she sips her tea. "It may not be exactly according to script, but this sounds like an epic romance to me." Another sip. "So, like in many of a different sort of romance, you say no, and run off. He still hadn't proven himself, or was still in need of some serious changing, or both… This is very common in redemption arc stories. That's the point of why no one in the wider world believed the Vader redemption story. Just one act of murder isn't enough. He didn't _earn_ his redemption.

"So you separate, he had to go off and fix himself up, so he could win you. And then, well, you jumped the gun a bit on the full fixing up, but, well, it's not like you two would have been the first to get to the fun part before nailing down all of the niggly bits.

"In fact, it's generally only in stories that couples get all the little bits nailed down properly before jumping in, or at least jumping each other."

Rey smirks a bit at that. "Did you and Pat have… most everything nailed down?"

Ellie laughs at that, hard. "We had a raging case of hot pants for each other, a contract signed by our parents, and… a common goal of making our family as strong and stable as possible. The details worked themselves out over the next thirty years. By the time we were grandparents, we'd gotten mostly everything ironed out."

"Mostly?"

"Mostly. It's been seventy-two years, and, really, if we had _everything_ sorted, it'd be boring."

Rey laughs at that. Then she touches her hair, aware of the fact that it's just sort of hanging there, and says, "How pretty does the Handsome Prince's Lady have to be?"

"You're more than pretty enough."

Rey looks at her nails. No polish on them right now, because she's been working and whatnot. There is dirt under them, because earlier today she was working in the microfarm, digging potatoes. "Do I… always have to be… polished or… elegant… I mean… A lot of the time I'm in ratty clothing, and tired and sweaty, and teaching kids how to do things like dig trenches for pipes or working hard on balance and flexibility and…"

Ellie sees the dirt under the nails. And the utilitarian hair. And the fact that her clothing is functional, hard wearing, and warm.

"On the downside, no matter what you do, someone will complain about it. If you're always proper, fashionable, and well-dressed, someone will fuss about you being fake, or spending too much money on clothing or… Something. If you are out and about like this, someone will fuss about you being dirty or plain.

"That said, that's a particular challenge no woman can win. Because you are a women, people will feel entitled to complain about what you wear and how and why. I know Jon's giving you ideas, and working on a look for you, and staying in it when you're in public is probably a good idea.

"And, honestly, take the time, set up an appointment, and talk with Mirina. Jon learned every trick he knows from her, but she's got libraries full of other ones he's never before seen. There are… Places… Understandings of power… Where men, and yes, I understand we're talking about Jon, but he's not an exception to this rule, just _don't_ go. I'm sure his mother and sisters slipped a lot by him over the years, and he just wasn't even near equipped to begin to see what they were doing.

"Between the two of them, they can set you up with an image that I'm sure you'll be comfortable in, that will get a minimum of commentary from the wider galaxy."

More time with Mirinia is somewhat intimidating, but… Again, if she's going to do this, working with someone who wants her to succeed because her success will help her son succeed, should be fairly easy compared to the galaxy at large, who wants her to fail.

Ellie's continuing on. "On the other hand, because you are, to a degree, upending the traditional Prince's Lady, who's more of a prize than a person, you can likely get away with more range in how you look.

"And there's a wide range of people who seem to really approve of the idea of a somewhat rough-shod person, who happens to have a lot of good looks and personal charm, slipping into the upper echelons of power."

"Another story?"

"The orphan who ends up a queen? Yes, there are a _lot_ of versions of that, too. I'll make sure a datapad with a lot of stories gets delivered to Kylo's rooms for you." Ellie takes another drink. "Did you look yourself up?"

"Not yet."

Ellie nods. "Rey… I don't know, but I can empathize, on why you don't want to, why it's difficult, and what you're afraid of finding. How both no one and a huge line of some ones are terrifying in different directions. But… If there is anything you need to learn from the family you've married into, it's that secrets make us vulnerable, and secrets you personally don't happen to know are even more dangerous.

"Since we're building an image, things that can damage that image can cause trouble. If you have family, and you don't know that, and they pop up, and decide to make a plausible claim that you're an ungrateful little tramp who ran away and joined the First Order…" Rey's wincing. "People will lie. They'll do it for money, power, kicks, attention, and sheer perverse cussedness. Unfortunately, your home world no longer exists and the people who can verify you spent your formative years in Jakku are gone. Though, given what you've said about them, that's likely to your benefit."

Rey looks uncomfortable about that. "People will just… forget… about what he did to Jakku?"

Ellie smirks a bit at that. "Oh, no. They absolutely won't. All in all, it likely was a good decision, at least as a power play, on his part."

Rey looks horrified at that.

Ellie shakes her head a bit, and takes a sip of her tea. "Tell me how you felt when he told you he'd done it."

Rey shifts, uncomfortably. "I… Sick?"

"Not how you were supposed to feel. How you actually felt. That first, full brush of understanding it. When you were just feeling, not thinking." There's a look on Ellie's face, and Rey's not sure what it means, but it almost makes her feel like Ellie knows her better than she knows herself.

"Pleased." Rey says it very quietly.

Ellie nods. "And for more than just revenge, I'd bet. Pleased that he'd done it. For you. Your man loved you so much he killed everyone he could find who'd ever done you wrong. Proud of his power. Your man _could_ go kill everyone he could find who'd ever done you wrong. Strong. He laid his power at your feet, in your service. You liked that, didn't you?"

Rey bites her lip, and looks away from Ellie to the planets spinning beyond the transteel wall. "I shouldn't."

"That's likely true, if we were angels and not people, but we're people, so let's stick to what you actually felt. Pleased, powerful, cherished, aroused…"

Rey squirms a bit. She feels naked and open in a way she's normally not, especially with someone who isn't Kylo. "I'm not sure about that last one."

"Really?" The look on Ellie's face makes Rey wonder what, exactly, Pat's done in the past that involved having her back.

"Uh… we were… close… when he told me, so… I'm not sure how to sort that out."

Ellie grins. "Interesting pillow talk. That said, those feelings are… normal. Common even. If you chose to let that story out, billions of people will, just at the idea of it, feel those same sensations, or the desire for them." Ellie sips her tea again. Then she shakes her head a bit. "Beyond your own feelings of how 'moral' people are supposed to act, there is no downside on this story for you or him.

"You are literally a woman of such great worth that he'd obliterate an entire planet for you. And he is a man of such power that having desired a planet to cease to exist, he made it do so.

"For him, in many cultures he's done the absolute, base minimum of what honor demands in this sort of situation, and honestly, he likely should have sent a bunch of Stormtroopers down to grab the man who bought you so he could have personally disemboweled him in front of you, before blowing the planet up, and after hunting down anyone else who'd routinely done business down there around the time you were hurt, and dragged them back down there to die, too.

"In much of the galaxy, a huge part of what it means to be a husband is that you are a man who will provide for and protect your wife and children. Your status as such depends on how well you do those things, and how clearly you've taken care of what's yours.

"In wider parts of the galaxy, what it means to be a King, is that you are the man who will provide for and protect your people. Now, if he'll blow up a planet for you, the thinking goes that he will protect his people, too. The attacks on Qualee sealed that idea.

"If there is going to be an _ideal_ of Master Ren, a sense of how to use his dark and violence in a way that makes people want to be near him, protector is it.

"So, no people will not forget Jakku. Nor should they."

Rey thinks about that. "And… The Prince's Lady… She's… the one who bends that violence toward protection, away from destruction?"

"Maybe. Did she?"

And again Rey feels the plasteel of the deck below her knees, and sees Kylo looking down at her, saber in hand, as Snoke droned on and on.

"Yes."

Ellie's pleased with that. "Like I said a little bit ago. There are spheres of power where men just don't go. Many of them don't even understand that these spheres exist, because when they're used well, they believe that the ideas and motivations and maneuvers are all their own. And sometimes, they mock these spheres, or say they aren't really power." Ellie rolls her eyes at that. "They're wrong about that, but, well, being wrong is rarely the sort of thing that'll stop a motivated man. Much, generally, to the detriment of all involved.

"But the wise man understands that power flows in many directions and through many channels, and he takes advantage of all of them."

"Pat?"

"The two of us wouldn't have made it this far if we hadn't understood, and valued, what the other one could bring to the table.

"Let's take our Jon for a moment, who, I understand, is significantly better-trained for this sort of job than you are, but, for reasons I'm certain you aren't immediately grasping, isn't suitable for this sort of thing."

Rey nods. That sums it up well. Though not entirely. "How about, I'm not seeing why _I'm_ suitable for it if he isn't."

"Ah… Okay. Human societies, generally, not always, but generally tend to arrange themselves in one of three ways, patriarchies, where the people running things are generally, but not always, men. Matriarchies, where the people running things are generally, but not always, women. And egalitarians, where anyone might be in any place of power."

Rey thinks about that for a moment. She's been studying religions and that tends to go with history and politics, so… "I'm familiar with the ideas. The Order is egalitarian."

Ellie shakes her head. "The Order may eventually be egalitarian, but right now it's borrowing very heavily from the Empire which was a patriarchy."

Rey's eyes narrow. It's clear she understands what Ellie's saying, but not necessarily seeing why.

"It's not just that a lot of the upper echelons of the Order are, at this point, Empire left-overs, it's that the First Order's extremely top-heavy, highly structured, and rigid training mechanisms are still shadowing the Order."

"That doesn't sound like a sex difference."

"I don't know if it is one or not, but, in general rigid structures and patriarchies tend to go hand in hand. Matriarchies can also be extremely rigid and rule following, but they'll often go about it in a different way, and egalitarians seem to have a difficult time with rules and structures and whatnot, because they also seem to have a difficult time with the idea that some people are supposed to be followed without question."

Rey purses her lips.

"We'll get into this more, later. For the time being, the Order is a patriarchy. Part of that means it has rigid codes and rules and places for everyone.

"Thus, not only is Jon a man, but, he's got rank and you don't. As the Lt. Colonel, or the Grand Marshal, or wherever he chooses to end up, he is part of the official structure of the Order, and is known as a hand of the Master. Anything that goes to him goes through _official_ channels, and is part of the record. Because he is part of the diplomatic wing, speaking, hinting, sleeping, or whatever with him, is seen as speaking, hinting, sleeping, or whatever with _The Order._ "

"Did the people at the First Year Party know that?"

"Oh, absolutely. I'm sure all three of the ones who ended up with Jon understood exactly what they were doing when they shifted their focus away from Kylo to him. I'm sure _Jon_ understood what he was doing with that, too. He knows how to play the game, he's just not… well-suited for some of it.

"An entreaty to Jon is… public, for lack of a better word. It's real and official. One state talking to another. Because that's how power flows between men of rank. An entreaty to you is unofficial, it's one person talking to another one, feeling things out, seeing if an idea is worth moving the men with ranks into place to make it official.

"This feeling things out… This is where most diplomacy, most deals, most of the work that makes states function, happens. This is where the role of the Queen comes in in a patriarchy. It's her job to get the players into place, so that when it's time to move the _official_ people in, everything is set."

"That's what you do."

"Yes, and I do it _spectacularly._ And to do that, people need to be _comfortable,_ " Ellie nods to the tea set, and looks around at her very comfortable rooms.

"People are generally, more comfortable with 'their own type.' What that means will vary from person to person, but most women are more comfortable with another woman. A sense of shared experience or what have you. Jon can't… take advantage of that, and while I know he has much more experience with women-only places than most men, he's still a man, and when he's around, ladies will… tailor their words and topics of conversation, and now that he has rank, they will tailor it further, while playing whatever games they can with him."

"They'll see me, and… assume I… know these things."

"Yes. Our physical shapes effect how people interact with us. It's, again, part of sending the message, and managing how people relate to you."

"What if I don't know… How to… I don't know, be a woman? The way you mean it."

Ellie smiles. "That, too, can be useful. People will have a set of expectations for you, and defying them allows you space to maneuver, and put them off balance. Shift how they have to interact with you, and how they see you.

"Ignorance is a limited virtue. You can only play that card so many times before people become aware of that fact that, if you're _still_ ignorant, you're too stupid to be in the game. That said, you can, if you choose, use it to your advantage. If you… intentionally misunderstand something, you can force people to make themselves 'more plain.' Say the things they'd prefer not to say, or in your case, get them to think about the things they shouldn't think."

"People who think I'm… rough and stupid—"

"Ignorant. Lacking in information. It's abundantly clear just by being near you, you aren't stupid."

"Okay, ignorant. They'll… let things slip. Say and think what they shouldn't."

"Exactly. Depending on where we are and what we're doing, Pat will play drunk at public functions. People will say things they shouldn't to a man in his cups, assuming he won't remember. Likewise, they'll trust things a drunk says, more than they should, assuming that he's letting things slip that he shouldn't."

Ellie pauses there, glances at the chrono, and then says, "Back to ignorant, and your family. That was a bit of a digression we took there. Information you don't have, don't control is dangerous. Which is why you need to look yourself up. Do a DNA search. If you find people, we're going to need to vet them. See who they are and what they've been up to and how they managed to lose you.

"I assume, that if you find someone, you want to be in control of how eventually meeting them turns out. It's one thing if a liar comes out of the woodwork and they're just full of it. It's an entirely different thing if they can prove a DNA link to you."

"If they can?"

"You search now. Before you're well-known. You find them. Then you have the power. You get to find out all about them, first, and then chose to seek them out, or not. Trust me, if you find any DNA links, by the time you're ready to do anything about it, we'll know everything from their shoe size, to which political groups they support, to the last time they flossed their teeth. You will not fly into a meeting with whomever you may find, blind. That's the least we can do for you."

Ellie reaches out and gently squeezes Rey's hand. "If you find a link, a parent or sibling or… whomever, and we do the legwork first, you'll know if you are the long lost daughter/sister/niece they desperately want to see again, and then you can go to them, and make the happily-ever-after come true. And if they are rank bastards who threw you away… Well, if that's the case, you'll get to decide if they are going to regret that decision for the rest of their extremely short lives."

"I… wouldn't…"

Ellie nods. "It's one thing if it's outside of your hands, something that's happened in the past. It's another thing to choose to wield the blade for the sake of vengeance." She lays her hand on Rey's. "Here's another angle of looking it up, first, and having us vet anyone you may find. Just because you don't want to murder whoever may have sold you—"

"It's not that I don't want to, it's… wrong?"

"Something you feel is inappropriate to your understanding of how a good person behaves?"

Rey nods.

"I understand. Now, do you think your Kylo will have any reservations about that?"

Rey's mouth opens and closes. She… doesn't know how Kylo might react to the idea that the people who sold her might be out there somewhere. "He thinks they're dead."

"And you hope he's right?"

"He saw… I've… They were people, and they sold me for alcohol, and they died. If they… weren't my parents… That would be one thing. If they'd stolen me or something… But… If they'd bought me or… I know, and he does, that they are dead. If there's another layer of betrayal behind that…"

Her eyes are bright, and quivering sadness is pouring off of Rey.

"Okay. We… don't need to go there. Not now. If you've both seen it… There probably isn't anything else," Ellie says. "Not on that level. But there may be grandparents or aunts and uncles, half-siblings. And there absolutely will be thousands of people claiming you are theirs, so… You need to look."

Rey takes the deep breath. "Okay." She glances at the chrono, too. "It's about time for me to get the kids together."

"Lessons?"

"Sort of. It's my night to keep an eye on them while they make up their supper. They cook for themselves, but it's a good idea for an adult set of eyes to be hovering in the background."

Ellie smiles at that. "A _very_ good idea. One day, I'll tell you the story of the Pat, Eliza, Seirra, and James Jr. making my birthday breakfast for me."

"Eliza, Seirra, and James Jr.?"

"That was a long time ago. Those are the first three of the grandbabies. And Pat, Popop as they called him, was in charge of the 'babies.' They were six, four, and three. He and James Sr., our Elaine's husband, were 'letting the ladies have a lie in' and in charge of getting breakfast ready."

Ellie's quivering with mirth at the idea of this story.

"They didn't burn down the house, did they?"

"No. But, let's just say, it was a very good thing there was an adult eye on things, because James Jr., at three years old, decided that flour was white and fluffy, and had just grabbed the open bag of it, and was just starting to shake it around the whole house when his Popop grabbed it and him, saving them from a blizzard of baking material covering the entirety of the downstairs."

Rey does laugh a bit at Ellie's image of a much younger Pat, with a full head of dark hair, a significantly less round belly, a small child under one arm, and a bag of flour in the other hand.

"How long ago was that?" Rey asks.

"James Jr. is now Popop to James IV."

"Oh."

"James IV doesn't talk much. He's only got four words, and is barely toddling about, but… It's been a while."

* * *

Rey opens up the datapad, and brings up herself. And promptly finds that she can't access herself on this pad. She sighs at that, but… Well, they were going to put more security in place. She grabs Kylo's personal pad, and looks herself up.

This time it works.

The first thing she does is put her fingerprints in. The computer does its thing while she waits. And after a moment it tells her there are no matches.

Then she does her retinas. And, again, after ten minutes, there are no matches.

Whomever gave birth to her didn't register her. More proof, if it is that, that the people who sold her likely were her parents. Likely… Miserable drunks likely wouldn't have taken the minute necessary to put her finger marks and eyes into the system, along with a name and birthday or birthplace.

But… maybe… If you'd stolen a child, a young one, a baby, you likely wouldn't register her, either. Wouldn't want to make it easier for her parents to find her. Especially if they had their DNA in the system, waiting for someone to match.

Rey takes a deep breath. She finds a knife, pricks her fingertip, and lays a drop of blood on the sensor on the datapad.

That drop won't find her. If her eyes and prints aren't in the system, her blood won't be, either. But it might find others, related to her, who are in the system. It might find people who put themselves in the system, hoping one day she's match to them.

It whirls for a _very_ long time, zipping along, comparing her DNA to everyone else in the system.

Rey tries to imagine people, a mother and father, grandparents, aunts and uncles and cousins, all of them looking for her, all of them mourning the child they didn't get to raise.

But she can't imagine it. Her mind won't form the images.

"I'll be back, Sweetheart…" but… Like Kylo said, it's her voice in the memory.

She blinks as the datapad chirps at her. No match.

Of the hundreds of billions of people in this system, not a single one of them shares a single great-grandparent with her.

And she's not sure if that's heartbreaking or relieving.

A line a billion girls long, and they're all just her… How literal is that image supposed to be?

There were parents. She remembers screaming for them. She remembers… A voice… that wasn't hers. Not words, but… Her hair, she wore it in three buns. Someone had to put it in those buns the first time. Infants don't do their own hair.

There had to have been parents. Human beings just don't spontaneously generate in the desert.

And they had to have come from somewhere, but…

Apparently not the sort of somewhere that they left records of themselves.

* * *

1/25/2

It's dinner again. And this time, Kylo's chatting away, keeping up a stream of commentary on the meetings he's had.

He absolutely knows that Rey is, at best, only aware of his voice, but that's fine.

That's why he's doing it. Right now, she's thinking, and feeling, and just wants him nearby, not really focused on her.

So, he's more or less talking to himself, with her in the room, letting her think/feel.

And, as food wraps up, and as he's stretched out everything he's got to say about his meetings well beyond the reasonable point, he feels it when she's ready to say something, so he shuts up.

"If we're going to do this, I want something for us."

He nods. He knows what _this_ is. She's been thinking about it intently for days now. "Okay, uh… What sort of something for us?"

"There's got to be some time when we're not The Master and Mistress. There's got to be time for just Kylo and Rey. Not… six minutes here and an hour there. We can't _always_ be on all the time fixing every problem."

"Like… A few days a month off, something like that?" He thinks he can probably swing that. His people have off time, and off shifts. He could have off time, too.

"Yeah. Something like that. Just you and me, and maybe the Maji, or maybe just us, and… If we go somewhere, we don't get recognized, and we're not… being the Handsome Prince and His Lady."

"I'm good with that." He stops there for a moment. "I… Okay, speaking about saying things out loud, I assume you know this, but… I don't want to be the Master forever."

She nods. She's not sure exactly when he began to see a future where he wasn't going to be the Master, likely about the time he figured out that Lord and Lady Ren, The Emperor and Empress of the Galaxy wasn't ever going to happen. But she did notice it.

"I know."

"Good. Uh…" Pieces of the shape of _The Master,_ what that means as a political reality, begin to take clearer shape in Kylo's mind. "There's a bit less than six years to the first elections. Then five years after that to the next ones. So… How about, we'll be the Handsome Prince and His Lady, and then, a year before the second election, I'll announce that I'm stepping down, let other people run, and, in addition to making sure we've got a few days a month where we're just us, come the second set of elections, we're done. We'll retire or… Whatever. Stick around long enough for the new Master to come into office, and then that's it?"

Rey thinks about that. "So… a bit less than eleven years?"

"A bit less than eleven years, and then we can… go be Maji, or… I don't know, travel. Just be Kylo and Rey. Get a good ship, make our money gambling, or something, I don't know, maybe the Master and Mistress have a pension or something, and take our children to see all the things we never got to see, do the things we didn't get to do, but think they'll like."

That's a lot more 'for us' than Rey was thinking, but she likes the idea. More than that, she likes the idea of a definite end time to Lady Ren. Eleven years. She can to _anything_ for eleven years if she knows that at the end of eleven years, they'll be done.

If they'll be done. "Do you think they'll let us go?"

Kylo shrugs. "How would they stop us? I'll let them know I'm going, and if no one attempts to replace me, one day we'll just be gone, and… Kinear—"

"Who likely won't be alive in eleven years."

Kylo doesn't love that idea, but Rey's likely correct. It's not unheard of a human to live to be 105, but it's not common. It is unheard of for a 105 year old to have enough stamina and metal clarity to run something like the Order. "Or whomever will take over. I mean… If we do an even borderline competent job of this, someone will want to take it over when we leave, right?"

"I'd think so."

He lays his finger on her Order of the Maji pendent. "Eleven years?"

She nods. "Eleven years."


	12. Dildo

1/26/2

The next day, Jon's in Kylo's office. He's gotten through the update on finding someone else to completely take over Tactical Design, which Kylo cares about, in the sense that it's something that has to happen to get Jon to move up to his head of Diplomacy, but he's not exactly riveted by, but…

Anyway, when Jon finishes with that, he ends with, "Am I boring you?"

"Sorry. Uh… Distracted," which is true. He spends a few moments explaining Ellie's Handsome Prince and Lady plan, and then wraps it up with adventures in eating out and movies, and that part of seeing the movie was attempting to locate something like the sort of grand romance they're trying to be, and then that gets him thinking about the joke they didn't understand, so he says, "What's a dildo?"

Jon just about chokes at that, but after he gets breathing again, says, "Possibly the most ironic question you could ask me."

Kylo blinks.

"You really don't know?"

He rolls his eyes. "No, I get my kicks by seeing if I can get you to swallow your tongue. We could feel from the context it was some sort of sex joke, but…"

Jon asks in disbelief. " _What_ movie did you see?"

"The Mix Up?"

Jon blinks and decides he might have to go watch it. "I didn't realize it was that risqué."

Kylo's still looking at him.

"A dildo is a fake shaft, Kylo. One made of plexiplastic or glass or something like that."

Kylo thinks for a second, and then his lip starts to quiver, and then he starts to laugh. Finally, "Oh! Yeah… That makes more sense," comes out of him. Then he laughs harder, getting what Jon meant by 'ironic.'

Jon looks _very_ amused by that. "I'll bet. So… uh…" He's got a very naughty smirk on his face. "You were watching a movie with dildos in it? With Rey? In public? That _can't_ have been on purpose."

Kylo sighs. He's not _that_ sheltered. "If one had been on screen, I'm pretty sure I could have figured out what it was. They kept making fun of the one character by calling him one. 'Just like the real thing, but plastic.' They mentioned that a lot, and the actor was… yeah, just too perfect and plastic to be real, so… The nickname makes sense now."

Jon sniggers a bit at that. "Oh my."

"It was supposed to be a romantic comedy, but besides the sex scenes, we were both so bored we wanted to cry."

"Well, there are movies that are just collections of sex scenes with not much plot and less dialog, often featuring dildos, but generally you watch them in private, or maybe with a few very close friends, on your personal holovid player, in your personal rooms."

Kylo rolls his eyes a bit before saying, "When the first making out scene started, we were… uh… well, we didn't know it was going to end where it did, so we were a little surprised to see that apparently that's something people watch in public."

"Generally, no. I mean… it's a big galaxy, and there's likely somewhere you can see shows like that in public, just not anywhere I've ever been. Also, there are good romantic comedies, but since the one you and Rey went to was by a director who is kind of famous for making ridiculously sappy, overly-dramatic pap, with stupidly complicated plot lines that depend on coincidence to solve, maybe you'd want to avoid them in the future."

"So, that's not the whole genre?"

"It's a sub-genre. Some people really like overly dramatic papfests. Me not among them."

Kylo nods. "I can understand that. The write up didn't sound terrible, but… _fuck_ , was it!"

Jon's nodding along. "So, do you want to… give Rey some ideas of what this story looks like?"

"Yeah. I read stories as I child, and my nannies told me some, but I don't really remember them."

"I'll get some holovids for you. Do you have a proper projector? You miss so much if you try to watch them on the screen of your datapad."

"No."

Jon nods, and then thinks a bit, and says, "How serious are you about this?"

Kylo shrugs a bit. "Why?"

"How packed is your and Rey's schedule for the near future?"

Kylo just looks at him. "Packed, enough. I think I've got some free time in… I don't know, ten days?"

Jon's nodding. "Check with Rey, grab a day both of you are free."

"Again, _why?_ "

"Because we're going to book one of the cinemas, and I'm going to have a chat with my Mum and Ellie, and we're going to sit you two down and watch some shows. If you're going to do this, you might as well have a _good_ mental image of it, and… I mean… You're the Master, Kylo. If C8 offers to buy out a cinema for a day, not only will they bend over backwards to make sure you and Rey have the best time possible, but they will absolutely play any movie I suggest to them."

"Okay… Let me… _Hey…_ " He switches from his verbal conversation to a mental one with Rey.

 _Busy. Give me a moment._

"She's doing something she needs to concentrate on. Tell me what else is going on."

"We got a signed contract for our mediation services!"

Kylo lets out a very un-Masterish whoop of pleasure.

Jon grins at him. "I may have done that, too, when Threepio told me."

"Who is it and what are we mediating?"

"Unthar K'Aar. He's the leader of a fairly unstable system, and when his son was alive he had a decent plan in place for passing on his throne to him. Because his son was bigger, badder, better armed, and more willing to kill people than the leaders of any other faction. Unfortunately, his son died last year, leaving him with identical twin grandsons. Traditionally first born follows the footsteps of the last King, but no one's entirely sure which one of them is oldest. To make matters worse, his different tribal heads are rallying behind different grandsons, and because no one knows which one is older, they split daddy's ships and holdings down the middle."

"And we're going to?"

"Determine who the best man is, and offer to back him. Both factions are more than powerful enough to cause local trouble, but not powerful enough to withstand twenty minutes of CityKiller bombardments. K'Aar's hoping that by bringing us in to mediate, and then as enforcement of the mediation, that we'll be strong enough to stop the plotting until whichever grandson can build up his own forces enough to hold his own throne."

Kylo's smiling. "So…"

"You'll do some studying, learn a bit about their history and culture. We've got a few experts also digging deep to _really_ learn it. Then you'll talk to K'Aar, get a feel for his concerns and where he wants to see things go. Talk with the boys. Feel them out. Then you and the experts sit down, figure out which one to pick, and offer up binding mediation."

"And people will pay us to do this?"

" _Well._ " Jon is beaming. "They will pay us _well_ to do this. And, just to sweeten the deal, if they accept the offer we give them, we'll get free access to put recruiting stations on all of their planets."

That makes Kylo even happier.

"And, we haven't set that up, yet, but my mom," he sounds wary, "and apparently, independently of her, Threepio, have both come to the conclusion that we should offer embassy space here to any system that wants it. Give them a place, for a fee, to do the business that's either too dangerous, or too messy, to host on their own soil. If this goes well, we'll see if they want an embassy on the _Supremacy,_ too. Start getting some full-time dwellers onto the I-Deck."

Kylo's nodding. He likes that idea. As he's about to verbalize his approval, Rey says, _Free now,_ in his head. _What's going on?_

Kylo keeps looking at Jon, trying to maintain some level of focus on him, so he's not leaving his present surroundings to talk to Rey.

"She's back?"

And apparently failing miserably at it.

He nods, and thinks to her. _Jon's suggested that was a particularly bad example of a romantic comedy. And that good ones exist. On top of that, he's also suggesting that since Ellie's asking us to play the parts that a lot of people have as stories in their heads, that maybe we should sit down and watch some of the stories._

 _Okay… does he have the stories?_

 _He's got a list of them, and is fairly sure that any of the cinemas on the_ Supremacy _will bend over backwards to show them for us. So, can you arrange your schedule ten days from now to watch some shows with me?_

He can feel her thinking through that.

 _Are these shows that are appropriate to bring the kids to?_

 _Would you want to?_

 _I know Rose would like to see some of them. Finn and Poe will be off then. So that leaves the two of us as the resident adults, so…_

 _I'll ask._

"Is this the sort of thing children can watch?"

Jon ponders. What he knows about children would fit into a thimble. A small one. "Maybe? Does she want to bring the rest of the Maji?"

"We're low on adults right now, so yes."

"I can't promise it, but at least as best as I remember the movies I'm thinking about, kids should be able to watch them."

 _Jon thinks it'll be okay. He's not certain, but hopeful._

 _We can give it a try. Let me know when you're in the Cinema, and I'll bring them to you. And… We'll watch some shows._

He's smiling at that. _Good._ "We'll watch some shows."

* * *

At dinner he says to Rey, "Jon tells me a dildo is a fake shaft."

She thinks about that for a moment, finally figures out why he'd say that to her, and then starts to giggle hysterically, _finally_ getting the on-going joke of that movie. After a moment, and rubbing the tears from her eyes, she says, "What do you use one for?"

Kylo blinks at her. "Uh…" He can feel himself blushing, and he knows she did that intentionally. He shoots her a little, none to hot, glare. "Somehow, I didn't think to ask Jon _that._ "

She's grinning at him. "I bet he'd know."

"He probably does, which is part of why I'm not going to ask."

She's looking at him intently, with a lot of amusement in her face, and she's not _asking,_ but he can feel the desire and challenge in her gaze. He narrows his eyes a bit, and finally says, "Are those puppy eyes?"

"Rose would have to see them to tell me. Why, is it puppyish?"

"I'm not sure." He eats a few bites of his salad. "Why do you want me to ask so badly?"

She grins at him. "I have no idea, but just the idea of it… makes me feel good." And it does. In an… she doesn't know… odd sort of way, maybe. It's definitely sexual, but her mind's more involved with this than her body. Either way, though, she likes it.

"You like the idea of me talking with Jon about fake shafts?" He looks like he can't possibly begin to believe this.

Rey shrugs. Put that way it does seem a bit silly, maybe. She still _really_ likes it though. "I'm not saying it makes sense, but… Uh… Yes."

He closes his eyes, sighs, and then bites his lip, because, okay, it's not doing anything for him at first blush, but if she _really_ likes it, and he can feel it quivering off of her, eager and attentive… He attempts to imagine even beginning that conversation with Jon. The image won't form. He sighs again. "I honestly don't think there's enough vodka in the galaxy to get me to have that conversation with him."

That makes Rey laugh. And Kylo's pleased to see that she's not… bothered… disappointed by the fact he's not willing to comm Jon and ask. "Okay. But if there is…"

He shakes his head, chuckling a little. "I'll let you listen in. Hell, if there is, I'll invite you to join in." He thinks about it. "Maybe you could have the conversation, and I'll just keep you company." He ponders that. Rey talking about fake shafts… with Jon… okay, maybe he can kind of see what she likes about this. Sort of. If he squints.

She thinks about that. Talking with Jon about it, herself, feels mostly just informative. She might go do it, because, well, he likely does know how they work and what you do with them. Then she thinks about that more and decides that might be like measuring her naked for undergarments and fall under the 'I'm only human, please don't tempt me,' category. "Doesn't seem to be having the same impact."

He shrugs a bit.

After a few bites, in which he can feel her happily imagining a very… intense, and apparently, at least to her, quite sexy conversation between him and Jon, he decides to turn the idea a bit. "You're the one who's curious… what would you do with one?"

She blinks at him. "Uh…" She puts her fork down. "I'm not entirely sure what one even looks like, so…"

He half-shrugs, too. "I'm not either, but if it's a fake shaft, we're both acquainted with the general shape and size it's got to have, so… What would you want to do with it?"

Rey bites her lip. Now she's blushing, a bright, pretty pink creeping from her cheeks to her ears and collarbones.

Kylo's grinning at her. "Oh, you've got some ideas, don't you?" He knows that blush. That's her aroused blush, and when that comes up, he knows a good time is in the offing.

"I… Maybe… We could… look it up in the library. Or… Rose says there are channels that just show sexy pictures on our holovid viewers. We could… Get a better idea of what one is and what people do with it."

He quickly stabs his salad a few times, gathering a much larger bite of supper than he'd usually attempt to put into his mouth in one go. "Eat fast."

She sticks her tongue out at him, but does as told.

* * *

Putting 'dildo' into the search feature of their library is an education in and of itself.

Once the images start coming up, Rey says to Kylo, "So, apparently that statement about having to know the general shape and size…"

He's nodding, eyes wide, apparently having greatly underestimated the variation available in this particular endeavor.

He rubs his lips together. "Do you think they're all for humans?"

She's looking at… well, maybe the scale is off, but even if it is… "I rather hope not. That just looks… painful."

As best he can tell it's bigger around than his fist, so… "Yeah. I mean… maybe… some people like that…" After all, some of the drawings they've looked at certainly indicated that some people really like… big… gargantuan… shafts. Just, both of them thought that was firmly in the fantasy camp, and not something anyone would attempt to… well… make real.

But, as they keep scrolling through, size isn't the only apparent variation. The only thing they seem to have in common is they're all roughly cylinders. And roughly covers a lot of territory. And they come in apparently, not only every possible imaginable color, but way more textures than either of them would have imagined.

And it looks like some of them _move._

After several minutes of looking and scrolling, Kylo says to Rey, "So… you still want to find out what people do with them?" He's certainly curious, but… He also wouldn't mind remaining ignorant of anything involving the ones bigger than his forearm, or the ones that look like tentacles, or the ones that very clearly are the phallus of something that isn't even remotely human, and doesn't look like they've got any business fucking them.

She grins at him. It's clear she wants to. "Do you?"

A lot of them are sort of sleek plexiplastic or glass or metal, and he certainly wouldn't mind seeing some of them in action. Especially if the people playing with them happen to be women. "I'll admit to being a bit on the intrigued side. But I also want to be able to back out if it looks painful."

"We can do that."

He grins at her, and keys up the search feature. _Women with dildos._

She laughs at that. "You just want to look at pretty girls playing with them."

Kylo smirks at her. "So do you."

Her grin spreads. "And maybe some pretty boys."

His eyebrows come together as he looks at her. He can, probably, figure out why _one_ boy might play with one. But if you've got more than one guy… "Why would boys, plural, you know, more than one of them, together, use one?"

She shrugs and then giggles. "That appears to be one of those questions there isn't enough alcohol to get you to ask Jon, so I guess we'll just have to look."

He shrugs a bit, and then rolls onto his back, scooting up in their bed a bit, before saying, "You know what? It's too damn cold here for this." And a heartbeat later, they're in his rooms on the _Supremacy_ where they can be comfortably naked above the blankets.

A heartbeat after that, they're naked, and resting against the pillows, his legs stretched out in front of him, her between them. His chin is on her shoulder, and she's holding the library pad before typing in, _sex with a dildo._

 _5,980 responses._

Before she clicks on one, she says to Kylo, "Apparently, we're not the only people who might like the idea of this."

He kisses her ear, and she can feel his shaft twitch a bit against her back. "Apparently."

* * *

So, apparently, there are a _lot_ of things people use dildos for.

Obviously, on the most basic level, it's a penetration tool, and… It does look like a lot of the people who are using them in those pictures are having a good time. (Granted, Kylo does _not_ understand sucking on them. Rey's intrigued by that idea, so… Maybe if they ever get one… But… It looks kind of silly to him. He figures that if you have at least one member of the party with a shaft, that should get sucked on, and if no members of the group have a shaft, then, well, he's just not capable of figuring out what they get out of watching someone suck a plastic one.)

But, in their art books, the picture are… pictures, and…

Well, Rose had mentioned they've got channels that just do sex videos, and Jon had mentioned that there were movies where plot and dialog weren't exactly the point, and… It certainly appears to be a tool that's designed to _move_ so…

He's feeling a little flushed, and a little embarrassed, and really good, and kind of naughty, and he can feel a lot of that reflected back at him from Rey. And Kylo's not sure how much of it is originating from him, and how much of it is her, but…

"We're grown-ups. Married grown-ups. We're allowed to do this?"

Rey raises an eyebrow at him as he says that, looking for the sex channels. "Did you intend to ask that as a question?"

"No." He finds them. "There are fifty-two of them."

"Apparently, people really like sex. Aren't there only seven news channels?"

"Yeah." He almost spends a moment looking at what else they've got channels for, but decides that's the wrong kind of distracted right now. "So…" It feels odd. He's known for a while these, meaning the entertainment channels, exist, he's just never… attempted to use them before. But… "Okay, there's a search feature…" He types in _women with dildos_ (looking at the pictures means he's got a much better idea of what boys, plural, might do with a dildo, and… he's not averse to that, he assumes a lot of what was in those pictures must feel good, and he's somewhat interested in maybe trying some of it, but he'd much rather _watch_ something with women in it.) and a slew of videos turn up.

Kylo's chin is on her shoulder, and she's looking at the holovid player. "That's a lot of results."

He's nodding. Each one's got a title, a price (none are more than a few credits), a tiny key picture, and a short description. "Jon wasn't kidding about no plot," most of the descriptions are just lists of sex acts. "What do you think pegging is?"

Rey shrugs at that. Until ten seconds ago, she didn't know it was a sex term. "It's a video with a dildo in it. I'm going to assume it's got something to do with using one." She looks at the picture, notices there's at least one man in this video. "Let's find out." She taps the player, and the image of a woman walking down a hallway carrying a satchel of some sort pops up.

* * *

She gets to the end of the hall, knocks on a door, and a moment later it opens. Kylo would admit he was hoping the person who answered the door would be a woman, but… It's a guy, and a kind of slight one at that. Not particularly pretty or androgynous, this one is very obviously male, and not attempting to be anything else, but he's kind of small and lean.

"Hi, I'm Kelly. Your physical therapist. They told me you were having issues with your hamstrings and glutes."

"Yes, Ma'am."

The male is in a bathrobe, and if he's got a name, it doesn't seem to matter to the story. Kelly is kneeling on the floor, unpacking her bag, unrolling a long smooth mat, and placing a few… tools… next to it, along with towels and a bottle of oil.

"You're a dancer?" she asks, looking up at him.

He nods. "Yeah. I pulled my back last year when I wasn't braced properly for a lift, and ever since my low back, hips, and glutes are just _tight._ "

"What's tight?"

He shrugs off the robe, and underneath he's just wearing a tiny pair of shorts. Lean, yes, but there's some serious muscle on this man. Kylo can feel Rey's pleased with this choice, and can see her smile. Meanwhile, Kelly is dressed in some sort of too tight, shiny, neck to toe body glove sort of thing. It covers her, but it's skin tight and very thin, so the only thing it's really leaving to the imagination is her coloring and how much body hair she's got.

Kylo hopes she takes it off at some point, but he can't for the life of him figure out how she got into it in the first place. If there are fasteners on it, he can't see them. So, he's wondering if he'll get inappropriately distracted by the mechanics of the outfit if she tries to take it off.

The man is standing on one foot, and he lifts the other one, pulling it up, and gets it to a bit past shoulder high. "This. I should be able to get it flush to my ear."

Both Kylo and Rey stare in amazement at that. Kylo pauses it. "Can you do that?"

"No. You?"

He's shaking his head.

"Think he's a Force user?"

"Maybe."

He unpauses it, and they watch the dancer go through a collection of other stretches. Both Kylo and Rey are fairly flexible. Kylo spent more than a decade practicing the basic Jedi strength and balance poses. He can do a one-handed handstand, without the Force, if he feels like it. But this… The man is up on his toes, on one foot, and has his other leg pulled up behind him, holding it with his hands, saying, "See, my foot should touch my forehead."

Kylo's not sure how sexy this is, but he's starting to feel like he needs to up his flexibility training. After all, he's hit the point where he stopped doing the Jedi poses because they weren't challenging, but… This stuff would be challenging.

"Do you think I'm supposed to watch this and think about shifting my workout?"

Rey shakes her head. "I think you're supposed to be paying attention to muscles and wondering if he's going to fall out of his shorts."

Kylo glances down a bit, and notices that, yes, those shorts are really short, and the guy in question does appear to be in danger of slipping out of them.

"This is why I don't own shorts with a five centimeter leg."

She kisses him. "Love, you'd have spilled out of those little things just walking around."

He feels stupidly pleased by that.

The dancer does a backbend, and Kylo's nodding, "That, I can do."

"And likely with the same result." Because that's the move where the dancer's tip slips out of the leg of shorts.

They're both laughing at this.

"Do you think this is supposed to be funny," Kylo asks.

"Does it matter? We're having a good time," Rey replies, kissing him again.

"Nope."

The dancer seems to be done showing off. Kelly certainly doesn't appear to think what he's been doing is funny. She's very serious, eyes narrowed and appraising, nodding.

"I think I can help you. I need you to lay face down on the mat, legs apart. I'm going to start with your calves and work my way up."

"Will it hurt?"

"It might be a little uncomfortable, but if it hurts, let me know, and I'll use a lighter touch."

The next bit isn't funny. And all three of them, Rey, Kylo, and apparently, the Dancer, all really enjoy it. Kelly's got his calf in her lap, and she's stroking and kneading it. The Dancer's making some very pleased sorts of sounds, and she's saying things like, "You're storing a lot of tension here, and let me press just a bit harder here, just… yeah, just like that, just take it… there you go, good boy, just keep relaxing under my hands…"

It's kind of mesmerizing, watching her hands on his skin, the way she's stroking and stretching and kneading.

"We should really do that again, soon," Kylo says.

Rey nods. "Yeah. When we take a few days off, we're going to get that done again."

Again, Kylo's not sure if it's erotic, but he certainly wouldn't mind being the dancer, laying on the floor having a beautiful woman rub his calves while telling him to just lay there and relax.

He could certainly see doing that, and enjoying it.

As Kelly starts moving up the Dancer's body, rubbing his thighs and hips and glutes, Kylo's absolutely certain that this has moved out of the 'things that might be nice if they were to happen to me' space and fully into the 'that's fucking _hot_ ' space.

With the way Rey's squirming in his lap, this seems to be working for her, too.

"Good?" he says to her. He knows it's good. He can feel it. He wants to hear it, too. He pauses the video.

"Yeah."

"What do you like about it?" he asks, lips ghosting over her shoulder, raising goosebumps on her skin.

"Everything. I like imagining being the girl, and running my hands all over him. I like the idea of touching him like that, making him squirm. I like imagining being the dancer, and laying there, getting rubbed on. I like the way his hips are rocking. Trying to get her hands to move higher up. And you know he's rubbing his shaft against the mat."

He licks her ear and bites gently on her shoulder. His hands come to rest on her pelvis. He's just cupping her sex, warming it. "I absolutely do. You do that to me, and I'll be rubbing off on whatever's below me, too."

"I like thinking about what he's going to look like when he flips over. Is the tip of his shaft going to be poking out of the waistband of his shorts, or is it tucked into the shorts… Will there be a wet spot on the fabric, on his belly…"

"Do you think she's wet?"

"I would be."

"What do you think she's going to do with the dildo?" They haven't seen it yet. The 'tools' she unpacked, a roller, and some sort of pressure point massage tool, and a few… he guesses they're some sort of pressure point tools, too, though they aren't quite the same shape as the one she used on the Dancer's calves. There are three of them, about as long as his finger, in graduated sizes, with a blunt tip and a flared bottom. They look like they'd fit easily in her hand, and she can use them to really dig into the muscles of the dancer's hips and butt.

She's used the roller and the first pressure point tool, and the Dancer seemed to really like them, but not the last three.

"I don't know. He's got to be quivering under her. I'd just hop on him."

"That's certainly how I'd want that massage to end." He turns the video back on.

"Roll over," Kelly says, and the Dancer is eager to comply. And yes, he's hard, and the tip of his shaft is jutting out of the waistband of those ridiculously tiny shorts, and Rey is rocking against Kylo's hand, but he's keeping it soft enough that she can't get much real friction.

"You're evil," she says to Kylo.

He grins against her shoulder.

"I'd like us to do some stretching exercises," Kelly says.

"Okay," The Dancer's voice is breathy.

Kelly's on her knees between his legs, and she's got his foot on her shoulder, and is leaning into him, forcing his leg up and back. "There… how's that?"

"It's good. Still feels kind of tight… Up at the top."

Rey sniggers. "That's not your leg that's tight."

Kylo chuckles at that, rubbing his shaft against her back. "Very much not his leg."

"I suspected that," Kelly says. "Let's do the other leg, just to make sure."

They're both laughing at _suspected._ "You'd have to be blind not to see it," Rey says.

"She's being thorough," Kylo says as Kelly puts the Dancer's other foot on her shoulder and leans into it. The Dancer moans at the stretch.

"Tight?" Kelly asks.

"So tight. It's like… a muscle cramp I just can't reach."

She's nodding seriously. "I thought so. Sometimes, tensions deep inside us needs to be released. And that can be difficult without help."

Kylo laughs at that. "It's not that deep. Or that difficult. Just give him a hand and…"

"Fortunately for you, I've got the right tool for the job."

"Thank you!" The Dancer is looking grateful at that.

"That said, some men find it… intrusive…"

"Oh come on, just get his shorts off," Kylo says. "He's not going to mind if you touch his shaft."

"I don't care. I'm a dancer. I have to be able to bend."

"Okay. How about you take those shorts off, and I'll get it ready."

"Finally!" Rey says, grinning, looking forward to what she thinks is going to come next. She's not entirely sure where the dildo is going to come into play, but maybe the Dancer will spurt, and kind of floppy after won't be in any shape to "help" Kelly "release her own tensions."

The Dancer is peeling off those shorts and Kelly's reaching for the lube and she's picking up the smallest of the pressure point massagers and lubing it up and…

"Just lay on your back, and pull your legs up. This might be a little uncomfortable easing in, but once it's in place that tension should melt away,"

"Anything!"

And the Dancer is on his back, with his legs high and that thing, which both Kylo and Rey are rapidly deciding is not a pressure point massager, unless it's designed for a very specific sort of spot, or… okay, maybe it is… She's… from the looks of it, gently rubbing it around his anus, and… The Dancer really seems to like it. Apparently, she's hitting all the right spots for him, because he's moaning hard.

Kylo's not moaning, likely because he's gone perfectly still, watching so intently the _Supremacy_ could be under full attack and he wouldn't notice. That's… really… He's so hard he's afraid he's going to pass out. That looks _really_ fucking good.

Rey's done that, or something like it, to him before, and he really liked it, and… okay, yeah, he really likes watching it, because he couldn't really see her do it to him, and… He's breathing fast, panting almost.

Kylo swallows hard, as Kelly very slowly eases the tool into the Dancer, and he shudders all over at the feel of it. "That's a good boy. I can see you starting to relax. Here let's try that stretch again." Kelly works his legs, and the Dancer keeps moaning.

Rey's watching Kelly work, and… she can feel the power of that. Of holding the Dancer or Kylo or both, the fantasy slips between them, just in the palm of her hand, controlling their pleasure, making them quiver and moan.

Kylo's hips are starting to rock, gently, against her back, and she can feel his shaft, feel his enjoyment, too.

Rey wriggles against him. "You really like this, don't you?"

"Fuck yes!"

"Fuck?"

Kelly's still working the Dancer, still playing with his legs, stroking his thighs, and… Rey wants that kind of control right now, too.

"Please…" purrs off of Kylo.

She shifts a bit, so she's no longer between his legs, but over them sliding down his shaft, and he moans loud at it.

He feels so good. Thick and hard, and Rey's just easing down his body, angling herself so he hits all the spots she likes on the way down.

Kylo wants to close his eyes and focus on her body on his, but he also doesn't want to stop watching, and… The Dancer moans, too, loud, and the tool's inside of him, and Kelly's holding the base, twisting it, rocking it back and forth saying, "There's that's good. This should start to stretch things nice and easy."

She's rubbing her hands up and down the insides of his thighs, and the Dancer's sort of writhing on the mat, his shaft rock hard and jutting against his belly.

"How long has it been since you experienced sexual release?" Kelly asks, as the Dancer continues to try to, subtly, get her hand on his shaft.

"Too long."

"Ahh…" she says, gently stroking her fingertips down the length of his shaft.

Kylo whimpers at it. The Dancer does, too.

Rey glides up him, hovering a bit, so she's only, just barely, touching him, before sliding _fast_ back down. Both of them groan at the feel of that.

"Well, that's likely part of the problem, too. Sometime men need a good draining. Things can get backed up and swollen if you don't get drained often enough."

The Dancer's thrusting up against her fingertips. "And… do you have something for that?"

She grins at him. "Oh, I do. Again, some men find it… invasive…"

"I don't care, just… please…"

Rey squeezes her delta tight on Kylo, and Kylo whimpers again.

"Oh, sweet boy. I have just what you need. On your hands and knees now, love. I'm going to take good care of you."

Kylo hasn't felt like he's been in any danger of spurting from the sight of something… well… ever. Real danger. Like it might actually happen danger.

Except for now.

She's kneeling behind the guy, slowly pulling the first tool… maybe that's the dildo, just a small one, out, and sliding the second, bigger one in. The Dancer is keening as she does it. Face pressed into the mat, hands clenching in front of him. Ass high in the air.

She stares at him in satisfaction, and then bends, pulling one of his stones in her mouth, and one hand on his shaft, and she's licking up from his stones to… shit… there… He's still got the… thing… inside of him, but she's licking all around it, and the Dancer is practically crying he's so turned on. His shaft and stones are almost purple they're so hard, and Kylo's squirming in Rey, wondering if he can spurt just from _seeing_ something, and oh fuck, her tongue is… he bites his lip, hard.

The Dancer is dripping. A long steady flow of clear pre-spurt just easing out of him.

Kelly runs her finger through it, and says, "Yes, it's clear you need a good draining."

Then she pulls away, twisting to the side, grabbing a belt and… Okay, that's definitely a dildo, and Rey quietly says, "I think I know what pegging is," as she fits the dildo into the belt, and Kylo would nod but he's afraid if he so much as moves a single muscle he's going to lose it and spurt right now.

And then Kelly is up on her knees, pulling the tool out of the dancer, and then she grabs his hips, "This might burn a little, but in a minute you're going to feel so good," and then she just _slides on in_ deep and steady… and Rey's right… _that's_ pegging, and she's leaning over the guy, pinning his wrists to the bed, and her hips are setting a long, slow, deep pace, and she's whispering in his ear about how pretty he is, and how sexy, and how good he feels and…

 _"Fuck…_ " goes sliding out of Kylo's mouth.

Okay, it's just physically not possible for Rey to pin him like that. She'd need an extra thirty centimeters at least, but… Oh… That _looks good._

She can feel how he's watching it, and with a good grip on the base of his shaft, slips off of him. He shudders through that, because that was _almost_ enough friction to tip him over. "Here… You get into the right position."

He's on his knees, face pressed into the bed, arms stretched in front of him, and it's true, she _absolutely cannot_ pin his wrists with her hands. And, she also can't, comfortably, get her pelvis up against his ass in that position. His thighs are just too long in comparison to hers.

That said, she can use her Force to pin his wrists, and she can lay her hands on his ass, and it's not like they've got a strap-on dildo, or any sort of dildo, anyway, so… But her fingers work just fine, and she's very gently starting to ghost them down the cleft of his ass.

"How's this?"

Kylo exhales long and low, shuddering all through his body.

"And this?" Rey lays a kiss on his right butt cheek, and her lips are moving toward the midline, and…

"Wait…" He blushes. He hasn't gotten a shower since yesterday night, and, in general, on days like today where the most strenuous thing he did was move datapads from one side of his desk to the other, neither of them care much if he's gotten one in the last twelve hours, but if she's going to be licking his ass he wants it _clean_. "I need you to do that to me… really _need_ that… in three minutes," and then he's in the refresher before she can even shift her hands.

* * *

If asked, Kylo will tell you that he does not like the sonic. Mostly because the frequency is _supposed_ to be too high for human (and most humanoid) ears to pick up, but to him it sounds like some sort of small insect being tortured.

That said, there are exactly two situations where he prefers the sonic to soap and water. Both of which are coming into play right now.

The sonic gets you _clean._ It uses high-pitched vibrations and very fast puffs of air to remove dirt, oil, sweat, dead skin cells, whatever. Any and every bit of crud that could be on your skin or in your hair is _gone_ by the time you get out of a sonic. (That's also part of why he doesn't like them. He feels sterilized stepping out of one, and most of the time he doesn't want to feel like a surgical instrument.)

The sonic is _fast._ In the amount of time he could pretty much just get wet and maybe apply the soap to his body, he's _done_ in the sonic.

And since he wants to be _very_ clean, and do it _very_ fast, right now, it's _exactly_ the tool for the job.

He's back in bed before the dents where his knees had been in the mattress have had time to smooth out.

That said, if this feels even half as good as it looked, he is going to ask for it again, but after they've played around in the bath, because, really, he prefers soap and water.

* * *

 _Three minutes._

Rey's almost about to call him back. Given her position… It's not like she couldn't decide for herself if he was clean enough to lick. After all, she had a good view and could absolutely smell him, but…

Three minutes gives her _time._

She _thought_ she knew this man, and his sexual response cycle, inside out and upside down, and all of the wiggly little squarks of it.

Apparently, there are surprises available for both of them.

She knows he likes having his butt played with. She could figure (if she had known what pegging was) that he'd like watching someone else get his butt played with.

These are not surprises.

No, it's _how_ the therapist was playing with the dancer. It's Kylo responding to… Praise. The words. He'd thrill through whenever Kelly would call the Dancer baby or love or tell him he was doing so good. She's never played much with pet names for Kylo. They call each other love, sometimes, but that's more something he does for her, so she mirrors it back. Plus, calling him by his _name_ is such a thing for him, the idea of coming up with little pet terms for him never really occurred to her.

 _Doing so good. Taking it so well. Look at you, so pretty…_ She likely _should_ have figured that would do good things for him.

Kelly pinned the Dancer. She's got him down, on the bed, wrists held, and to a degree that leaves Rey cold. Too many… too much… everything. But Kylo… _I need you to do that to me…_

Again, it doesn't feel like a shocking revelation, or anything she shouldn't have put together sooner, but she can feel pieces sliding into place.

 _Control… That will always be a thing for us. Nothing ever grabbed me up and took me somewhere good._

Rey's going to grab him up, and take him somewhere _good._

* * *

She's got an amused look on her face when ten seconds later he's out of the refresher, so clean he doesn't smell like… anything. She's not sure if she likes that. Kylo should smell like… well, himself, but…

Later.

"Eager, I take it?" She gently trails the tips of her fingers over his shaft, which didn't even start to droop he was in and out so fast.

"I really am."

She pats the bed. "On your knees, love. Get down for me."

Then he's on his knees again, ass high in the air, an all over sort of _please_ just radiating off of him.

* * *

Every molecule of air in his lungs goes rushing out when Rey takes his shaft in her hand, gently pulls it back, takes his tip in her mouth, giving it a few gentle sucks, and then licks up it, over his stones, behind them, and then _there._

It's deep and wet and silky and squirmy in all the right ways and it feels a million times better than it looked, and he's rocking back at her trying to get _everything_ all at once.

She's got him pinned. Her Force is holding his wrists to the bed. He can't move his arms, and he probably can move his legs but he doesn't want to. He's got to just be there, feel it, and enjoy. There are a lot of things he's submitted to over the years, but this is the first time someone's made him _enjoy._

"Oh, look at you, quivering for it!" She kisses from his spine to the tip of his shaft. "I love you wanting me like this."

He loves this. All he has to do is _exist._ Just be here and absorb love and pleasure. It's _perfect._

"You're glowing, Kylo."

He doesn't know if he actually is or not, and feels too good to open his eyes and find out.

He probably can't spurt from this, but right now, that's fine. Right here, suffused with love and pleasure and… _Force_ her tongue is so wet and so slick and it feels so… He doesn't have words for that. This is where he wants to be, right here, right now, everything is exactly how it should be.

He's partially aware of the feel of her Force summoning the massage oil. She pulls back and he pouts a little at that, but he can hear the click of the massage oil bottle opening, and his whole body thrills at that, because he knows what's coming next. Then there's the anticipation. His eyes are closed, face pressed to the bed, and he's just waiting, feeling the heat of her body between his legs, but right now she's not touching him.

And then she is. With a full body shudder, he relishes her hands, slick with oil, both of them, on his ass, rubbing in warm, firm circles. Then her finger, slick and firm slips into him, and it does burn, but it's a burn that settles into his shaft, making everything harder and more sensitive, and he wants to fist himself, but she's got his hands pinned.

"I've got you, Kylo. I'll make you feel so, so good."

He already does. So good. Too good.

"Force, you're beautiful like this, all golden and flushed and hot for me."

He whimpers. _Beautiful_ spiked his desire, made electric pleasure arc through him.

"That's it, pretty love, that's it… Just hold out a little more. Let me watch you like this, gorgeous." Her finger is stroking in small, sure circles inside of him, and he knows she can feel how much he's loving this, and her, and how she's making him feel right now. "You're doing so good, love. So good."

He takes a moment to just breathe. Riding the feel of her in and on him, and breathing through the pleasure and pulse of her touching that little spot inside of him.

"Ahhhh… Look at you, so hard and eager…" Her other hand is just ghosting along his shaft. Gliding on the drop of slick at his tip. "So wet… Do you want me to lick it?"

His face is pressed to the bed, otherwise he'd be in danger of giving himself whiplash he'd be nodding so hard.

He feels her finger twist inside of him as she shifts position, slipping below him, between his legs, and then her mouth is on the tip of his shaft, her tongue stroking over the underside, and he's _right_ on the edge, feeling the floor peeling away from under him a hair at a time.

He doesn't have to say it, his stones are in her hand, and her mind is in his body, she can feel him both as a matter of her physical body on his, and her mind in his… She uses her mind to talk to him, _That's it, love, feel it. So hot and hard and_ ready _for me. Ride it, beautiful, don't fall over yet, just_ feel _it._

Force! He is. He's _right_ there, all through his body. Usually, here, a hair's breadth away, his body is focused down to his shaft and stones, but right now… Right now he's focused on them, yes, but… It's not _just_ them. This one… it's his low belly, and ass, and thighs, and everything's just, almost, _there._

His jaw is clenched, and his hips are rolling, slowly, he's pulling this moment just that much further out. He knows if he were to thrust, hard and fast, he'd be done in a stroke, two at most. So this is just a long, slow roll, pulling that much more friction out of the slide of her mouth against him.

She's sucking and pressing in tandem, getting that spot that makes him feel the twitch and pulse of his spurt, without tipping over the edge. _There you go, sweet boy. I can taste you on my tongue. Delicious. Up love, on your knees. Want you deep in me when you spurt._

He scrambles up, and wobbles for a moment before she helps him get stable. Then he's kneeling, and she's in front of him. _Hand in my hair, love._

Hands, right, he's got hands. His left one cradles the back of her head, fingers twining in her hair, as he guides her toward him, keeping his stroke shallow, no matter how much he wants to plunge.

 _Mmmm… Deeper, sweet love. You can go deeper._

That just tingles through him, along with the sight of it. Looking down at her, her lips wrapped around his shaft as it vanishes between her lips.

With permission he snaps his hips forward, shaft deep in her mouth, and as he does, she follows with her fingers, thrusting into him as he does to her, and one… two… her mouth on him, wet and suck, fingers inside, press and thrust and on two he's gone, twitching and moaning, body vibrating with his release.

He wants to watch, to see her swallow him down, but his vision goes white, and the room fritzes out, and for a moment there's just the _feel_ of it.

Then he's back, in his body, mind, and room. His vision is back online, and he watches her twitch as he's coming down, panting, tingling all over at it.

She looks up at him, grinning, and then pulls back a bit, wiping some of his spurt off of her lips, licking it off her fingers.

His eyes close and he shudders through that. Then he feels like he weighs a million kilos, and every muscle in his body has worked long and hard. Kylo flops back on the bed.

Rey snuggles in close to him, and for a moment they both breathe.

Finally, he says, "You're good, too, right?"

He feels her nod, and the amusement in her mind as she says, "You think I didn't ride along on your good time? That was…"

"Amazing."

"Yeah."

He feels loose and calm and light and so, so good.

"So, we going to get one of them?" Rey asks.

He nestles in close to her. "Yeah. I loved you doing that to me." He's petting her hair before he thinks to ask, "Did you like doing it?"

He knows she rode his release, so she liked feeling it through him, but that's not what he's asking.

"Oh yeah. It's… A kick, seeing you like that. All spread out and begging for it. I'll happily do that again."

"Good. I really liked that. You… taking care of me like that." And again, she knows that he likes their regular sex too, but this is a different sort of taking care of him.

Rey raises up on her elbow. "I'll always take care of you…" Now that she's not going at it hot, pet names aren't just tripping off her lips.

He's looking at her curiously. He can feel she's looking for something.

"Darling?" Rey shakes her head at that. It doesn't feel right. "I'll find something."

"Something?" He's blinking, too sleepy and blissed out to really follow what she's thinking.

"You like the pet names. I'll find one for you."

He grins at her, and pets her face. "Anything… Anything from your lips makes me happy."


	13. The Best Night

1/29/2

The days when Chewie and Finn come back from their adventures are always _the best days._ At least, that's the consensus among the kids at Lirium. (And Rose.)

And this time is no different.

But there are _best days_ filled with new stories and new hardware for the settlement.

And then there are _best days_ filled with new stories _and_ new foods for the communal kitchens.

And today is a _best day_ where box after box after box of _fresh_ produce and new goodies are being unloaded from the _Falcon._

"Where were you?" Rey asks, wind trying to steal her voice away. They've got to get this loaded and moved fast, or all of those lovely crates of yummy fruit and veg are going to be _frozen_.

Finn nods to the Faviers, all of whom are hitched up to sleds. "Hilthor III. It's harvest time, and they're low on bacta, so we stocked up and made a killing. There's at least a month of hay for the critters, and a _lot_ of goodies for us, too."

"Why were they low on bacta?" Critt asks, putting one of the boxes on another sled.

"They only had one factory that made the stuff, and it burned down. We got there with a ship full of it, they took every drop we could find, asked for more, so we grabbed more, and then one more run, and… well, we've got more food than we know what to do with now," Finn replies

"Small place?" Jacen asks.

"About twenty-five thousand Hilts scattered over fifty square kilometers. They've got the start of a decent town going, but they're mostly still farming," Finn says with a sniff, while handing over a crate of strawberries.

 _Which is good for us,_ Chewie growls, a cage of very unsettled… somethings… _Rabbits_ he says, apparently able to tell that Rey and Jacen don't know what those soft, fluffy things in the cage are.

Torine, back for another load of goods to take to the kitchen looks at the rabbits and blanches. "Don't tell me we're going to eat them! We can't eat them! They're too cute."

The adults glance at each other, as Chewie puts the cage on the sled with the hay for the Faviers on it. Finn's the one who rescues them. "They're fiber animals. That long fur can make yarn. Go on, into the _Falcon,_ grab another box."

"Fiber animals? You mean stew animals, right?" Jacen says, voice low.

"That, too. They do make yarn out of them, also. That's why we got them."

Chewie growls, quietly for him, _Figured you could use animals that breed fast, don't eat too much, give you something warm to wrap around yourselves, and then a good meal when they get old._

Rey nods at that. She also makes a mental note to make sure Kylo _never_ sees one, or rabbit will no longer be on the menu for them, either. Like Torine, he has a difficult time eating things he can empathize with, and these sweet, little balls of fluff have empathy written all over them.

"Sounds perfect," Jacen adds. "So, you gonna let me come along on the next one of these trips?"

Chewie and Finn both glance at each other, and then at Jacen, and back to each other. A third set of hands who can fly the _Falcon_ and sweet talk anyone who gets in the range of his voice wouldn't be a bad addition to their crew.

 _We'll talk about it,_ Chewie replies.

* * *

Five minutes later, when Jacen's in charge of getting the sled with another load of fruit and veg on it heading to the kitchen, Chewie asks Rey, _Can Jacen come with us?_

Rey shrugs. "I don't see why not. I mean, if you want him to." She sees the way Chewie's looking at her. It's clear that he thinks it's her job to have an opinion about things like this. She rolls her lips. "I don't know. I'm not his mother, and he's old enough to decide this sort of thing for himself. Right?"

Chewie sort of shrugs. It's clear that he's dubious as to the ability of seventeen-year-old human males deciding much of anything for themselves.

"I was on my own at his age."

Chewie nods. He doesn't say anything, but it's clear that he's thinking about how orphans don't necessarily make great parents.

"He is a pilot in training, so… If you're willing to put him in the Falcon. It's probably good for him to keep learning how to fly different ships."

 _We can always use more pilots._

"So. Yeah… I'm okay with him going. Just make sure he behaves and learns something useful on the trip. He's still a kid, sort of, right?"

Chewie pats her shoulder. _You'll get better at this. When we figure out what the next run is, I'll let him know and see if he wants to come along. Hopefully won't be a long one the way this one was._

"Yeah, what happened with this? Weren't you supposed to be gone for eight days?"

 _We were, but Finn wasn't kidding about every drop we could bring. We scraped the bacta supplies of three different settlements before we ran out of sources. They gave us exactly as much cargo as we could carry, and fifty thousand credits on top of that. If we could have found more on the cheap, they would have taken it. You don't notice how important bacta is until you've got to ration the stuff._

Rey would have to imagine that's true. Given how often she's helping to take care of small cuts and bumps and burns and whatnot. If they didn't have any sort of Force healing here, they'd likely be swimming in the stuff.

Chewie looks over her shoulder. The kids are back with the sleds, time to load up more food.

Then to the kitchen, cooking, eating, party time!

* * *

"You okay?" Critt asks Finn after he turns his head from the food and coughs. Again. They're next to each other, in the communal kitchen, sharing the counter, cutting up plums to pickle.

They're small, the size of Finn's last thumb joint, delicate, almost translucent purple tinged green. More sour than anything Rey thinks of as a _plum,_ but she's been told they make awesome sweet pickles, so that's what they're doing with them.

 _Jade plums._ Chewie had said when the kids were all drawn to them.

"Yeah," Finn grabs a plum, popping it in his mouth, grinning around it. Right now the whole settlement, minus Rose, who is getting Paige down for the night (and will be joining them soon), Poe (currently off doing whatever it is he does when he's not here) and Kylo, who isn't home, yet (and Rey hopes he'll join them), are in the kitchen, gorging themselves on the fresh fruit and veg. It'll only be fresh for so long, so they're eating their fill as they clean, chop, and sort everything for freezing, pickling, or turning into jams and jellies.

The kitchen smells excellent, and it's warm. Everyone is in there, all of the cookers are going, heating brines and simmering berries into compotes and jams, so for once, it's warm enough for everyone to be in shirt sleeves and trousers. But Finn's sweating. "Throat hurts a little," he says, feeling a bit of a tickle behind the roof of his mouth.

Rey catches that, and looks across the room at him. "Is that normal?"

He glares a little and then rolls his eyes. "Actually, yes. Every time we go to one of those farming communities, the ones with… Chewie, what do they call those things?"

Chewie howls.

"With them. They're like the Faviers, but smaller, with hooves and pointy ears that stick up. Anyway, I get within a klick of them, and my nose starts to run and throat hurts. I've been coughing and sniffling since we got to Hiltnor. Should be done in a day or two, though."

"Allergies," Kven says, nodding. "Before I moved here, I used to get them every fall. They've got shots for them."

"I'll ask MX-6 about it the morning." Because he'd really rather not end up feeling like his head is a leaky faucet every time they run into a settlement with horses.

* * *

 _Rey?_ Kylo's got supper, and is looking forward to eating it with his wife, but right now he's sitting in an empty cottage. A _cold_ empty cottage. He pokes the heater. It's on full blast, which means… He checks the thermometer, and outside is _cold._ Winter with a vengeance, indeed.

 _Communal kitchen. Come join the party. We could use someone who's handy with veggies and a knife._

He bites his lip, thinking. _Everyone there?_

 _Poe's off planet. Rose is getting Paige down for the night, otherwise, yeah. Finn and Chewie are back with a_ lot _of fresh produce. We're taking care of it. Jams, jellies, pickles, chopping things up for freezing. Xanth's got some music going. We're telling stories. It's a party._

He smiles a little at that, and she hits him with his mental image from more than a year ago of being able to join story time and be part of the gathering.

 _So, come on._

He takes a deep breath, lets it out slowly, decides that… well, if being in the same room with Chewie is a problem, he can leave. Then he strips out of his blacks, slips into Padme… Well, Ren now. The difference a few months makes, apparently. No matter what he's wearing, he's Ren, now. Kylo tucks dinner into their cooler, and grabs the two knives out of the block that he particularly likes. Then he bundles up.

It's _cold_ outside.

* * *

He pauses at the door. He's never actually been in the communal kitchen before. He knows it's there. He knows a lot of the kids don't see much purpose to using up space in their cottages for food storage, and prefer to eat together in here.

Plus, it's easier to rest knowing the little guys don't have a cooker in their places. Just that much less of a chance of someone or thing getting burned.

He knows that Poe also likes this set up. His ship doesn't have much of a galley, so this space is for him, too. And… for all he knows the Ticos might not have a kitchen in their cottage. Maybe they turned that space into a nursery for Paige, or… Actually, no, they slapped an extra room on top of their cottage. That's got to be the nursery.

Anyway… He's dithering. And shivering. The wind's cutting right through his cowl.

 _Come in,_ Rey thinks to him, so he does.

It's, especially compared to outside, bright and hot and loud. There's at least twenty-five people shoved in there, ranging in age from five or six (Sometimes Rugh will say she's five, sometimes six. MX-6's, the med droid, best guess, based on her teeth, is five and a half) to Chewie's 248.

Chewie.

He's just staring at Kylo; who's staring back. Every Force sensitive in the room can feel the tension crackling off of them. There's a lot of anger pouring off of Chewie, and Kylo can feel his defenses rising at it, along with a deep, heartsick shame. And sorrow, so much sorrow, that's wavering around Kylo like the black cloak wrapped around his shoulders. Grief, loss, regret…rage… It's pouring off of Chewie, a silent howl of loss undulled by time.

The Order kids, Jacen lead among them, are projecting a wave of protective feelings toward Kylo. He blinks, that's… new. But that also means they're starting to look at Chewie differently, because the wave of anger and pain from him is just overwhelming, and they don't know _why_ Chewie so clearly, vibrantly, passionately _loathes_ Kylo. Why him just being in the room makes Chewie flare sparking red.

Rey's stepped over to him. "Hey, come in," pulling him gently deeper into the room. Chewie turns away from him, and goes back to chopping up olmelts.

 _You're okay._ Rey's thinking to Kylo.

 _Maybe._

Jacen shouts out, "Turn this up; I like this song," and that gets the kids talking again. Then he sees Kylo take his cloak off, hanging it next to the other ones, and the knives he's got tucked into his belt.

"You've got your own knives?" Magiit asks.

"He's a tool snob," Rey says.

Kylo pulls a cutting board toward him, standing next to Rey, and scoops some of the peaches from her board to his. He really sees what fruit she's got and feels her giggling in his mind. _Yeah, I saved some. Might play with them later._

He doesn't blush. Intentionally. At least, not so anyone else can see. The tips of his ears feel hot. _It's not like it was a preference or anything. Just… what was available._

 _Uh huh… And what if I want to nibble one off of you?_ She lifts one of the pieces from her board, gives it a little lick, and then sucks on it before popping it in her mouth to eat it.

His eyes light up at that and an entirely different warmth spreads through his body. _I can likely go along with that._

 _You know I can hear this, right?_ Jacen thinks at them. _Probably about three of the other kids, too._

Rey whimpers. Kylo blushes, completely uncontrolled, now. Everyone near them is staring, feeling _something_ is up.

Jacen winks at them. _Nah. Just fooling with you. You two are pretty good at keeping your thoughts down. That said, if you're gonna think naughty at each other, keep your expressions under control. It's_ really _easy to see the bedroom eyes._

Kylo sighs, stabs the peach in front of him, splitting it through the pit, while holding hot eye contact with Jacen, and thinks at Rey, _I wanted to do this why?_

She leans over, up on her tip toes, and kisses him. "Because it's fun."

* * *

And really, a few minutes into it, it is.

Kylo doesn't often fondly remember anything about learning to be a Jedi, but sometimes kitchen duty was pleasant. Working together with other people you… well, in his case tolerated, in a companionable sort of way is nice.

And, Finn can really tell stories. He's _great_ at it, and apparently they had a good time on this latest trip. Listening to him, and yes, he does have to stop to cough a little now and again, apparently those _things_ he's allergic to set him off for a few days, is entertaining, and Chewie keeps breaking into the story with his own bits and pieces.

And it's just _nice._

Rose joins them once she's got Paige down. She's sharing Finn's cutting space now. And they're working companionably next to each other. He's peeling, she's slicing, nibbling choice bits from each other's fingers, and both of them are radiating a gently content glow just being together.

She's got some stories of doing this with her family. They were miners, not farmers, but they, and everyone in their mine, had a small garden for fresh produce, and harvest time was always a party.

And Kylo, as she's talking about bringing in the olmelts and swecklers and pumpkins and musk melons, decides to add a bit of his own past to it.

"Harvest time was year round where I was. We didn't have winter… At least not like we do here. It'd get cool. Deepest winter might mean a day or two of frost, and maybe a night of freezing rain, but nothing like here. We had snow, once, in fifteen years. Once the days got short, we'd switch from warm crops, fruits, berries, to cool ones, potatoes, cabbages, rye, Rose's olmelts."

Rose is looking across the table at him, curious, "You used to farm?"

"Luke was a farmer first, Jedi next, so his temple… monastery… whatever, was a farm. We had crops going year round."

Chewie adds a bit, _Took us three years to find a planet with the right climate for that. He wanted a place that wasn't too wet or dry. Not going back to Tatooine or Dagobah. It couldn't get too hot or too cold, and it couldn't have too many people on it._

"Best I knew, we were the only people on it," Kylo says.

 _Lando took care of that. He bought it for Luke. There were three small settlements there when we found it. He made it worth their while to go elsewhere._

Kylo hadn't known that.

 _Took him four more years to get it set up after that. Clearing out a place. Building it up. He had some of the same domes we've got here._

Kylo nods. "Yeah. Our gym. One of the meditation spaces."

"Did Luke set up his monastery on his own?" Savarah asks.

 _R2 was there,_ Chewie says.

"But you weren't?" Xanth asks Kylo.

Kylo shakes his head. "If it took him three years to find the place, that means I was two when he got there. They didn't take me there until I was eight."

"Were you the first student?" Cassie asks.

"Second. He found M'Gll before I got there. Second of the New Jedi." He looks to Rey. "Second Maji." He goes back to chopping more peaches. He and Rey have finished the blush ones and moved onto the white ones. "They had a peach orchard?" he asks Finn.

Finn doesn't say anything until Rose gives him a bit of a kick under the table. "Yeah. Peaches, plums, apricots, pluots. Almonds. Lots of them, but we don't need to do anything with them, so they're already stored."

"And berries," Elias says. He's been taking kilo after kilo of berries, and gently heating them on the stove with lots of sugar. "We're going to have jam until the end of time."

"Good. Plain toast is boring," Opal says.

"So's plain porridge," Kylo says.

Chewie howls. _Luke was the only person I ever met who preferred his plain. Not even any butter or salt. Just naked, mushy oats and wheat._

Kylo rolls his eyes at that. "He liked jam and sugar, or salt and butter on his just fine. Probably better than just fine. But if he liked it, then he'd want it, and wanting was on the direct route to the Dark Side path. And no one who isn't starving, especially not Jedi Master Luke, ever _wanted_ plain porridge."

Ostrae, who's overseeing very carefully straining the seeds out of the raspberry puree she's making for jam for her cookies, looks at Kylo and says, "Jedi weren't allowed to have yummy food?"

He shrugs a bit. "We cooked for ourselves, and none of us had your touch with it. But, in general we weren't supposed to want things, and it's easy to want yummy things, so food was plain and nutritious. We did cookies because we were able to talk him into the idea that physical training days were hard, so we needed something with a lot of fat and sugar to keep our energy up. He might have just wanted a good excuse for cookies, too.

"When things got ripe, we could just pick them and eat them." He takes a slice of peach and pops it in his mouth. "This is good, but there's something to be said for eating it the second it's ready, right under the tree it grew on.

"We didn't let food go to waste, so anything that didn't get eaten when it was fresh was put away, preserves, frozen, dried. Luke kept trying to get fruit to dry properly, like it did on Tatooine, but it was too humid for that. Even the Jedi Master couldn't make good fruit leathers in 70% humidity."

"So there was jam for your porridge?" Kven asks Kylo, voice quiet, feeling shy at speaking directly to him.

"There was, but… Luke ate his plain. And it's not like he'd look down on you or say anything if you put jam or butter or salt on your porridge. You didn't _have_ to eat yours plain. It wasn't a rule or anything like that. Especially when kids were first with us. New place, new rules, new everything, no family or friends around. Luke didn't want us to feel like we were being punished, and a diet of plain everything certainly feels like punishment. But he was the one who 'knew how to do it right.' And he was the one telling us about the dangers of pleasure and wanting and attachment. And, especially as kids… eating is a big sort of wanting and pleasure.

"So, M'Gll, she's the one who got there before I did, ate hers plain. And would drink room temperature water with it. And she'd be just fine. Never giving so much as a hint of anything less than perfect, smug satisfaction at that. The only thing M'Gll ever wanted was to be the perfect Jedi, and at least from where I was sitting, she was well on her way to it.

"I'm his nephew, and Leia Organa's son, so I'm supposed to just ooze perfect Jedi-ness out of every pore, and…" He takes another bite of peach. "I want things. I _like_ wanting things. And plain porridge and lukewarm water is fu—awfully gross, okay?" The teens snigger at that catch. "You have too many meals of that, and you stop wanting things, all right. You stop wanting everything and get really listless, which I _loathe._ But, again, I'm supposed to have been a super-Jedi since birth, so I'm not supposed to want anything, and I hate it. And, of course, Jedi aren't supposed to hate anything, either. I always felt like everyone was staring when I'd even put salt on my food, or add some jam to my breakfast toast, or… Whatever. They probably weren't. A lot of it was likely in my head." He shrugs. Most of these kids likely don't need to know about him and Snoke, not yet. "But it always felt that way." He glances to Chewie, able to feel him really listening to him. "Most of the time I felt like every step I took, and every move I made there was wrong." He taps the Maji pendant on his throat. "I felt like that about almost everything I did before I put this on."

Chewie just looks at him. Kylo can't read the expression, but he can feel the emotions aimed at him are more sad than angry.

That's probably good enough.

For now.

* * *

The kitchen is the warmest bit of the entire settlement by the end of the night.

It's really _nice_ in there.

Nice in a you-could-toss-off-all-of-your-clothing-and-cavort-about-naked-without-having-to-keep-yourself-swaddled-from-head-to-toe-in-blankets sort of way.

This is relevant, because, as the fruits and veg have been dealt with, and the tools put away, and the children have headed back to their cottages, Kylo and Rey _and_ Finn and Rose are lingering, cleaning more and more slowly, looking to take advantage of the very nice and warm galley, and the privacy that would come from being the last ones in there.

If, say, they _just happened_ to be the last ones in there.

Rey and Rose are talking with each other, keeping up conversation about what they hope to get done soon, namely snow breaks, because they've spent more than enough time shoveling snow out of the street, and… well, they've hit the point where they just don't have much room for it. It's a meter high in most places now, and then bits they've shoveled over and over are two meters high, or higher now, and…

Something's got to get keep some of the snow out of the town, and Rose has been researching snow breaks.

But, really, there's only so much to say about snow breaks, and there's only so much cleaning to do in the kitchen, and there's only so slowly you can do it, and… Well, when you've wiped up the same bit of counter for the third time, it becomes really obvious that you're intentionally _not_ leaving.

Finally Rose just says it. "Look, you two have an entire other ship that's not freezing, so off you go, and let us enjoy here."

Rey breaks out in giggles as both of the men look scandalized and refuse to even get in the neighborhood of meeting each other's eyes. She grabs a few peaches, and Kylo's knives before saying, "Come on," and porting him back to his room on the _Supremacy._

Once they're there, Kylo flops onto their bed, saying, "Remind me to never eat in there."

She laughs at that. "I'm sorry, did I misunderstand what _you_ were hoping to do in there?"

"No, but if _I'd_ done it, then I wouldn't need the reminder."

Rey laughs at that, and sits next to him, pulling off her jacket. The peaches are lying on the bed next to them. She glances at them, and him, and back to them, a very amused and sexy smile on her face, "So…"

He sighs a bit. "You really want to see this?"

The grin on her face isn't on any level obscure.

Kylo glances at them. He can remember being fifteen, and just so, so, so _randy_ all the fucking time, and so bored of his hands, and just _desperate_ for _anything_ new. And they were new. Soft, ripe, juicy, sun warm… But… right now, they're just a few orbs of fairly tasty vegetable matter and not even close to triggering any interest on his part. "They're a hell of a lot less interesting now that you're in my world."

She laughs. "I'd really hope so." She settles herself in his lap, and kisses him gently. She got the sense of his last few thoughts. "If it's not fun, they can just be part of breakfast."

He shrugs a little. "They could be fun, and maybe one day they will, but… right now, thinking about them and sex just makes me feel desperate in a way I don't like."

She kisses him. "Then they'll be breakfast."

He kisses her, long and slow, feeling his body rise against hers. His hand comes to her breast, cupping it, feeling the soft, supple weight against his palm.

He kisses it, through her shirt. "This. You, soft and warm. A pretty handful against my lips. This is what I want." He kisses again, feeling her nipple perk through the fabric of her shirt. He glances back to the peach. "That was just killing time until you came along."

Rey squirms invitingly, and then pulls her shirt over her head. His lips follow the path of naked skin from her throat to her breast. His thumb traces over her nipple, and he admires the tanned flush of her skin. "It's been months since we've seen a warm day. Longer since we were playing in the sun on Lirium, but the sun's still in your skin." He nuzzles against her curves. "I love this."

She strokes his hair, fingers trailing down his neck, dipping under the collar of his shirt, tracing along the line of his shoulder. She tugs his head up, looking him in the eyes. "And the stars in yours."

Their lips meet again, and again, as they wriggle each other out of their clothing, as hands follow a familiar dance.

It's not long before he's deep in her body, and she's deep in his mind, and both of them are rocking, slick and eager, against each other.

And not long after that, they're curled together, under the deep blankets of their bed at Lirium, breathing in unison, chasing slumber.


	14. All The Problems In the Galaxy

1/30/2

Rey wakes up a lot earlier than she'd like to.

Knocking, on the door, and… She's up, pulling on her robe. If someone's at her door this early, something's wrong.

She's half-turned to Kylo to tell him to go back to sleep, but… oh… okay. He slept through the knocking. She decides it's a good thing that he's comfortable enough here to sleep through someone coming to their door in the middle of the night.

She opens it, and Rose is standing in front of her. "Rey… Can you, come over?"

Rey blinks. "Uh… Sure, what's up?" She waves Rose in, heading to her room. If Rose is here, this isn't the sort of thing she can do in her bathrobe. "Hold up." A moment later, she's out of their room, dressed, ready for whatever it is Rose is here for.

"It's not allergies. Finn's sick. Like… throwing up and high fever and… sick."

"Oh." Rey winces. Of all the things you don't want. "What did MX-6 say?" One of the great things about a med-droid in a settlement this small, is that if you comm him, he'll come to you. One of the bad things, is that if MX-6 has made his visit, and Rose is here, it means there's not much MX-6 can do.

"Hiffa virus. Anti-viral resistant Hiffa virus. And apparently it's stupidly contagious, spread by breathing in cough droplets," Rey winces, harder. A lot harder this time. "so… In the next twelve to twenty-four hours, we're pretty much all going to have it, so…" Rose muffles her mouth in her sleeve as she coughs.

"So, you want to see if I can help?"

"Yeah. That's MX's best guess for keeping this from running wild. All he can offer is to make us a bit more comfortable while we go through it."

"Okay, you call Poe?"

"Yeah. I told him not to come home for the next ten days, unless he wants to do it in anti-haz garb."

"It lasts for ten days?" Rey groans. Ten days of everyone sick is _not_ anything she's looking forward to.

"Yeah. Finn's volunteering to be your test subject. See if there's anything you can do to curb it or speed it up or…"

"Great." She rubs her forehead. There's got to be something she can do, but nothing is immediately springing to mind. Then she notices that Rose is sweating. "You're sick, too."

Rose nods, and then rolls her eyes. Her husband just got back from a _long_ trip. "Yeah. I did a tad more than just breathe the droplets, you know?"

Rey nods. "Is Paige sick?"

"She's not fussing, and since MX said it's caught by breathing in the droplets, neither Finn and I have wanted to go into her room."

"That makes sense. Okay. I think the first thing we're going to do is see if we can keep Paige from getting this."

Rose slumps a bit in relief. "That would be good."

* * *

Rose and Finn's home looks the way it always does.

Well, except for MX-6, the med-droid, standing in the living room. He's humanoid, light silver, with glowing blue eyes, and, in a galaxy of many, many races, he'd be easy to mistake for some sort of organic creature.

Apparently, when it comes to medical care, a lot of organics like things that also look and feel like organics.

So MX-6, save for the glowing eyes, the never changing expression, and the silvery skin, does. (Apparently, organics also like to be able to identify non-organics at a glance, which is why MX-6 is silver with glowing eyes, instead of human colored.)

Finn and Roes's home absolutely doesn't smell the same.

Usually, Rose's home smells like spice, tea, and whatever's been simmering away in the cooker on low, getting ready for dinner. Today it smells like… Rey actually doesn't know. She's never run into something her nose less wanted to experience than this. It's the single worst thing she's ever smelled, and as an ex-scavenger, she's run into some mind-bogglingly unpleasant substances in the past.

She chokes a bit heading in, and MX-6 says to her, "Hiffa virus is known for that smell. There are many viruses that cause intestinal distress, but that particular smell is the calling card of Hiffa."

"Wonderful. What is Hiffa?" Rey asks, figuring the more she knows, the better the chance she can do something about it.

"It's a viral infection that starts in the lungs, multiplying and spreading through cough droplets. In the first stage, it appears to be a mild sore throat and cough, worsening to sweating and fever. That will last for twelve to thirty-six hours. Then it settles in the intestinal tract, resulting in a high fever, and the body evacuating everything."

"Is it fatal?" Rey asks, noticing Rose going straight into her bedroom to lie down.

"Only in settlements where IV liquids and calories aren't available. Dehydration and malnutrition are the primary killers in people with Hiffa. If you can keep the patient well-hydrated and fed, they'll survive."

"And you can't make it go away."

"If it was standard Hiffa, I could, but it's a long-lasting virus, staying active in a person's system usually for three or four days after all symptoms have passed. For an anti-viral to work, people have to take it long after they're feeling better. Most of them don't. Which means that an anti-viral resistant strain has popped up, and that's the one you all have now."

"Wonderful."

MX-6 cocks his head. "Well, on the upside, in a week and a half, you'll all be immune to Hiffa."

"Lovely."

"Indeed." MX-6's blue light eyes glow at Rey as he says, "Do you think there's anything you can do?"

"That's the questions now, isn't it?"

* * *

It's not difficult to find Finn. Between the smell, and the retching noise, and the fact that like every other cottage on this planet, they've got one refresher, there was only one place he was going to be.

Rey knocks on the door, and quietly says, "Can I come in?"

There's a groan from the far side, and she takes that as a yes, and enters.

The smell was bad _outside_ of the door. It's staggering inside. Finn's mostly naked, he's still got his sleep shirt on, curled on his side next to the toilet, smeared with some greenish brown stuff Rey would rather not contemplate, and she's sure Finn would have preferred it not have come out of his body.

But, today's not the day for getting what they wish for.

"Hey," she says softly.

He tilts his head in her direction. Waves of hurt and sad and awful are just pouring off of him.

"I'm sorry," comes out of his mouth. "We were out longer than we thought we'd be, so I made sure we rushed right home. Cut a day and a half off the trip. If we hadn't rushed home, this would have hit me on the _Falcon_ and…" And whatever comes after that doesn't have a chance to get out of Finn's mouth because he's on his knees, throwing up again.

Rey kneels beside him, and rests her hands on his back. He's scalding hot to the touch, skin slick with sweat, and shivering as he retches. When she focuses on Finn, she can feel the virus. It's a stretchy dark muck flowing through his body. Tendrils of it weaving through every system of his body, the bulk of it lining his innards. Apparently, his body knows what it's doing. Most of the muck is in his guts, so it's emptying those guts out.

Getting a feel for it, she can see how it'll go, spreading along. It's tenacious, creeping into any system it can get a toehold in, and breeding fast. She can feel Finn's system trying to fight it. Trying to purge it. His light is on fire, burning it out. It's breeding faster than he's killing it, right now. But every load of it he gets out of his body, is more he doesn't have to kill, and it's not killing Finn's fire, so eventually, he'll beat this into submission on his own.

It's just not going to be even remotely fun.

The problem is, she doesn't, just by feeling, really have any sort of plan for what she can do to help this.

Other than lay her hands on Finn, and just wash him in a general sense of calm.

Judging by the way he's groaning and still throwing up, it probably doesn't help.

* * *

From there she checks Rose. It's there. Not as much, but it's there. She's in bed, on her side, curled into a tight ball, shivering. Her fever is coming up, but, at least now, it hasn't spread into her intestinal track.

And that's where the start of a plan begins. Maybe, if Rey can head this off…

Maybe.

* * *

From there she sprints up to Paige's room.

It is true that when Finn gets home, he does want to see his girls.

It's also true that when Finn gets home, he wants time with his _wife. Alone time_ with his wife. So, it wasn't exactly an accident that he got home a few minutes _after_ Paige went down for her long afternoon nap.

And when Paige got up from her nap, she got to have some quality time with Daddy and Mommy in the kitchens, eating supper, playing, and 'helping out' with food prep. (Mostly by gumming a few tiny bites of plum and apricot.)

And then Mommy put her down to bed, where she was in their home, on her own (Yes, there's a comm that Rose keeps on herself so she can hear what's going on in Paige's room) _not_ breathing in the hazmat that was issuing from Finn's lungs.

So, unlike everyone else on Lirium, who spent at least six hours, in an enclosed space, with Finn, Paige spent about an hour and a half in her daddy's company.

And thus, when Rey gets up to Paige, and takes a moment to get a feel for her, she smiles. Paige certainly has the virus; it's there, but just a tiny tinge of it.

She lets the sleeping baby lie, creeps out, closing the door quietly, and then heading to Rose and Finn's bedroom. "I've got the start of a plan. I'm going to see if Chewie can help." In other circumstances that would have likely gotten some questions, but Finn just groans a bit, and Rose curls into a tighter ball, shivering harder.

* * *

She's at the Falcon a second later. "Chewie!"

A moment later, he sticks his head out of the hatch. _Rey?_

"Sorry to wake you." She explains what's going on, and follows that with, "How's the air cycling on the _Falcon?_ "

 _Good enough._

She takes his hand, and lets her senses flow through him. "And you can't catch Hiffa."

 _Can't catch most viruses that humans can get._

"Feel like doing some babysitting?"

 _Sure._

"I'm not sure if it'll work, but I'm going to see which of the kids have a tiny viral load, see if I can kill it, and then get them on the ship with you. Get them out of here."

 _We can do that. I'll get it ready. Just make sure you're right about killing it. I've got one refresher, so I'm in no situation to deal with a bunch of kids with tummy bugs._

Rey's about to leave when she remembers last night. "Chewie, was that all right? Last night?"

 _Did you see it not being all right?_

"I'm checking. You said, before, you wouldn't be in the same place with him."

Chewie shrugs a bit. _If he was still the same man he was when he killed Han, I wouldn't be in the same place with him, but… If Han can forgive it, and he can start acting like a person… how can I not tolerate him?_

She gives him a hug. "Thank you. He's…" she's not even sure what the word would be for this. "Intense, about you. Regrets what he did to you."

 _He damn well better. Not like he accidentally stepped on my toe or broke one of my toys._

"Yeah, he knows."

 _Good. Get me the kids._

* * *

"Okay, Paige, come here, Sweetie" Rey says to her niece.

Paige looks irked to be up this early. She's annoyed by the fact that her mama isn't cuddling her. She's disturbed by the loud retching sounds coming from the refresher, and the moaning between retches. She doesn't much like the smell also coming from the refresher, and Rey doesn't blame her one bit.

And, as a ten month old, she's expressing being irked the only way she knows how, by crying, loud and incessantly, because according to Paige, getting some cuddles with Mama and nursing is pretty much the only thing that could possibly fix matters.

"Sorry, baby, I'm pretty sure that's a really bad idea, now."

Paige is utterly un-mollified by that.

Rey closes her eyes and feels the virus moving through the baby in her hands. It's just wisps of it, right now. Faint smears of black muck. She can feel Paige's light, her immune system, gearing up, ready to fight, and she boosts it, a bit, feeling it attacking the black muck.

She focuses down further, feeling her own light, and setting it against the black. It's slow, and tiring, but she can surround and crush it. Split it up, scatter it, feed it to Paige's immune system, which is avenging against it, roaring in victory.

The little girl in her hands cries, fever spiking, sweating, her intestinal track making some unhappy rumbling noises. She spits up, a little, but by the time they're done, twenty minutes has passed, and the virus is gone.

"Okay, come on, Paige, I know you're not feeling very good right now, but it'll get better soon. We're going to go to PapaChewie, and he's going to get you in some clean air, and cleaned up." Rey doesn't waste any time, she ports Paige and her stuff directly to Chewie, who isn't exactly thrilled to be dealing with a messy baby, but, he understands.

He takes the baby girl in his massive hands, half-coos half-growls something comforting at her, and she does calm, a little.

He nods to Rey. _The others?_

 _I'm making house calls. We'll see who we can save from this._

* * *

The correct answer is: Paige. Everyone who spent the whole night in the kitchen is oozing with germs.

Except, apparently, Rey, Savarah, Xanth, and Cassie. The lightsiders with natural healing chops. The lightsiders with natural healing chops, who were so good at this healing thing, they didn't even have to focus on the virus to kill it. It just waltzed on into their systems, took a look around, and promptly died.

Five of them, against seventeen sick kids, and the Ticos.

And, she likely should have expected this, but Critt and Ostrae are sinking _fast._ Darklings both. Critt not only doesn't have any healing skills, but his dark is more or less rolling over and just giving up in the face of the virus. Ostrae's got no Force specialty of any sort, but apparently her personality alone is making her just spiral inward in a dark circle.

Jacen's up, eyes bright, fever bright, but he's all over keeping up with Critt. Enjoying getting to 'help take care of him' for as long as he can keep standing. Elias and Muni are sick, but not falling too hard too fast, not yet. They're fairly well balanced, but have enough light, and enough Force to help stall the virus. They've got Ostrae. Again, for as long as they can keep standing.

Rey's looking at them as she's leaving to go back to the Ticos. Hours… maybe a day, tops, and then it's going to be her, Kylo when he's not Mastering, MX-6, and three kids among nineteen violently sick people.

Rey sighs as she heads back to the Ticos. It's going to be a _long_ week.

Unless… well, her immune system beat the virus into oblivion before it could get a foothold in her system. Cassie, Xanth, and Savarah's did the same. She got Paige's to beat it out, too. So… Maybe…

* * *

Kylo wakes with a jerk, head spinning, something just got his attention, but he doesn't know what.

And a second later, he doesn't care. His head _hurts._ So does his throat.

"Fuck you, Finn! Allergies my ass…" and then he starts to cough.

"Master Ren?"

That gets a jerk from him again. C8's voice. Probably what woke him up. He groans, and then opens an eye. Yes, he's at home, which means C8's getting him through the comm, which means… "What time is it?" followed by more coughing.

"Fifteen minutes until your meeting with Grand Admiral Schiff. Since your coffee was still waiting at your door, and I didn't hear or see you, I decided to risk calling."

"Good plan. Uh…" Kylo seriously thinks about sitting up, but that seems like it would take a stupidly large amount of energy. "C8, talk to Schiff, see if he actually needs to see me today."

"I can do that, sir. May I ask why?"

"I've got a cold. Some asshole didn't keep his germs to himself, and now I've got them, and Schiff is what… Eighty-seven?" Too fucking old to catch whatever the hell this is.

"Eighty-three, sir."

Kylo burrows deeper under his blankets. It's really fucking cold this morning. He's shivering. "If I've got this after spending an evening on the far side of the room from the guy, I really don't want to give it to Schiff, so…"

"Done, sir. I'll find out whether he actually needs to see you, and if he does, I'll patch his comm through to yours."

"Okay. Uh…" He's so tired. "Uh… If this is just our usual monthly meet up, reschedule it. And… Uh… Breakfast, lunch, dinner, and my datapads. If you could get them all on a tray or something… maybe with some extra blankets… I'll… stop by eventually and grab them. Try to work from home when I've gotten a bit more sleep."

"I'll take care of it, sir."

"Good." And then Kylo rolls over, burrows deeper into his blankets, mentally curses at Finn some more for giving him a cold, and goes back to sleep.

* * *

"There's got to be something you can do, right?" Finn says, wishing he was dead. "Like what you did for Paige?"

Yes, there's _something_ she can do, but… By the time she got to Finn and Rose's second thoughts began to creep into her mind. "You probably won't like it," Rey says to Finn, who's half-lying on the floor, half pressing his head against the side of the toilet. She saw how Paige's body dealt with just a tiny bit of the virus when she ramped up her immune system. Finn's got a full on raging case of it, so…

His voice is rough as he says, "We're both going to be wishing we were dead in two hours if you don't do anything, and Paige can't spend forever with Chewie."

"Paige had barely any virus in her, and…"

"Just do it, Rey."

Rey looks over to the lump that's curled into a little ball on their bed. Rose isn't talking. She's shivering and sweating and getting worse by the minute so…

"Okay, but…"

"Do it."

Rey lays her hands on Finn's shoulders, letting her Force swim through his system, finding his immune system, feeling it fighting, hard, steady. The virus is reproducing faster than the immune system is killing it, for now, but it's not killing the white cells, which are reproducing faster than the virus.

His body will, on its own, eventually win this fight. She's just… speeding it up. Giving it reinforcements.

She focuses on that, on the little light sparks flowing through him, making them stronger, making them reproduce, getting more of them into his system, bolstering them in their fight.

She can feel his fever rising further, and he's shaking harder, and then he's not under her hands because he's lurched up to start throwing up again.

Rey's wincing as he messes himself. She's got his immune system on overdrive, and his immune system is fighting the virus, by excreting it and cooking it. She stays next to him, gently rubbing his back as his body does everything it can to empty itself, and when he's done, slumped back on the floor, she lets herself feel what she's done. "Two days, maybe three. They'll be rough, but you won't be down with this for ten days."

He nods, weekly, lying on his side again, eyes closed, skin slick with sweat.

"You empty?" she asks.

"Maybe."

He's… looking off. In a way Rey really doesn't like. And she's starting to have second… third… thoughts about having done this. "Okay, I'm going to clean you up as well as I can, then get you to the medbay. You're likely going to need intravenous fluids, and Rose isn't going to want to share a bathroom soon."

He groans at the thought of Rose, and then whispers, because his voice won't hold for regular speech, "Don't do this to her."

"How bad does it hurt?"

"Bad."

"Okay. You just lie there."

* * *

She _can't_ get Finn cleaned up. Every time she tries, he's wracked with more spasms. There shouldn't be anything left inside him, and by the third or fourth time he's just retching, but…

Overkill. His immune system is fighting _hard_ right now.

Too hard.

She's not sure if she can get it calmed back down, either. Or if she should try to mess with it any more than she already has.

* * *

MX-6 looks, as much as something with one expression can, concerned when Rey ports in with Finn cradled in her arms and Force, and very gently lowers him onto to one of the cots.

"What did you do to him?"

"Super-powered his immune system."

MX-6 tuts. "Are you sure that's wise, Rey?"

"No."

Finn's on his side, shaking. The droid steps closer, his "hand" which is set with several sensors, pressed to Finn's forehead. "His fever is at 40.1, and he's dehydrated…"

"You said that's common with Hiffa."

"Dehydration is, but usually not this soon after onset, and his temperature is much too high." The droid heads, quickly, to the supply room and comes out a moment later with a cooling blanket. As it's swaddling Finn in the hydromesh fibers, it says to Rey, "Most viruses and bacteria cannot survive at more than 37.2 temperature. The immune system, when working normally, will boost above that level. That said, humans cannot survive at above 40, not for long."

 _Shit._ Rey doesn't need MX-6 to fill in the blanks for her. Get someone's immune system working too hard, and it'll cook them just as well as the germs.

"Might I suggest, that if you experiment with this more, that you don't 'superpower' any more immune systems. Maybe just a slight tweak?"

"Is he going to be okay?"

"Oh yes. The next few hours won't be much fun, but I can keep him hydrated and cool enough to avoid any permanent damage. If we couldn't, this absolutely would have been fatal, but as is, it'll just be deeply unpleasant."

Rey grits her teeth. "Wonderful."

"That said, dehydration is a very serious side effect of Hiffa, so when you are out and about, keep watch for signs of it. We'll likely need to run IV fluids in everyone with it, at least some of the time."

"Do we have enough IVs?"

MX-6 looks around. Right now the medbay has four beds set up. "I have eight beds, and I'll get them set up. So as long as we don't have to do everyone at once, I should be fine."

"Force willing."

* * *

"By all means, let the Master rest. The last thing we need is everyone coming down sick," Schiff says to C8. "Besides, for the first time since our meetings began, the only thing I have to report is that we've actually met our monthly targets. And that will certainly hold."

"Thank you, sir. I'll let him know."

"Did he tell you what he's down with?" Schiff asks. He probably shouldn't be, but he is curious as to what, possibly Kylo could have caught. And part of it is genuine curiosity. And part of it is that he, like the rest of the general staff, knows that, somehow, Kylo leaves the ship at night, and goes somewhere, and if he's got something exotic, that could help them figure out _where_ he goes.

"He said it was a cold, and I could hear him coughing. Why sir?"

Schiff's grinning. "Because my wife makes the finest hot toddy ever. Whatever she puts in there'll cure anything that ails you. I have a feeling she'll appreciate him deciding my old bones didn't need to be exposed to whatever plague he's got. She'll stop by with a flask of it for him sometime today."

"I'll make sure he gets it, sir."

* * *

Schiff remembers the first time he noticed that Ren might be worth something. By the time the biggest chunks of the debris from the _Supremacy_ were cleared, and they had a rough count of who among the officer class was still alive, Admiral Schiff was the highest ranking, longest serving naval officer. (Though they did have to call him in from the Uquistor system, 297,000 light years away from the _Supremacy_. Which did, indeed, have a lot to do with him being the highest ranking, longest serving naval officer left.)

And, he was the only one Hux could stand. (Possibly because the entirety of the two of them interacting with each other was a ten minute call in which Hux informed him of the disaster with the _Supremacy_ and pointed out he needed a Grand Admiral, ten minutes ago, and barring that, as soon as possible. The trip, at hyperspeed, should have taken nine days. He got his personal Navi team to cut it down to six. And then he took command, through his comm system, while en route. When he arrived, he'd been running what was left of the First Order Navy, save the _Supremacy,_ for almost a week, competently. Then he showed Hux the navi chart they used, and from then on Hux was almost bordering on pleased with him.)

So that put him in a very good position.

After the battle of Crait, he, like most of the professionals in what was left of the First Order, was stuck in a situation where they could back the technological wonder child who very clearly spurted in his trousers when he blew up an entire system, or they could back the unstable rage puppy with the Vader fetish.

And though all of them would have preferred a different set of people to champion (many hearts broke the day it became clear that Captain Phasma was not going to be rejoining the high command, in that she seemed fairly stable and was decently popular with the troops, she was the one many of them _wished_ had survived), that's who they had.

And for Schiff, it wasn't even a remotely difficult decision.

At almost 81, he was too damn old to go rogue again. It was one thing when the Emperor fell, thirty-three years ago. He was in his prime, and he had a command of professionals he could count on. Back then he didn't need to even think about it. He watched the second Death Star blow, sent the order for his command to get out and regroup, and once everyone still alive had been counted, he and his got out of anything approaching Rebel territory and began to reassess the situation with an outlook as to what was likely to happen next.

For Schiff and most of his colleagues, execution for war crimes was the answer, so they decided not to attempt to seek a peace.

And between then and Snoke's rise, he and his gathered strength, and took over a fairly comfortable chunk of the galaxy.

That fairly comfortable chunk was, unfortunately, located too close to Snoke. And when Snoke rose, Schiff ran the numbers, and rapidly decided that if he stood against him, he'd be ground to dust, but if he offered to take him and his in, they'd likely be able to continue as they had been. So, he threw in with the monster.

When Snoke fell, he was too old, and didn't trust enough of his command, to go rogue.

So, the technological horror or the rage puppy.

Schiff went all in for Hux. Even with what Hux had done to the Imperial Officer class. Even though Hux wasn't much of a military tactician; he enjoyed killing people way too much to be a functional military leader. If Schiff had had his way, Hux wouldn't have commanded anything that was even close to lethal. Instead, he would have given Hux as many credits and people as he wanted and let him build his own research center. In the hands of a competent tactician, Starkiller, that tracking device, the plethora of other gadgets Hux came up with, would have made the most effective military force ever to fly this galaxy.

And while Hux didn't have a whole lot of use for Imperials, he very much had a use for Imperials who were good tacticians who actually understood what he did and appreciated it.

So, yes, once it became clear Snoke was out, and Ren was in, and Hux was going to get him out, Schiff went all in for Hux. Better a genius sociopath, a _predictable_ genius sociopath, than a toddler having tantrums.

The day Schiff arrived, Hux had called together a meeting, with all of what was left of the high command, and Ren, and offered up a carefully curated collection of things that needed to be done to get the First Order into something remotely like flying shape. Anyone with any technical background could see that some of the things on the list were the equivalent of buffing the rivets to a high shine, (and one of them literally _was_ buffing the rivets to a high shine) and some of them were literal life and death matters.

The idea was to have Ren set the 'priorities' of the list.

Hux, of course, had set this up for Ren to pick the obvious, and in several cases, _wrong,_ things, to show off how incompetent he was as a leader. Because, after all, at that point, not everyone was all in for Hux, and not everyone understood what he could bring to the table as the Supreme Leader.

Schiff, having written half of the list, _understood_ that the man who sent the whole fleet after one fucking ship less than an hour after the Navy had been decimated by a suicide attack, was not competent to be anywhere near the Supreme Command, so he was willing to do what was necessary to take him out.

Granted, at that point, literally all he knew about Ren was his folly at Crait, his reputation for extremely destructive temper tantrums, that he was a personal attaché for Snoke, and that he had some sort of Force skills. And he had his entire army shoot at a phantom. (At least, according to Hux, Ren was screaming about shooting something, but none of them could see whatever it was. Other versions of the story indicated Luke Fucking Skywalker was there, withstood the bombardment, because of course he did, and then Ren took the field and physically cut him in half. That's part of the reason Schiff backed Hux, Luke Skywalker appearing out of nowhere to stand off against the land force of the First Order sounded like a ghost story. But… Schiff wasn't there. And in the years since, he's come to the conclusion that Luke Fucking Skywalker probably was there, but it also didn't matter. Ren's not the first commander he's served under to see the occasional ghost or make a stupid decision. He is one of the few who's attempted to learn from his mistakes and do better, and that's worth a LOT.)

So, he walked in with his mind shut. That rumor about Force sensitivity was far too likely to be true, so he thought about literally nothing but the contents of the list.

He expected Ren to just glance at it, pick the top five, and then command they do them.

He was pleased to see Ren actually read _every_ item on the list. (The list was one hundred and seventy-three items long, intentionally.) And… he didn't hate seeing Ren carefully question Hux on some of the items which, given the dense tech writing around them, Ren didn't understand, but once he grasped they were in fact the equivalent of buffing the rivets, he just _looked_ at Hux, and Schiff realized that Ren knew _exactly_ what Hux was doing.

For a heartbeat, Schiff tensed, ready and waiting for Ren to pull his saber, and Hux to pull that mono-molecular blade he was rumored to keep on his wrist, but Ren went back to reading the list. Apparently, he knew, for the time being, he needed Hux to keep the First Order flying.

And that intrigued Schiff, because apparently, there was a chance that Ren might actually win this thing. There was a chance Ren might, possibly, be good for the First Order. Sitting there, watching Ren read the list, the idea that maybe there might be someone who wouldn't run the First Order into the ground, or kill it for kicks and giggles, began to spread through Schiff's mind.

As he was realizing that, Ren looked up at him, just for a few seconds, and then went back to the list.

And then Ren continued to read the entire list. And asked more questions. And then he began to pick.

He got the obvious ones. _Obviously_ , hull structural integrity, restoring the grav field to the entire ship, restoring life support to the whole ship, and full communications through the entire fleet _had_ to happen. If he hadn't picked them, they likely would have just started ignoring his orders from that moment on.

Then he spent a moment looking at the list, and said, "Air cycling? Is that not part of life support?"

"No, Ren," Hux replied. Half the table tensed because Hux hadn't said Supreme Leader or My Lord. They slowly relaxed as it became clear Ren wasn't going to hit him for it. "It's the system that cleans the air."

Ren's eyes narrowed slightly, and he just _looked_ at Hux again. Schiff doesn't know what Ren was thinking. He does know what he was thinking, namely the rumor that Hux got his rank by offering a report on the woeful inadequacies of the security of the kitchens, taking advantage of said inadequacies, slipping poison into the kitchen system and not being willing to administer the antidote until he got his stripes. (And the fixes he designed to safeguard the kitchens were approved.)

Snoke gave him those stripes.

The kitchen improvements were implemented.

And everyone didn't die.

"Cleans it how?" Ren asked.

"In a good system, if filters out dust particles, makes sure the gaseous mix is ideally suited for the people on the ship, kills germs."

Ren nodded, and looked over the list. "We don't need a state of the art one to keep flying, do we?"

"It will have absolutely no impact on the ability of the _Supremacy_ to keep flying," Hux replied.

But Schiff, and anyone else who knew ships, which was at least two third of the officers at that table, knew that without correct air cycling, they'd all die of CO2 poisoning, or someone would get sick and it would spread through the ship like wildfire, or just… Just dust. Without cycling, the dust builds up, and it gets static charges, and next thing you know a chunk of your ship just exploded.

But, no, it doesn't, immediately, or literally, effect the ability of the ship to fly, at all.

Kylo spent another moment reading, and then nodded, and said, "When we do the life support systems, make sure air cycling is working properly, and upgrade it if it needs it. The absolute last thing we can afford right now is for our surviving soldiers to get sick."

The rest of the crew looked at each other, and one, General Hapian, said, timidly, "My lord, what about our weapons system?" There were multiple versions of upgrade/fix/secure/improve the weapons systems on the list. Schiff still isn't sure if Hapian asked about the weapons because he was one of Hux's plants, or because, as a General, he didn't exactly grasp how precarious their situation was.

Either way, Kylo said to him. "Who exactly do you think is going to attack us? The Resistance is down to one ship, and when they called for help, no one was willing to come. Thanks to General Hux, the New Republic is no longer an issue. Our surviving fighters and destroyers will keep us covered as well as we'll need, but for the time being we have to secure the space we all currently _living_ in."

One of the others, and Schiff knew he was a Hux plant, asked, "Shouldn't we at least attempt to find the number of dead and wounded."

Ren sagged a little, and then said, "We already know the number. Too many. But the dead aren't going to get any less dead. And if we haven't found someone who's wounded by now, they aren't going to survive. So we'll focus on getting our home back and flying so we have a place for our living members."

That was the moment that Schiff switched alliances.

He knew, that given time and enough money, Hux could design a fantastic air cycling system. Assuming those reports that Hux wrote after Ren gave his commands were even close to true, he did. He also knew that Hux was the kind of man who might put poison in it just for kicks.

Ren, meanwhile, chose it, over weapons, over his own comforts (and they were on the list) because he didn't want his men to get sick.

And now, more than two years later, as the chill of old age is seeping into Schiff's bones more and more each day, he's appreciating that again.

Because if whatever cold Ren has is the sort of thing that would take him down overnight. It's the sort of thing that could have killed Schiff.

And when he explains it to his wife, she's also pleased by the idea that Ren valued her husband's health enough to not meet with him.

Though, because she's been with the Empire, and then several years when Schiff was a renegade on his own, and then the First Order, she does ask him, "Do you think the air cycling Hux put in works?"

Schiff sighs. "I'll put it on the list of things to double check."

Just because Hux could design an amazing air cycling system, and just because he reported implementing one, didn't mean he did, or for that matter that he didn't sneak some sort of kill switch in there, just because the idea of using it amused him.

And if the Master is sick, now would be an excellent time to make sure the air cycling on the _Supremacy_ works.

* * *

On Rey's second set of rounds through the Maji, Jacen and Critt volunteer to be test subjects. She can feel that for Jacen, this is a chance to be useful, in a way most of the rest of the group just _can't._ As soon as there's someone besides Rey who's vaguely adult and functional here, the better. Plus, (and this is likely a sign of exactly how sick Jacen is, normally he's much better at keeping his desires under wraps) he's clearly radiating that the sooner he's feeling better the more he can put into taking care of Critt (he's got some awfully detailed fantasies of doing so), who's a shivering lump in the next bed, occasionally moaning.

That said, one of those moans is "Me, too." so, apparently anything Jacen can do, Critt can do, too.

Maybe. Rey's feeling awfully skeptical about attempting to mess with Critt's system.

She doesn't pump Jacen's immune system nearly as high as she did Finn's, but, just like with Finn, in a matter of minutes he's gone from bad to worse, and any hopes he may have had at taking care of Critt are gone in a wave of stomach emptying nausea and brown-green excretions.

She did not, apparently, nail _slightly_ more.

Which means bringing Jacen to the medbay, where he, too gets his own cooling blanket, IV drip, and a gentle sponging off as needed. (Which he, unfortunately, needs more often than he'd like.)

MX-6, by virtue of his mechanical face, _cannot_ look skeptical, but apparently he can project that feeling awfully strongly, as he's swaddling yet another of Rey's charges in a cooling blanket to keep his body from cooking his brain past the point he can heal.

Or maybe it's just staring at two people she's more than rather fond of, who, in her attempt to make them better, all she appears to have done is make them _worse_ is eating at Rey.

Then she's back to Critt. "Are you sure you want to try this?"

He's pale, and shaking, but not quite at the puking up his guts part of the illness, yet. "If you can figure this out, all of us can get better fast, right?"

"Faster."

"Bring it on."

"Okay."

With Critt she keeps him at about half as much as Jacen and gets the same result, if slightly less bad.

Sitting between Critt and Finn in the medbay, Rey's gritting her teeth, and getting the sense that when you get a nasty virus your immune system goes after it as hard as it can _without killing you_. Making it do more is likely _not_ a good plan.

She wonders how many of the first Jedi accidentally killed their patients by pushing their immune systems too hard.

She sits between them, head in her hands, and tries to think, or barring that, _feel_ a way to make this _better._

* * *

Two hours after talking to the Grand Admiral, C8 adds a small flask, with a pretty ribbon around the neck, to the tray of breakfast, lunch, and dinner sitting on the table in Kylo's room. Attached to the pretty ribbon is a note: "Grandmere Schiff's hot toddy. Pour 10 mls into warm tea or cider. Good for sore throats and cough. Thanks for not spreading the germs! –Thea Schiff"

After all, just because her husband has obtained the highest rank in the Order, short of Master of the Order, doesn't mean that Thea Schiff stopped playing the game.

"Thoughtful" little gifts to keep your commanders thinking well of you is part and parcel of being an officer's wife, and she's _very_ good at her job.

Making sure the other officers' wives that she likes also get a heads up, is _also_ part of the job. After all, a good tide rises all boats, and Thea Schiff isn't about to let a good tide go to waste.

By the time her husband has gotten the first report back on the full diagnostic on the _Supremacy's_ air cycling system (Yes, it works just fine. Yes, there's a kill switch in there. And yes, they found the cyanide tubes. And, of course, yes, as of right now, there doesn't appear to be a way to remove the tubes without killing the _Supremacy's_ life support system, but… Well, that's why they've got engineers and back-up systems. _Fucking Hux!_ ) there is a collection of little bottles of various teas, salves, lozenges, and home remedies from all over the galaxy, each with a thoughtful little note, all waiting for the Master or his Lady to come pick them up.

* * *

There's a heartbeat where Kylo's awake and doesn't know why he's awake. A moment when he's just blinking and…

And it's over, and his body is _bolting_ for the refresher as fast as it can while trying to simultaneously curl in on itself as his guts scream and spasm into the worst cramp he's ever had.

Whatever the fuck Finn brought home, it's _not_ a bloody cold.

It's almost bad enough for him to call out to Rey, but if he's this sick, and she's… not here… Fuck… He doesn't know if she's sick or well or tending to others, and… He hurts. He hurts so bad, and his body is spewing everything he's ever eaten out of it, and…

And in a moment he went from being afraid to call out because he doesn't want her to get ill, to being so bad off he can't focus down well enough to scream out with his Force for hers.

* * *

"Rey?" Xanth says to her, as she's making rounds. Mostly just cleaning up, making sure the sick kids have blankets and towels and a soft hand to pet them from time to time. Make them feel more comfortable.

"Hey," she says, quietly.

"We've got the kitchen and chapel cleaned out. There's not a speck of virus alive in either of them." Granted, that wasn't terribly difficult. Hiffa can't survive below 15 degrees for more than an hour, so they just opened the doors to any room that didn't have people in it.

"Good."

Xanth nods to Opal and Tourine, both of whom are lying on the floor. They're hot, so, so hot, and the floor is cool tile, so that's where they are. "They look so sad."

"Yeah, I know."

"Immune boosting doesn't work?"

She half-shrugs. Finn might be getting better, at least, his fever's gotten low enough he's no longer in the danger zone. "The side effects are really nasty."

"Oh." He sits on the floor next to the twins, gently stroking their shoulders, getting a feel for the muck of the virus. "Have you tried killing it?"

"A little, with Paige. It's reproducing faster than I was killing it."

He nods, and then says, "Every one dead is one that doesn't make any more viruses."

"That's true. Feel it. Can you find a way to kill them without having to do it yourself?"

"Why not myself?" He's looking up at her, concerned.

"How many hours do you want to spend doing this? Everyone still needs nursing and cleaning and tea and…" And Rey's been up for almost twelve hours now, which isn't unusual, but she only got three hours of sleep before that, so she's _tired._

Xanth nods. "Let me see what I can do."

"Thanks. It's been a long day, make sure all of you get rest, too."

"Uh huh… Are you getting a nap?"

Rey looks at the twins on the floor. She's not really doing anything to help anyone, just going from cottage to cottage and mopping up messes. But right now, she can't think of anything else that might help. She just feels stuck.

And maybe part of being stuck is she hasn't eaten anything since dinner and it's well past lunchtime. No food and three hours of sleep isn't a good combination for easy work. And this isn't easy work.

Rey stands up. "Yes, actually. Sleep and food. We can't take care of anyone else if we're exhausted. I'm going to rest a bit, and I'll make rounds again before dinner. And maybe, if I actually rest, I'll get some new ideas for how to fight this."

Xanth nods at that. "Good. I'm off to Kven's next. We've always gotten on well, maybe I'll have better luck with his system."

Rey nods, and heads toward her cottage.

* * *

Rey's a few steps from the door when she feels it. The rush of fear and pain and…

She's bounding forward, into the house, and as soon as she does, she feels it, and smells it. Kylo didn't dodge this bolt. She winces. She'd been so focused on everyone else, that she just didn't think… Kylo's always so _Kylo._ He kept fighting with what would have been on anyone else a mortal wound, with a saber through his shoulder, with… He'd go weeks without sleep back in the day. He's indestructible. She knows, rationally, that he isn't, but... He _is._

The idea that he even could get sick just never occurred to her.

But it should have. She's mentally berating herself for not checking in on him the minute she saw how fast Critt and Ostrae were dropping.

"Kylo?" He's obviously not in their living area or kitchen. "Love?" Her voice is low, and she's hoping to find him curled into a ball, sleeping.

He's not on their bed. And really, if she can feel the waves of pain, she knows he's not going to sleep through them.

The door to their refresher is shut.

"Kylo?" She's intentionally keeping her voice low. His pain's eased off some, a general ache instead of flaming rips of pain through his guts. Now there's just this muzzy murk on the far side of the door.

"I'm gonna come in, okay?"

That gets a response. _No._

She rests her hand on the door. He's hurting, well, they all are. And likely messy, but… Not like she hasn't been hip deep in sick today. Embarrassed, but… well… Again, everyone who's got this is in pretty sad shape, so… He won't be the first person who didn't get the right part of himself aimed at the toilet in time, and given how this is going, he's not going to be the last, either.

She sits against the door, back to it, and lets her Force find his, and just like Critt, which should have been a major clue, his system is _useless_ at this. The germs are rampaging around through him, meeting pretty much no resistance.

His fever is high, muscles shaking, sweating… seems to have gotten himself into the shower, so he's got water running over him, so there's something… It's not the mess, the shower's helping with that, so it's not too bad, it's the smell. He _hates_ the smell.

 _Yeah, I could have gone the whole rest of my life without ever smelling that, too._ She thinks to him.

She feels a tiny little half smirk on the other side of the door. And then feels the whimper. Even that level of moving hurts.

 _How long?_ She thinks to him.

 _I don't know. I… C8 woke me up. I wasn't feeling good. I told him I had a cold and went back to sleep._

"That was smart, the best thing you can do for yourself right now is sleep." She can feel the sound of her voice is too harsh right now. Any sound is.

 _Not sleeping anytime soon. What time is it?_

 _Early afternoon. Bit after lunch. Have you eaten anything?_

 _Not since last night._

 _You keeping anything down._

 _No._

 _Okay._

He's quiet for a long time, just lying there, on his side, letting the water flow over him, not really present, or too present in how awful his body feels right now. Eventually, though he thinks, _You're not sick?_

 _Me, Savarah, Xanth, and Cassie didn't get it at all. Chewie's immune. Paige had a small enough dose of it, I could kill it, and she's with Chewie now._

 _Good. Everyone else?_

 _Everyone else._

 _Can you do anything for them?_

Rey sighs. _Sort of. Finn and Critt and Jacen decided to be the test subjects. I can…_ she makes herself not sigh in defeat… _'help' your immune system, make it do a better job fighting this._

She feels him almost perk up at that idea.

 _Yeah, don't get excited. All I did was make them go from bad to worse. Increasing your immune response means the fever spikes higher, you shake harder, your body gets rid of_ everything _faster, and… off to the medbay with you for IV fluids, cooling blankets, and round the clock mopping off. Hopefully, you feel better in a few days instead of a week. That's the trade off. Right now Finn, Critt, and Jacen would tell you, if they could talk, but they can't,_ not _to do it._

He groans out loud at that. Hurt long and slow, or hurt excruciating and faster.

 _You want help?_ she thinks to him.

 _I want to die._ They both know he's not, really, serious.

 _Too bad. Not happening today._

She feels him tentatively attempt to move around a little, and the way _everything_ hurts.

 _Can this actually get worse?_

 _I really can't tell from this side of the door. What I can say, with absolute certainty, is there's nothing on the side with you I haven't already seen and smelled at least three times today, and I'm sure cleaning things up a bit and airing them out might make you feel a little better._

He's not thinking in words, just feeling the shame of being so sick he can't clean up after himself, and so sick he needs to. That's at war with the idea of maybe some clean towels in here, or possibly the room smelling a little better, and just having her nearer would make him feel better.

 _You won't catch this?_

 _If I was going to, I'd be in there with you, also lying on the floor. I wasn't just in the Falcon with Finn helping to unload, I also hugged him and he kissed my cheek when he got back, and you got home an hour into the fruit cooking party, so… If I could get this, I'd be down with it._ She also hits him with a little flash of what they were doing last night, while his body was apparently simmering away with germs and hers was happily killing them off en masse.

"Come in."

She braces herself for a moment, and then opens the door, and… Okay, it's messy, but… Well, it's just him in there, not say, him and two hut mates, so… She's seen worse today.

He's in the shower, lying on his side, letting the… she tests it, and right now it's just warm. Their hot water heater is likely doing the best it can, but once the tank is empty, best is just a hair over normal body temperature… Luke warm water rinse over him.

She shuts it off and squats next to him, gently petting his hair and shoulder.

"Hey."

He nuzzles a little into her touch, but doesn't say anything or open his eyes. She can feel that he's shivery, hurting, miserable, his insides on fire, trying to claw their way out, but… He's empty, too. Nothing left to come out, now. Though that wasn't true when he crawled in here. He was feeling too weak to really walk or sit, so he dragged himself in here, turned on the water, and collapsed on his side. He didn't want to have to lie in his own mess, and this took care of that.

She strokes his shoulders again, and does what she can to help with the pain.

At least that's something her Force is actually good for. _Healing_ may be the sort of thing that's going to be a trial by fire, but comfort… Okay, yeah, he's not in any way shape or form _better_ but some of the edges have been worn soft.

She sees him relax a little as that hits, and then shiver that much harder when his muscles try to relax.

She offers him a little squeeze to his shoulder.

"Okay, I'm going get you up, dry you off, and then put you in bed, okay?"

"Nghn."

She understands that as concern from him about not wanting to mess their bed.

"They're just sheets and an air mattress. We'll get new ones if we need them. You don't need to be on a cold, wet tile floor."

"Mrhmp."

"Come on."

She gets him hovering in the air, finds a clean towel, and gently blots him off. And, like with everyone else she's touched today, even the softest touch makes him ache. "I know, love, I know. I'm going as fast as I can. Get you all nice and dry, and into bed, under the warm blankets." She feels him perk up a little at the idea of nice, warm blankets. "Hold on." She spreads the towel on the floor, and gently sets him back down. He makes a slightly annoyed sound at that, but not enough to actually complain.

She can feel just being aware of her has him tired enough that talking either with his voice or mind is too much to ask, so she just explains. "I'm going to get the blankets, and put them in the oven on low for a little bit.

A pleased sort of purr slips through his mind.

"Yeah, I thought you'd like that. Back in a second."

She carefully picks her way out of the bathroom, grabs the blankets, does stick them in the oven on warm, and then also grabs her rags and cleaning supplies. When she heads back to the bathroom, she sets them on the sink, and then again, gently gets him hovering, this time she slips him through the air to their bed, lowering him onto the mattress. "You're on top of the sheets right now. Warm blankets coming soon." She drapes the towel he'd been lying on over him, and remembers she has access to a place with a lot more blankets and towels, and then flashes, fast, to the _Supremacy._ Apparently he'd felt well enough to ask for… quite a bit of food, and… blankets and whatnot. And… Okay, the news must have spread, because there's this… heap of presents, next to the food and blankets. The only names on the tags she recognizes are Schiff and Mitaka. She grabs them, along with extra pillows, and the datapads on the top of his desk. He's not going to want them now, but maybe in a few days.

He purrs again when she piles the extra blankets on top of him.

 _There's a bottle here from Lady Schiff. It's got something in it that's supposed to be good for sore throats and coughs._

That gets his attention enough, that he explains, _Cancelled my appointment with Schiff. Didn't want him to get sick. I guess she was pleased._

 _Looks like she spread the word. There's the bottle from her, and something like ten other little get well soon presents. Maybe in a few days, they'll help you feel better._

But she realizes as she says that, that he's asleep.

* * *

The less said about cleaning up the bathroom, the better. Still, in the cosmic scale of things, dealing with puke and shit isn't _that_ bad. It's mostly just annoying.

People get sick, they make messes, and sometimes, they aren't strong enough to clean up their own mess, so they need people who love them to do the cleaning.

She snerks a little at that idea, thinking that if she wrote it down, put it in some sort of pretty calligraphy on a nice piece of paper, and maybe picked some more impressive words, that'd be something Majis a thousand years from now would consider a particularly deep and meaningful meditation on the nature of love.

And maybe it is.

Or maybe it's just cleaning some stray poop off the floor.

Either way, it's real.

* * *

She gets a lot less nap than she'd been hoping for. She just _can't_ sleep next to Kylo when he's hurting that bad. He's asleep, mostly. Every hour or so he lurches up toward the refresher to take care of business, and then she mops him off and tucks him back into bed. But, even if he were fully asleep, just being near him makes her want to _do something._

But right now, she doesn't know what.

The absolute last thing she wants to do is make him feel _worse._

Right now, as she's getting ready to drag herself out to check on everyone else, he's curled into a tiny little ball on their bed. It's amazing to her how small he can pull himself. A man his size shouldn't be able to turn into a child-sized lump. But sick and shivery and too hot and too cold and hurting from head to toe, he can.

Rey wants to just sit by his side, hover, pet him, and… her Force may not fix this, but he does seem slightly more comfortable with her near.

But she's got nineteen other people to tend to, too.

She kisses Kylo's forehead, the only bit of him peeking out from under the blankets. "I'm going to go check on everyone else. I'll be back, soon."

He moans a little.

She bundles up to… and then it occurs to her that she's been in everyone's rooms, so there's no reason for her to walk through the cold to get to them.

She takes the overcoat and gloves and scarf off, and ports directly to the medbay first, to check in and see how everyone is doing.

* * *

Awful.

Everyone is doing awful.

Finn's fucking _gray._ Yeah, she did a fucking lovely job there. His immune system is up and working super double overtime, killing those germs left and right, and even with an IV to keep fluids streaming into him, he's excreting them almost as fast and…

She's holding his hand, and can feel this, she hasn't literally killed him, she's just made him wholeheartedly _wish_ he was dead.

Jacen and Critt aren't all that much better. They're at least keeping _some_ fluids inside themselves and able to sleep, a little at least.

"Any new ideas on how to _help?_ " MX-6 asks.

Rey can't tell if he's being sarcastic or not.

Mostly she just wants to rewind time and leave well enough alone.

Time doesn't seem to be interested in going along with that.

* * *

She ports from one cottage to the next, wiping up messes, applying cool, damp towels to foreheads, making sure that everyone who can keep a little tea down gets some. (Or everyone who isn't throwing up yet gets as much tea as they can hold. She's fairly sure that starting everyone off well-hydrated helps some… right?)

As she shifts from home to home, she finds Cassie, Xanth, and Savarah with their friends. Cassie was getting a rest. Xanth was sitting with Kven, holding his hand, staring at him. Rey can feel he's thinking and feeling, so she doesn't interrupt. Savarah's with Magiit and Marrock. Both of them are pale and shaky, but still in the coughing stage of things. She's got them sipping tea and resting.

Calm before the storm.

Rose is full in the storm. Rey gently gathers her up and ports her to the medbay.

This time MX-6 appears to be pleased. "Good timing, she's just on the verge of dehydrated. We'll get an IV going. It's probably time to start bringing in everyone else who's gotten to the throwing up part of this. Cycle them through so we can get more liquids into them."

"How long does an IV bag take?"

"Half an hour." He looks to the three beds with Critt, Jacen, and Finn in them. "I can take five at a time now."

"Fortunately, right now, we don't have five in need of fluids… Yet." Rey's looking around at the empty beds, and thinking about who's going to need them, soon.

And who needs one, now.

* * *

Kylo's skin isn't gray with dehydration. But the only reason Rey knows that is because she's seen Finn. Otherwise, she'd think Kylo's gray. And, for a moment, part of her wants to take him to the medbay, here, where she can stay nearer to him.

And part of her knows that if he's in the medbay, he's going to get one eighth of MX-6's attention, because the droid won't play favorites. Or she can take him to the _Supremacy_ where they will devote _more_ than enough medical attention to him, only him, and no one else.

"We're going back to the _Supremacy._ " She says, as she starts to gently lift him a bit, cradling him in her arms.

He makes a _I'd rather not_ sort of groan. There's a vague thought in his mind that bringing a virulent pathogen onto a sealed ship with millions of people on it is likely a terrible idea.

"I know, but every IV in our medbay is in use or will be shortly, and you need one, too, so… I'm taking you where you can get one."

He groans at that, too.

And then he's in his bed, on the _Supremacy_ and the sheets are too cold, and the blankets aren't deep enough, and everything hurts, and… _fuck…_

She can feel how much he really didn't want to move.

And then she feels how much he has to move _now._

And, of all the things Rey's seen him do, this was likely the top of the list he would have preferred her not to have her witness, but, he trips over his feet three steps into his run for the refresher because he's hit the point where he just can't hold himself up all that well. Which means he needs help getting to the refresher and he's just boiling in the shame of it, but…

Rey hovers him up into the air, making small soothing sounds, and settles Kylo back into bed, really hoping he'll just passes out again soon. He doesn't actually need to go to the refresher because there's nothing left in him to come out. Probably another hint she needed to get him hooked up to an IV a lot sooner.

He moans as the sheets touch his skin. _COLD!_

Nothing much she can do about the sheets being cold here, but… She probably could put them in the oven, and they'd still feel cold to him. She nestles Kylo into the bed, strokes his hair and face, feels him writhe and moan for a few minutes, dry retching, and then settle back down into mindless oblivion.

She kisses his forehead. "I love you." Then she heads to the door to his office.

"C8," Rey says; she's not entirely sure where the droid is. Not in Kylo's room.

But, within seconds of her voice, Rey hears the click of metal feet on metal flooring, along with the glow of his eyes lighting up.

"Mistress Ren."

"Kylo's sick. He needs fluids, but can't keep them down. Can you get a med-droid in here, without everyone seeing/hearing/noticing?"

C8 thinks about it. "How literally do you mean everyone? The med-droids are fairly small, but an IV unit and diagnostic kit, along with whatever the droid deems necessary to take care of the issue can take up space."

"Don't need diagnostics. He's got Hiffa virus."

"How did he get Hiffa virus? There are only active outbreaks on a handful of planets on the rim." Kylo's certainly told her that C8's not supposed to be able to have emotional processing, but he's sounding awfully surprised and horrified at this.

She just looks at him.

"Another question about what happens when he's not here that I'm not supposed to ask?"

"Yes."

"And I can assume, you'd prefer I didn't enlist Lt. Colonel Frakes or Grand Marshal Kinear in this endeavor because you'd prefer to minimize the risk of them getting sick."

"I'd really appreciate it. Especially Kinear. The only people who die from this are very old, very young, or already sick, and I think he qualifies as very old."

"I'll figure something out."

"Thank you."

* * *

Twenty-five minutes later, when a laundry droid comes rolling into Kylo's room to grab his hamper, (and it does seriously need grabbing, Rey brought their soiled linens with them.) Rey's very pleased to see it, if a little put out because Kylo's skin is getting grayer by the moment, and he's hit the point where he's not sweating anymore, and if there's not an IV in him in less than five minutes, she's porting him directly to the medbay, everyone else be damned.

When, instead of scooting over to the laundry hamper, the top opens and a med-droid, along with a collection of… things, pops out, she smiles.

These med-droids don't talk. They're the small spherical units that work mostly on stitchery and patching people up, so they don't need to. Their various sensors can scan a whole body and figure out what's wrong, though, so that's likely all they need.

She gently tugs the blankets off of Kylo, and he complains about that, trying to burrow deeper into her, seeking more warmth, because now he's cold to go with fever-shivering, but he doesn't seem to actually wake up.

The droid does its scans, and sets up an IV with both fluids and something to keep his nausea levels down. It then attempts to put the IV into Kylo. _That_ wakes Kylo up.

He's not on board with that plan, doing his best to get his arm away from the droid. Rey gets a good grip on him, and uses her Force to keep him still while the droid inserts the tube and tapes it in place. She relaxes her grasp on him once it's done, and Kylo tries to rip the IV out. She's got to hold him down until he just can't fight it anymore. And as much as Kylo would prefer her not see him so sick he's not able to move around well, Rey would have preferred to _never_ have to do that. He hates this so much and he's hurting so bad, and the IV hurts worse, and right now she just can't explain to him why he needs it, not in a way he can understand, and… She'll take a million years of cleaning poop off the floor over having to do this again.

Fortunately, there's something in the IV to help him sleep, too, or just the painkiller is working, and he goes soft and limp in her arms in a minute or two.

Once the IV is in, and Kylo's out again, the droid spits out a report for her, and nothing's new. He's got Hiffa. He's dehydrated. (There's some scolding about not getting an IV into him as soon as he started throwing up, but… nothing she can do about that now.) This particular variant is anti-viral resistant. They can add something to lower his fever, but that'll just extend the amount of time he's sick.

She says no to the fever reducer.

The droid hovers in a way that looks a bit like nodding, and then settles on the table, moving into wait mode. In three hours, it'll switch out his IV, and keep doing that until he can take fluids by mouth.

* * *

2/1/2

Rey has never felt this useless in her life.

What she wants to do, needs to do, feels like she _should be able to do_ is to settle down, feel the thrum of the Force, guide and ride it, and then make all of her loves go bouncing up, hale and hearty, or, well, maybe pale and shaky, but no longer projectile excreting everything that's ever had the misfortune to end up inside their bodies.

And, okay, if that's not possible, she _at least_ should have been able to figure that her favorite Darkling would have come down with this within seconds of it starting up, and gotten his butt here, on the _Supremacy_ within minutes, so that he could have a personal med-droid tending to him, making sure he didn't get that dehydrated.

Barring that, she'd settle for being able to curl against Kylo, snuggle him, wrap him in her Force, and try to at least _comfort_ him.

And, as long as she's actively doing that, he seems at least a hair better.

But if she gets up to deal with the nineteen other people, who also need her, he goes back to shaking and moaning.

She hates this, he's so weak and sad and hurting, every time he gets toward waking up, he flails ineffectively at his IV. If he was healthy, he could pull it out with his mind, and seeing him just sort of slap at it because he can't coordinate his hand well enough to close around the tube… Her resolve to go and heal everyone else falters. Kylo needs her, and maybe she can't heal him, but just being near means he's better, but…

They need her, too. She kisses Kylo and pulls herself away from him. He starts to shiver harder as soon as she's not touching him, so she grabs one of the blankets from home and tucks it over him, careful with his IV line. She sighs at that, all the more reason to get back to Lirium, fast.

She's doing fuck all as a healer, but because she can teleport, and because the bloody weather is doing everything it can to fuck with them, it's howling snow at Lirium, so she's the most effective way to get her Maji from their homes to the medbay, so they too can get hooked up to the IVs.

So, she strokes Kylo's dry sweat crusted hair, kisses his brow, and then ports back home, to begin shuffling kids from their homes to the medbay, because even if she can't fix this, she can at least make sure her people don't die from it.

* * *

It never occurred to her that teleporting would be tiring.

It just _didn't._

Probably because she's never done it more than two or three times in a row.

One hour per IV bag. Port one Maji to the medbay, then another, and another and another, until all five of the beds not filled by Finn, Critt, and Jacen are filled. Port them back as they finish. Get new Maji to fill the now empty beds.

On the upside, she's not on cleaning duty. Which is exhausting and gross. (Though the less said about the condition of her clothing, the better. She's never wanted to burn her clothing before, but that's before she spent hours cradling a collection of violently ill people in her arms.)

She's the only one who can port, so she's the only one shuffling people around. But by the fourth hour of it, she's ready to drop.

It's MX-6 who tells her to stop. "Go home, Rey. Sleep and eat. You're about to drop, and none of us are going to be better off with that."

She's so tired, but… They're sick. And Kylo's hurting. And…

She feels a small hand in hers. Cassie's. She's looking up at Rey. "Come on, it's time to rest. You made us rest. Now you rest."

Rey sighs, thinks about going to the _Supremacy_ and then makes herself go to their cottage.

She won't sleep if she's next to Kylo, and she's got to sleep.

In their home, she remembers something else she hasn't done. Eat. There's food. Her body needs it, stomach screaming at her as soon as it sees the food on the kitchen table. The food he thought to ask for before he got too sick to do anything.

She steps closer, almost touches the sandwiches, but seeing the... stains... on her clothing, she realizes she really needs to clean herself up before she does that.

Fast shower. Peeling out of her clothing, throwing it in a sack to bring to the _Supremacy,_ and if it gets back to her, fine, and if it gets lost in the laundry, she won't miss it.

Then food. She sits down, touching the sandwiches, wishing she could share them with him. The first few bites are difficult. Too many images of partially digested food are in her head for eating to be easy. But her stomach is still yelling for more calories, so she feeds herself.

And once she's fed, her eyes are all but shut, her arms and legs weigh a billion kilos each and she's just _so tired._

It feels really bizarre to lay herself down, in their bed, alone. It's not like this is the first time. He's certainly had late nights where he was up with meetings past the time she went to bed, but it is the first time he's not coming back. First time she won't wake up with him next to her. First time she doesn't pull off her clothing, because his warmth will come find her in the night.

She pulls the blankets over her, wishing they smelled like Kylo, and not Hiffa virus, but… Right now it's too damn cold to air the house out, so…

She falls asleep before she's got too long to think on it.

* * *

"Luke!"

"Rey." His expression isn't warm, but it's not closed off, either. If anything, he's smugly amused. And while this is a dream, it's real, too, so she can feel that he's enjoying 'getting to Yoda,' whatever that means.

In the dreamscape, they're back at the cliffs at Ahch-To. The air is what she considered cold when she first got there, but now knows is just damp and a bit nippy. (Though damp is something she'd happily avoid for the rest of her life.)

"So?" she says.

"So… Had better days, have you?"

She doesn't actually glare at him, but it's close.

He nods. "Yeah. I gave Yoda that same look." He sits down and pats the ground next to him. "Come on, tell me about it."

So she sits, and does, and lets all of the day's frustrations pour out. And when she does, Luke sums it up as: "Everything is wrong, everyone you love is hurting, and you feel like you should be able to fix it, but it's staying unfixed or you're making it worse?"

She nods, tossing a pebble into the ocean.

"What are you fixing, Rey?"

She looks at him like he's stupid, and then says, "Everyone is _sick._ I've been puked or pooped on more times than I can count today. Was that somehow not specific enough?"

"Yeah, I got that. Humans don't normally spew excrement from both sides. _What are you fixing?_ "

"I'm so tired, Luke. Could you just tell me so I can get back to functional sleep?"

He looks annoyed at that, but given the dark circles under her eyes, and why he's here, it's not like she's making an unreasonable request.

"It took me decades to really figure this out. And I wasn't ever able to pass it on, because I learned it well past the point of having students. You cannot fix what isn't broken. Everyone around you is hurting and puking because their bodies are doing exactly what they're supposed to do. When you have a nasty virus you're supposed to get a fever so your body can kill it.

"That's the single most frustrating part of The Light. The Force will let you fix things that aren't broken. It'll let you do that all day and all night and foul up everything around you because of it. Part of the _light_ is beating your desire to help, to be the great healer, to be the miracle worker, into submission and let whatever it is that is _working_ work."

"But healing is a light side power."

Luke nods at her. "Yeah. Healing something that is _broken._ After fifteen years surrounded by kids with lightsabers, the cut or break I can't heal doesn't exist. But that's fixing something that _needs to be fixed._ Ask me what I did when we all got the flu?"

She raises an eyebrow.

"Made tea and passed around the blankets."

"Didn't you just say it took you decades to figure that out?"

He waves that away. "I figured it out with healing a lot sooner. Practical application and all that. The main point: 'if something is the way it's supposed to be, even if you don't like that supposed to be, leave it alone,' took _much_ longer to grasp."

She's fairly sure she's grasping the larger point. "Kylo?"

"Among other things."

"And going too far on the leave-it-alone side is part of why I couldn't pry you off this island?"

"Maybe. Did you fix him, Rey? Try? Or did you go expecting him to fix himself, and get horribly disappointed when it wasn't an instant change? I tried to fix him. Spent a long time on it. And the kicker was, the poor kid _was broken._ Violent sociopath steeped in black from head to toe is not his base nature. Not so far as any of us could tell, and not so far as he is now. I just didn't have the right fix for him, which is the next part of this: the wrong fix is often worse than no fix at all."

"I didn't fix him. I… just thought he'd love me enough to just come, and I missed the point that he couldn't do that until he loved himself enough to pull himself out of unending pain."

"Romantically put, but…" Luke gestures a but-what-can-you-do sort of shrug.

"I want to make them feel better."

"I know. I wanted to make everyone feel better. All the time. But sometimes, you've just got to hurt. And sometimes, if you're out there, fixing what isn't broken, you're going to hurt everyone worse than they already are."

"Yeah. Great."

He pats her shoulder. "Exactly. No one said the Force was fun, you know?"

"No one said ever said anything about the Force to me. One day I just had it."

"One day I was whining about getting to go to town with my buddies. Literally the next day, my family was dead, I was on a ship that looked like it was going to fall apart any second, surrounded by dangerous strangers, attempting to rescue a princess I'd only seen a holo of. Seriously, _no one_ ever said the Force was fun."

She sighs at that.

"Go on, get back to sleeping. All the problems in the galaxy will still be there when you wake up."

* * *

2/2/2

Luke is absolutely _not wrong_ about that.

Rey wakes up not enough hours later, but it still feels like too many hours spent on her back.

The first thing she wants to do is port to Kylo and pet him.

But he's got a med-droid hovering over him, providing him with anything he might _need._

And right here, right now, she's it. So she washes off, makes herself eat some more, and gathers up the rest of the dinner and lunch so that Cassie, Savarah, and Xanth have food, and ports to the medbay.

MX-6 isn't there.

Since she's been sleeping, she hasn't been bringing sick people to him, so he's been bringing IVs to them. Unlike the humans on Lirium, he doesn't have to rely on his eyes to find his way around, so no visibility through the howling snow isn't an issue for him. (Likewise, he doesn't get cold, has better all weather traction on his "feet" than humans do, weighs more than they do, so the wind matters less, and can't get tired, so trekking through the snow isn't an issue. The hydropacks freezing and having to be thawed before he can hook them up to each patient is.)

Critt is awake when she ports in. His voice is rough, he's shaking, but his color is decent and his eyes are tracking.

"Hi."

"Hey," she says back, voice soft, not wanting to wake Finn or Jacen. They're both sleeping, but not peacefully. Jacen looks miserable, face pinched, body curled in on itself. Finn's got a similar posture and expression, but the last time she saw him his skin was gray from dehydration. At least right now he's back to something approaching his usual color, and he's got enough liquids in him to sweat. "How are you feeling?" she keeps her voice low as she asks.

He looks like he's almost thinking about barking a short laugh, but that would likely hurt, so he doesn't. "I've had better days."

"I'll bet."

He looks from side to side: Finn on his left, Jacen on his right. "How's everyone else? Are just the three of us sick?"

Rey shakes her head. Just the three of them are in the medbay right now, because she's not porting the rest of them in and out. "Just the three of you volunteered to be my experiments in healing magic and ended up in here with IVs full time because I made you worse."

Critt nods. "Remind me not to volunteer next time."

"Remind me not to mess with something that's doing what it's supposed to do next time."

Critt's looking alarmed, and Rey knows what the issue is. She grabs a basin, and pets his back while he dry heaves.

When he's done, she grabs a damp towel to mop off his forehead some. He sighs, and lays back. "This sucks."

"Yep."

His eyes are closed, and his voice tired as he says, "How much faster than usual should I be getting better?"

"With any luck, tomorrow or the next day you'll just be bone tired, instead of still throwing up."

"Maybe tomorrow or the next day I'll think this was a good plan."

"Maybe." She strokes his forehead again. "Sleep some more. Your body needs it."

He closes his eyes and in a moment is gone from the waking world.

She looks around, takes a moment to pet Finn and Jacen, sees both of them relax a bit. She can't fix what isn't broken, but apparently she can make going through it less of an ordeal.

That's something, right?

As she ports out to go tend to the rest of the Maji, it doesn't feel like much.

* * *

"Xanth?" He's exactly where he was when Rey last saw him. Probably eight hours ago. Sitting next to Kven, looking far away, thinking/sensing, as he holds his sleeping friend's hand. And for a second, after her voice, he's _still_ just sitting there.

Then he jerks, looks at her, shudders all over, blinks, and says, "Rey?"

"Yeah. Hey… Uh… When did you eat last?"

He blinks a few times, looking confused. Then he stands up, and sags back to the ground, knees going out under him.

"Xanth!"

"I'm fine." He's wincing. "Legs are asleep. Stayed in the same position too long. Uh, right, food." He blinks again, and this time slowly stretches his legs in front of him, massaging them, and wincing. "OW!"

Rey's not sure what's going on with Xanth, but… He's not _sick,_ so… She crosses Kven's cottage, and grabs a few pieces of bread, and a jar of jam. A moment later, she's made a sandwich for Xanth, and then returned to the kitchen to wet a washcloth, and gently mops the dried sweat off Kven, who appears to be asleep right now.

Now that she's got his attention, Xanth looks excited. "You told me to think of other ways to heal them." He shoves half the sandwich in his mouth in one go, and then has to stop talking while he chews. Once he swallows, he says, "Killing it off virus by virus is a bad plan, and you're right about that. I was trying that with him, and all I managed to do was make myself tired."

Rey nods. "If you got it in the first few hours, it's possible, but after that…"

"Exactly." He's eyeing the loaf of bread, and massaging his legs. Rey makes him another sandwich.

As she hands him the sandwich, she says, "That look in your eyes… You've found something, haven't you?"

"Maybe… Not sure yet. I've got the idea and feel of it, but I don't know if I can _do it._ "

She sits next to him, noticing that he let go of Kven to eat and rub his legs, and as he did so Kven's face grew tighter. He didn't wake up, but he looked much less comfortable, but as soon as he takes Kven's hand again, his face relaxes.

"I was talking to Luke, and he reminded me, or taught me, or… he said you can fix what isn't broken. Is this fixing something that isn't broken?"

"No." He looks fairly excited at this idea, and getting to share it. "It's breaking something that works too well. I… can do it for one or two at a time, and I've got to figure how to do it for a lot of them. The body kills the virus. If we make it do that any harder, it hurts too much. But the virus keeps making more viruses, and that keeps them sick. So… If I can make the virus not make new viruses…"

Rey smiles. "You can do it for a short burst, and then it's just… too much, isn't it?"

"Yeah."

And with that Rey knows the last piece of the puzzle. Like her, and Cassie and Savarah, Xanth's _light._ Which is great for his immune system. It works splendidly. It kills the fuck out of invaders before they can even register in his body. But for this sort of work, intentionally using his Force to go in and destroy something… "In a few days, Critt will likely be feeling better." She hopes.

"Critt… Why Critt?"

"You're talking about dark-side style healing. About channeling destruction into a positive force. And neither of us are particularly good at that. We need a darksider for it, and Critt's the one most likely to get better soon."

"Kylo's sick?"

"Kylo's sick. And after testing out my fix for this on Critt, Jacen, and Finn, I don't want to do it to him."

"I don't blame you." He stands up, wobbles a bit, and then stomps around a bit, wincing with each step. "I got too into it."

Rey nods to Kven, "How's he doing?" She can see he's sleeping, not hooked up to and IV, and he's pale, but not gray. So, at least just to look at him, he's as good, if not better, than the others.

"Probably better than most of the others. I can make the virus not reproduce, but it's slow and draining, and I can't do enough of them at a time. It's been…" he looks for a chronometer… "six hours… Way too long sitting in one position. Anyway, I got about a tenth of them sterile, which isn't enough, but… Okay, here's the cool part. I did rejigger his immune system a little. The fever makes him so hot the virus has a hard time surviving, and that slowly kills them off. His white cells attack the virus and do what I couldn't do, kill the boogers right and left. Here's what I did, I can get his white cells to ignore the sterile ones and focus on the ones that can reproduce, so… There's something."

She's grinning at Xanth. "That's absolutely something. And, honestly, figuring out a better way to do something, even if you personally can't do it, is worth so much. Maybe we'll get Critt on sterilizing, and if you can show the rest of us how to get the white cells to ignore the ones he can't hit…"

"White cells kill off the ones that make more viruses. Let the fever kill the sterile ones. That sounds like a good combination." Xanth looks pleased at that idea. Then Kven moans, shifts, his eyes jerk open, and he bolts for the refresher. They can hear the gagging sounds, and as Xanth's heading over to tend to his friend he says, "I wish I could do more."

"Yeah, me too. But right now, we can't." When Kven's done, Rey picks him up. "I'm going to take him to the medbay. I want you to eat, and then get a sleep. There's going to be a lot of mopping up between now and when we can get your fix into play."

Xanth nods, and then grabs the bread to make himself another sandwich.

* * *

2/3(?)/2

There's a point where Rey just doesn't know what day it is any more. Wake up, eat something, transport Maji to and from the IVs until all of them have had one, go to Kylo, eat, curl up against his back or side and try to nap next to him for a while, (not very effective, she really _can't_ sleep when he's hurting this bad) get up, do another round of Maji transporting, another round of eating and tending to Kylo, and then back to their place on Lirium to sleep some more.

But, at some point, eventually, Finn's actually awake and sitting up when she goes to the medbay. More than that, he's not excreting from every orifice any more. On top of that, his fever is broken, too. He's weak as a newborn, _tired,_ so damn tired, but as MX-6 says, there's no Hiffa left in his sytem.

(MX-6 also says that he's likely going to spend the next two days in bed mostly just sleeping and slowly putting real food back into his system, but, he'll be able to snuggle Rose when she's in the medbay, and that's worth a lot to both of them right now.)

When she sees him, she hugs him, _gently_ and asks, "Are you really sitting up?"

He blinks a little. "Maybe for another minute or two. What day is it?"

Rey laughs. "I have no idea. It's night. That part I can tell you."

He settles back down, squirms a bit, and says, "I can't wait to get back to my bed."

She nods at that. "With Rose in it. I'm sleeping in ours, but it feels really odd without Kylo there."

And right now, Finn's tired enough that he just agrees. "Always sleep like shit the first night on the _Falcon_ , because she's not there."

"Yeah."

His eyes are drooping.

She strokes his forehead. "Have a good rest. I'll see you when you're awake."

* * *

At another point, she's back in Kylo's room, and he's awake, too. And, for the moment, not throwing up. He's not doing much of anything, just laying on his side, eyes glassy, watching the stars move past.

She sits next to him, and lays her hand on his shoulder. He's still too hot. But he's with it enough he's not trying to rip the IV out any more.

He closes his eyes, and curls around her, chin against her right knee, his knees against her left.

For a moment, they're just there, and then he says, "You said you can get my immune system fighting harder?"

"Kylo…" She's stunned he even remembers that conversation. "Yes, I can do it, but… It's a really bad idea."

He looks a little surprised.

"It hurts. It hurts a lot. It's going to be another few days of everything in your body running out as fast as it can, your fever as high as you can take it, and everything aching, as opposed to another five or six days of just feeling cruddy. You aren't Finn, you don't have a sick wife at home and a baby who needs you. You can stay on light duty for a few more days. Just… don't."

He thinks about that for a moment. "Are you refusing?"

"No. But I'd really rather you didn't put yourself through it. If you don't have to hurt, maybe you can try not hurting." Left unspoken is that she doesn't want to watch him go through it, either.

His eyes are still fever bright, he's still achy and shivering, and it's been less than an hour since he was in the refresher dry heaving away. "I wouldn't call this not hurting."

"Yeah, but you're not begging for death, either, and you're lucid, He laughs at that. "and you can read or watch holovids and nap, and just take the time to lie around and heal at your own speed for once, so… Do it. I'm sure there'll be times when you need to be up again in a day, and I'll make it happen, but this isn't one of them, so…"

"So just, lay here and be sick."

"Just lay there, be sick, let me baby you, and maybe see if you can keep a few sips of tea or something located inside your body for more than an hour. Plus, once Critt is up, we'll be working on another possible fix, and maybe that one won't involve everyone wishing the Force would just take pity on them and end things."

He's about to ask about the other possible fix, and then he's got to run for the refresher. Anti-emetic meds means he's throwing up less often, it doesn't mean the problem is fixed.

* * *

Jacen is up the next time she's in the medbay. He's _up_ up. As in sitting up, next to Critt, who's sleeping, and petting his hair a bit.

She sits next to him, and says, "Are you really this much better?"

He can feel what she's asking and rolls his eyes a little. "For the next minute and a half. Then I'm going back to sleep."

"Ah…" She strokes his forehead. He's still feverish, but apparently her 'fix' has him at not throwing up now, and… "You don't feel nauseous?"

He shakes his head and coughs. "Tired… So tired, but not puking or shitting anymore."

"Good."

He nods. "Hopefully." He nods to where Finn's laying, on a cot next to Rose, his hand against hers. "I think I'm doing better than he is. Don't know if that's a combination of my Force, getting my system revved up before I had this going full swing against me, or you not tossing me that far into hyperdrive, or just these things effect everyone differently."

"Yeah, maybe."

He can feel her concern for Kylo. "How's he doing?"

"Not as good as you."

"Obviously. Better than Critt?"

"Not sure. I didn't supercharge his immune system, so he's still in the middle of it, and Critt's got to be getting closer to the end."

"We can hope." Jacen yawns.

Rey gives him a hand. "Come on. Back to your own bed. You don't need the IV any longer, and the sooner you get to sleep uninterrupted, the sooner you're really up and useful to me."

He glares at her a little, but before he's got the chance to do much, she's got both of them in his cottage. The glare intensifies.

"You didn't have to pull me away."

"Yes, I did. You think I really sleep if I'm next to Kylo, right now? No, he's hurting too damn bad, so I keep trying to make him feel better, which means I'm burning my energy on him. You're doing it with Critt, too. And, either your fever is too high to realize you're not keeping your emotions in check, or you're sick enough you don't care you're projecting all over the place, but either way, you need the rest, so…" She pulls back the top blanket to his bed. "Into bed with you. Sleep. Heal. I'll likely have a project for you and Critt when you're feeling fully human again."

Jacen gets into bed, and he quietly says, "How badly am I projecting?"

"I know everything you want to do with your taking care of him fantasy, and assuming he remembers any of this, he will, too."

"Shit. Yeah. Okay." He rubs his eyes. "I can usually keep it down enough that he thinks we're just friends."

"Why are you doing that? Just let him know."

Jacen snorts at her, then he looks at Rey, and snorts again. "Of course, you're one of them. No wonder you don't see the problem."

Rey's staring at him blankly, because she _still_ doesn't see the problem, and only feels a wall of annoyance from Jacen.

"Because like every other fucking guy I get a crush on, he _only_ likes girls, and I'm not one."

Rey's still not sure about the _them_ comment _,_ but decides that's not the important part. "I'm sorry."

"Yeah. Thanks. Just… poke me or something if I start projecting it again. If he figures it out, it's just going to make him uncomfortable, so… Until I'm in control, let me know, okay?"

"Okay. Go to sleep. You'll have better control when you're feeling better."

"Probably."

* * *

2/? +1/2

Round and round and round again.

Eventually, she ports into the medbay, this time with Blaine in her arms, and Critt is sitting up. Eyes clear. Skin dry. Alert (ish.)

He's on the other side of the virus, and from there…

Rey gently settles Blaine in one of the beds, but he grunts in pain as he touches the sheets. Whimpers when MX-6 inserts the IV. She pets his hair, "I know, honey, I know."

Her hand stroking his hair eases the pinched look on his face, and the heated blanket that MX-6 drapes over him soothes the shivers, a little.

Rey quietly says, still petting him, "It's time to sleep, love. Hopefully, you'll feel a bit better when you wake up."

Blaine's eyes drift shut, and in a moment he's asleep.

Critt watches her do that, and says, "You're getting really good at that."

She crosses the room and sits on his bed. "Lot's of practice. By the time this is done, I'll be able to put a sick kid to sleep in a second and a half with barely a thought."

He smirks, a little, and lays down on his side, facing her. "With as tired as we all are…"

"Yeah, it's not an uphill march." She strokes his hair, too. "So…"

"Tired, sore, I feel like someone scrubbed out my insides with steel wool, but… Better. I can feel I'm mending."

She nods, and lays a little of her soothing magic on him. He sighs.

"That feels good."

"Good."

He curls in on himself a bit, and his voice is very small as he says, "She always used to call me sweetling. I'd be sick, and she'd hug me and call me sweetling." He closes his eyes, and Rey understands what he needs.

She curls up behind him, arms around him, and strokes his hair. "Have a rest, sweetling. You'll feel better when you wake up."

Critt nods a bit, tears leaking from between closed lids. He's fifteen now, but the little boy inside isn't very far under the surface. The teen his parents abandoned rather than see go dark is even closer to the surface. Rey kisses the back of his head, and holds him close. She pets his hair.

"When you wake up, when you're feeling better, you and Xanth are going to have a chat about using your dark to heal people."

He doesn't open his eyes as he says, "Can't heal. Dark doesn't heal."

She smiles against the back of his head. "You'll see."

* * *

Kylo's sleeping when she steps into his room. Like the rest of them, his face is pinched, and he's curled in on himself. The med-droid is hovering near him, making sure he stays hydrated.

She wonders what those little guys can do. Obviously it's paying enough attention to the situation to be beneficial to Kylo, but… Does it notice that she just appears a few times a day? Does it keep track of them talking to each other.

And if this one doesn't, does that mean if there's ever need for another one, that it won't?

She sighs at that, and begins pulling her clothing off.

She's tired. And right now she just wants to curl around Kylo and hold onto him.

He murmurs a bit when she nestles under the blankets with him. His skin is still fever hot, cheeks pink with the flush of it, and the heat feels good to her after too long in not quite warm enough rooms on Lirium.

She knows that in a few moments, she'll pull back, overheating, but right now wrapping around him and drinking in his heat feels good.

He stirs a bit in her arms, making a pleased sound, and settling a bit deeper into his own sleep.

She rests her head against the nape of his neck, just breathing with him, feeling him relax in her arms, and wondering if maybe this time she'll sleep.

She's so tired. Tomorrow… Critt'll be more up, and put him with Xanth, and maybe they'll find a way to really beat this, or at least curb it for everyone, and… Okay, they'll still be sick, but less sick, and healing up faster, and then she and the rest of the lightsiders can just rest for a little while, and Force, that'll feel good.

Her, and Kylo feeling better, and just sleeping…

Maybe not just… Her sex drive gives her a tiny little twitch of interest, and then it's run over by the mammoth wave of _tired._

He's breathing deeper and easier in her arms, and for once it doesn't feel like he's hurting, so Rey keeps relaxing, too.

In, out, the heat of his body against hers…

She's almost asleep, just starting to see the images of her dreams when she hears voices on the far side of Kylo's door.

Loud fucking voices.

Really loud.

If she can hear them… Through the sound proofing…

C8…

Jon…

She blinks and sits up, awake.

Jon and C8 are arguing, and...

"Shit."

She pulls Kylo's bathrobe to hand, and then ports directly into his office, not wanting to open the door and expose Jon to any Hiffa that might be lingering in Kylo's room. In there, Jon and C8 are, apparently, in the middle of a heated argument, with Artoo between them, looking confused.

Well, confused is about to end, now.

"If either of you fuckers wake him up, I'm slapping your asses into next week with my staff. Now what's so fucking important I don't get to have a nap?"

Jon stares at her, stunned, and she can feel C8's awfully shocked by that, too.


	15. The Snag In The Plan

2/3/2

It's on the fourth day of in depth study of the K'Aran culture and politics, that the newly minted Colonel Jefferies of the Order's Diplomatic Corp (previously Lt. Colonel Jefferies of the Order's legal department, now transferred because he speaks diplomat and writes a very spiffy contract) comes into his boss's office, and tentatively asks General Threepio, "Sir, shouldn't we, at some point, meet with the Master and talk with him about what he intends to do at this meeting?"

Now, it is true that Threepio isn't exactly looking forward to a long, or even short, chat with _Kylo_ about this, it's also true that he's a professional, and for a professional to do a good job, he's got to get all of his variables spelled out and into place, and… well… he is starting to get nervous about the huge Kylo-shaped hole where there should be a well-thought-out plan.

But it wouldn't do to show nerves to his underlings.

"I'm sure the Master will arrange to meet with us at his pleasure. Now, tell me more about traditional succession contracts of previous K'Aran lines…"

And Colonel Jefferies, who can write one of those contracts in his sleep now, does.

* * *

2/4/2

On the fifth day of in-depth study, meaning two days before the K'Aran delegation will be showing up, expecting to have the Master mediate this succession issue for them, Threepio heaves a great sigh, and says to Artoo.

"I'm swamped with details. Can you call on the Lt. Colonel, and see what it is Ben thinks he's playing at?" (Threepio is scrupulous about _only_ calling him Ben in his head and to Artoo. He does rather like this job, and would prefer not to be tossed out of it, but not so much that he's going to completely rewire how he thinks about the youngest Organa.)

Artoo beeps in the affirmative, and goes scuttling off. He's fond of the young Lt. Colonel, who needs a translator to talk to him, but always does so like he's a real person, and compared to fetching drinks for whomever Threepio's next meeting is, this'll be fun.

(To an extent Jon puts Artoo in mind of Luke. More Luke after he was teaching than Luke when he was young, but there are hints of it, and Artoo likes that. Plus, Jon seems like a rather uncomplicated sort of human. The sort of human who would never just shut him down and then bugger off for a decade, but… Well, he would have never guessed that of Luke, either.)

Besides, heading off to see the Lt. Colonel gives him an excuse to go wandering around, and learn more about the _Supremacy_ and all the fascinating things that live, or in the case of sentient machines like Artoo, dwell here.

He doesn't take the most direct route to Lt. Colonel Jon, but he does find out that there's a fascinating bit of gossip going around the ship. Apparently, Admiral Schiff ordered a check of the air cycling system and found a collection of cyanide tubes in there. His engineers are still working on taking them out without destroying the ship or poisoning everyone.

Threepio's going to go berserk when he gets that bit of intel! Whoever heard of a self-destruct sequence that _only_ takes out the organics?

* * *

When Jon hears beeping coming from his outer office, he knows something's off. He likes visiting with Artoo, but he also knows that Threepio doesn't send him down just to chat, which means _something_ is up.

He sighs. Probably something he isn't going to like.

He hits the comm between him and his (new) secretary, makes a mental note that he really should move his office out of the design center, and then says, "R4-6837, send Artoo in."

A moment later, Artoo slides in, and Jon sets the translator for him.

"So, what brings you to Tactical Design?"

Beeps, blips, and a moment later, _"Threepio's getting nervous. None of us have talked to Kylo about the K'Arans yet, and he wants to know when you did, and that everything is on the up and up."_

For a moment, Jon just stares at Artoo. Then he rejiggers the translator, and says to him, "Can you say that again? I don't think this got it."

Unfortunately, the exact same message pops up after a cheerful collection of beeps, blips, and whirls.

Jon blinks again. "What do you mean no one on your side has spoken to Kylo about the K'Aran delegation, yet?"

Artoo's head swivels a bit and another series of beeps comes through.

"No, I do not see him every damn day. I haven't seen him in…" Jon blinks, rubbing his eyes. "It's been… Shit," he checks his chronometer. "Five days. He doesn't live with me."

Sarcastic beeping.

"Look, that was because the First Year party was in the offing. I don't normally see him every single day. Only Rey sees him every single day, and last I checked, I'm not her."

Less sarcastic beeping.

"Did Threepio not brief him?"

More beeps.

"I know Threepio would have _sent_ a briefing report. I _sent_ one, too. Did no one actually, physically, go talk to him?"

Again, beeping.

"Yes, I know you're not his bloody secretary. I'll call C8, who is, and check with him."

Jon's rubbing his forehead, as he punches in C8's comm number. "C8, uh… I'm sure this is going to sound stupid, but, has anyone actually visited Kylo to talk to him about the K'Aran delegation that's coming the day after tomorrow."

There's a pause on the other side of the comm, and suddenly Jon's feeling very cold. He doesn't know why, but something's _wrong._ He's already up and heading toward Kylo's room as C8 says, "I'm sure the Master will look at the briefings when he's ready."

Jon shudders. Then he finds his voice, and says, "What do you mean _look?_ "

"Set his head so that his eyes are pointed in their directions and then read."

Jon's _running_ toward Kylo's rooms, cursing the fact that he doesn't have a direct way to get a hold of Rey. "Get me Poe's comm, _now,_ " he says to Artoo, who's keeping pace with him.

A moment later, Poe's patched on through to Jon's wrist comm. "Jon, what's up buddy?"

"Don't buddy me, what's going on with Kylo?"

He hears an amused snort followed by, "Not much, I'd assume. Sleeping and puking probably, why?"

Jon crashes to a fast stop, and drags Artoo, to the nearest empty corridor he can find. _"What?"_

"Did no one tell you?"

"Apparently, not. I've got a full delegation here the day after tomorrow expecting the Master to be up, on his feet, and ready to greet them, and then figure out who's going to succeed the current leader of the K'Aran dynasty."

He hears Poe laugh. "Not gonna happen. Hiffa lasts ten days, and he's been down for four or five of them at most."

Jon stuffs his fist into his mouth and _moans._

Poe's voice gets more serious. "Wait, how bad is this?"

Jon whimpers, and then says, "It's our first neutral space, deal broker contract. It's worth eight billion credits over the next ten years and a _very_ good relationship with the K'Arans if they like the deal we set up. If we do this _right_ more of these fucking contracts will flow in and we'll finally be in danger of being able to pay our fucking bills. He's sick and none of you bastards thought to tell me?" The volume of his voice rose on each of those sentences, and he's a hair away from yelling when he gets to the last one.

He can feel Poe bristle at that. "Hey, cool it. I do not report to you, and everyone else on Lirium is projectile puking and shitting."

"Everyone?" Jon's wincing, finally getting how it's possible no one talked to him.

"Rey dodged it because she's got all the good Force stuff, and like two of the other kids did, too. They're taking care of the entire rest of the settlement."

" _Fuck."_ That's a whisper. Followed by, "You aren't there?" in his normal voice.

"I was bringing back supplies when I got the 'stay the fuck away' message. Can't go home for another week, at least."

"Well, get your ass over here. I'm going to need a fucking miracle to pull this off, and maybe you're good with them."

Poe laughs, long and bitter. "Wrong Maji. You need Rey."

"I don't know where she is, and she doesn't have a comm…"

"Give me a minute." Nothing but dead silence and then… "She's with him, and he's on the _Supremacy._ Apparently, your miracle just showed up. You still want me to come?"

"Yeah. I'm going to need all the schmoozing I can get, and you're good at that, right?"

"Lead me to whomever needs schmoozed."

Jon can just feel Poe's cocky grin as he said that. "Just let me know when you're on the _Supremacy._ "

"Same code I used last time?"

"Sure. Do you have a decent suit?"

"I think so, but from what Kylo and Rey have said, probably not according to you."

Jon glances to Artoo, shakes his head, and says, "You will by the time you need one. Okay, Master Poe of the Maji, get ready to cover my ass, because I might need a lot of it."

Jon can feel the smirk across the light years. "With pleasure."

* * *

After one full hallway, Jon knows attempting to _run_ to Kylo's rooms is just going to make him sweaty and annoyed. He can get to the tram faster, but he can't make the tram go any faster once he's on it, and he can't will the elevators to go faster, so he slows down and tries to _think._

Okay, best possible outcome, Kylo's got a light case of… what was that…

Artoo beeps, holding out a micro data pad, which is when Jon realizes he's speaking out loud.

He glares at himself and the universe in general, grabs the data pad, and reads the pro-offered information on Hiffa Virus.

Best case scenario, he's got a very mild case of it, is feeling refreshed by his, apparently five-ish days of napping, and can be propped in a somewhat vertical position, made to greet the K'Aran delegation, look vaguely awake as all of the parties manage to talk through their idea of what should happen, not throw up on any of the dignitaries or mess himself while doing so, and then, somehow, make some sort of pronouncement as to who should run this thing, all without… His eyes widen as he looks at how contagious Hiffa is, and how it spreads.

"Fuck!"

Jon's rubbing his forehead. He was thinking it was, maybe, possible that they could pump enough drugs into Kylo to get him to look almost functional for this, but… he cannot possibly risk the K'Aran delegation catching this from Kylo. They could do the best mediation job in the history of mediation jobs, but if they all get the plague from coming here, no one else ever will.

Second best option. Stuff Rey into her best Lady Ren costume, somehow pry her away from Kylo and the rest of the sick Maji (He wonders idly if he's fast enough with a blaster to set one on stun, hit her with it, and then drop her unconscious body in front of Mom and Lady Kinear and get them to _make_ her do this. He decides that's unlikely. Maybe if he crept up on her when she was asleep, but… Not going to happen. He does call his mom and Lady Kinear and tell them to be waiting in his rooms, and to start reading up on all of his reports on the K'Aran delegation, _fast._ ) get her to listen and chat, and, if he's very lucky, he'll get her to stay on script, and be Lady Ren, and if he's really, really, really fucking lucky, the K'Aran's won't spit in his face for promising the Master, and giving them the not quite official Lady Ren.

Absolute, cluster fuck, everything falls the fuck apart, he's claiming that Grand Marshal title, naming himself second-in-command of the whole fucking Order, grabbing Poe and his mom, designing the most ornate Maji costume anyone has seen, putting her and the droids in charge of getting Poe into it, pumping as much alcohol into the K'Arans as they can hold, showing them a _very_ good time, and _praying_ that once it's all done, he and Poe look enough like the guys in charge that they can pull this off.

He's fairly sure Kinear'll back him if he tries that play. He's not sure if Schiff will, but at this point he doesn't much care. Kinear'll handle Schiff if Schiff's a problem.

He's got… He checks his chronometer… Forty-three hours until he's got to put on the show of his life.

* * *

Once he gets into Kylo's office, his shoulders slump. If he were to stack the datapads piled up on Kylo's desk into a column, they'd be taller than he is.

There's no possible way the man's done a lick of work in days.

"You didn't tell me?" He can't even see C8, but he's sure he's in here, somewhere. Fucking black droid in a black room.

He sees the glow of C8's eyes a moment before he hears footsteps and, "Tell you what, sir?"

"Cut the bantha shit. He's sick. I know he's sick. You know he's sick. And because you didn't think to tell me he's sick, we're about to get bit in the ass so badly we'll walk with a limp for the rest of our lives. Supposedly Rey's in there, go get her for me."

"I do not know what you're talking about, sir."

"You bloody well do know what I'm talking about, and if you don't go in there and get her for me, I'm going in there and getting her myself, exposure be damned." He points at the chunk of wall that looks like every other chunk of wall in this office, but that Jon knows, if you hit it right, will slide out of the way revealing the doorway to Kylo's rooms.

"Sir, you are not going in there without Master Ren's express permission. Which you do not have."

"I go in there all the time."

"With _him._ He has not given me orders to allow you access without his permission."

Without looking away from C8, Jon says, "Artoo, I outrank C8 by a light year, pick that fucking lock and get me in there."

"Artoo, touch that lock and I will shut your central processing down so far you will never be brought back online again."

Jon doesn't need a translator to understand that Artoo finds C8's threat significantly more intimidating than his.

"Get me General Threepio, Grand Marshall Kinear, and Grand Admiral Schiff. If you won't bring Rey out to me, I will temporarily remove the Master as the head of the Order. So, get moving now!"

C8 stands there, impassive, arms crossed against his chest. Artoo's visor spins, and he starts toward the door to the throne room. He's going slowly, as if he's waiting for Jon to change his mind.

Jon winces, looks at C8, who is not budging and that's that. "Go Artoo—Get them— As of right now I am temporarily relieving Master Ren—"

The door slides open, and Rey's standing there, bedraggled, exhausted, Kylo's robe hanging off of her, black circles etched deep under her eyes, looking like she hasn't had a good night's sleep in weeks.

"If either of you fuckers wake him up, I'm slapping your asses into next week with my staff. Now what's so fucking important I don't get to have a nap?"

* * *

"Rey," Jon says, voice patient. He can just feel how tired she is. How much she doesn't want to deal with anything else. How drained. He can see it in her face, and the worry lines on her forehead and… "Why didn't you tell me?"

"You dragged me out of bed because I didn't mention everyone is sick? Really? I've been _healing_ or trying at least, keeping everyone hydrated, keeping people _alive,_ and you're miffed I didn't send you a little note? _Back the fuck off_ , Jon, this isn't about you!"

Tired and angry. Great. He lays as much soothing calm into his voice as he can, and begins mentally working on what he's going to stuff Poe into in an attempts to make him look important. "No. It's not about _me._ I'm dragging you out because no one told me, which means I didn't know that he wasn't in any position to deal with the K'Aran delegation, who are already in transit to us, which means it's too late for me to reschedule this thing, and right now, I desperately need Lady Ren, because I'm guessing if you look this bad just from healing this, there's no possible way the Master is going to show up for this thing, so…"

Rey goes pale. She was already pale, paler. "You… need Lady Ren? I… For what?"

He explains what he needs someone, who was supposed to be Kylo, but barring that, her, to do for the K'Arans.

Rey slumps into one of the seats at Kylo's conference table. She was already feeling nervous: resigned, ready, willing, but _nervous_ about the Alderaan thing, which was, if Kylo was approaching correct, playing on the kiddie level. This does not sound like playing on the kiddie level.

This is not easing one toe into the lake to see if she likes the water, let alone if she can _swim._

A moment later, C8's got a tray with tea and sandwiches on it. Jon hands her one. "Come on, you've got to eat. First things first, you aren't sick, right?"

"I'm not sick. Tired. Bone tired, but not sick. And… Jon, I just can't. I've got to get back to Lirium. Everyone needs IVs and we've only got so many beds for them and…"

Jon nods. He looks sympathetic. He genuinely is sympathetic, too, but that's not what he needs to be for this. He pulls up his inner fucking bastard and says, "Look, I know you want to be with them. I know you want to be near Kylo. I understand that. I was always a hoverer whenever Lane got sick, too. But… There's nothing you're doing for them that I can't get you a pile of med droids to do. There is something you can be doing here, that literally _no one else_ in the entire Order can do, and that's be Lady Ren. I need you to do this. The Order _needs_ you to do this. If he were the kind of man who can keep his butt in bed when something needs to be done, he would need you to do this for him."

Rey grits her teeth. Jon doesn't have to say it, if she doesn't do this, he's marching right on in there, Hiffa exposure be damned, and getting Kylo up and into something that looks vaguely functional, because they need _The Master._

Jon's pleased to see he's sold the lie. If she were even half as tired as she is now, he doesn't think he could have done it, but… She's tired, he's intentionally making himself believe he's going to do this, and… It's working.

He sells it further. "Look, I know you don't like asking for Order things, but… You need nurses. I have nurses. You are Lady Ren. I need Lady Ren. Let's call it an even trade, and then get you dressed and out there before we fail on our first, major, _extremely lucrative_ mediation deal."

Rey's lips press together. She knows Kylo worries about their finances. She knows how much he wants this neutral space, meditations, deal brokering thing to work. She knows that if Jon calls out with his mind, Kylo will wake up, and then he'll drag himself out of bed, and… "Fine. What do I need to do for this?"

Jon sags in relief. "Run in there, grab the plainest of your formal gowns, whatever underthings, shoes, and the cosmetics droid, and then come with me to my place. Mom and Lady Kinear should already be there. I'm guessing they'll make you get a real sleep and feed you up. Poe's already coming here. I'll get him stocked with nurses and all the med tech you could possibly want, and he can deliver them, and then come back here so you've got some friendly back up for this.

"Tomorrow, intense briefings. Getting you looking right. All spiffed up. And more sleeping. You're dead on your feet right now.

"Then Threepio will brief you more.

"Next day, it's a gracious luncheon while you meet with the K'Aar, chat with him a bit, feel him out, see what he wants, and then talk with his grandsons, get a feel for them, too. Then all the involved sides will put forth their own plans for what's going to happen if they win."

"Do I have to handle the talks?"

Jon shakes his head. "Just the one on one chats with the K'Aar and his grandsons. You just have to be there for the rest of them. We've got someone who specialize in K'Aran culture to listen, ask questions, and see what the 'best' answer may be. Once the talking is done, they'll 'advise' you on the next step, and then you'll sit at the head of the table, and talk with them about what you'd like to see happen next.

"Eventually, after you listen some more to everyone else, you'll chat again with each grandson, and then come up with 'The Order's Proposed Solution.' If they don't take it, we get paid for our time and hospitality. If they do take it, we get a ten year contract to enforce our solution and keep the peace in the K'Aran system."

Rey nods, slowly. Then she heads into their rooms, where Kylo is napping. She pets his hair back, kisses his forehead, and gathers her things. "So much for that nap." He's far enough asleep; he doesn't stir.

Then she's in his office with Jon.

* * *

As they're walking toward the elevator, Jon says, "How bad is it?"

"It's third shift and he's asleep. Fever's lower, but not broken. And he hasn't had an actual meal in days. It's Hiffa, which is beyond nasty, and if we didn't live in a galaxy with IV fluid and nutrient distribution, and good water sanitation, it'd be a population killer."

Jon nods. "How bad are you?"

She shrugs. "I'm tired. I'm annoyed. I don't want to be doing anything other cuddling with Kylo and setting up an experimental Force healing technique, which, if Xanth is right, might be the key to most of my loves getting up and feeling better, but I won't be doing it because this monstrosity just landed in my lap."

Jon winces. "I'm sorry. I wouldn't… If it weren't a huge deal…"

"Yeah. I know. When you go to the medbay to get those nurses, have them check you for it. Hopefully you didn't just get it off of me, but…"

He waves that off. "I don't get sick." Not strictly true, but, generally speaking unless he's being appallingly stupid, he doesn't get sick. Assuming he's good with washing his hands and not eating/drinking from the sick person's cup, he doesn't get sick. For example, when various colds and flus had been going around, he didn't catch them. "Never have. Don't think I'm going to start today."

"Lucky you."

"Lucky us. You want me to remind Poe not to actually get on planet when he drops the med-droids and equipment off?"

Rey looks listless, and Jon's really starting to wonder if she's right about not being sick, but… Well, given what the symptoms are… Tired. She's probably just tired. "That'd be good."

"We can send Artoo to oversee getting everything set up. If you want, you can record your ideas about the Force healing technique, see if you can get it working from afar."

"Yeah, fine." She looks disheartened and flat as they're walking along, and Jon sincerely hopes a nap and food will help, a lot.

"When did you eat last? A real meal. Not a cookie from C8."

She shakes her head. "I don't know. Three cycles."

"Three days?" Jon's eyes are wide.

"No… Take the kids to the IVs, five… uh, six now, open, so, that's…" She pauses. "Uh… about four hours to cycle through all of them. Get them all back home. Make sure the healthy ones eat and rest. Mop up, comfort, make sure everyone is in one piece. Come here, cuddle with Kylo. Go home, take the kids to the IVs, make sure the ones not on the IVs are more or less okay, repeat cleaning and nursing work, come back here, cuddle with Kylo…"

"Got it. Okay, when we get to my rooms, my mom and Lady Kinear are going to be in there. I'm going to meet with them, and I think you're just getting a good long shower," which is a polite way of saying that he'd rather prefer to never smell anything like the Hiffa lingering on her skin again, "and then into bed for a good long sleep."

"Where will you sleep?"

"I've kipped out on my sofa more nights than I can count. Another one won't hurt." This also isn't strictly true. He did sleep on that sofa for more than a year after Lane died, because he just _couldn't_ in the bed they shared. It's also too short for him, not firm enough, and when he wakes up his back and neck will hurt, but if he says that to her, she'll get weird about sleeping in his bed, and… Nope. They aren't going there.

"Fine," she nods absently. As they walk, Jon starts to do what he does, fix things. He's on the comm with Poe, getting him up to date, and ready to move an entire medical ward to Lirium if need be. He's relaying the orders to get that medical ward ready to move, fast. (A few people in the Med Division give him some static, but when he reminds them of who he is, and that this is for _Lady Ren_ those droids and supplies _move._ )

They're on the tram, and he's talking to Threepio about getting a streamlined version of the cheat sheet he'd laid on Kylo for Rey.

She's not really paying attention, but she does half catch something like, "Mistress Rey is handling this?"

"Yes."

"I'll be there at once."

"At once, she's getting a good eight hours of sleep and at least two meals. Just get it all collected as fast as you can."

"Yes, sir."

* * *

As they stand outside of Jon's door, two sets of expectations are about to go crashing into reality.

The first is Rey's. She expects to enter that door, try to wave off the older ladies, get a shower, and then collapse until they need to dress her up, all the while trying to _not_ have a minor mental breakdown at having to be, on her own, for very high stakes, _Lady Ren._

The second is Jon's, who grew up with one of these women, and is expecting a lot of what he'd call 'fussing' when he was younger. Rey's about to get fussed-over in a way she's likely never been fussed-over before. And he's not sure if she'll like it or if it'll scare her.

He opens the door, and Rey immediately gets hit with two older woman, both of whom have nursed a collection of sick children, parents, and husbands over the years, both of whom are aware of the fact that she's an orphan who's likely never been properly mothered herself, and both of whom are deeply invested in making sure that the Court of Ren will succeed well and long, because that's the key to them and theirs succeeding well and long, and that she's the current piece of the puzzle necessary to pull it all together.

"Oh, Rey, you look ready to drop," Mirina says, putting an arm around Rey, ushering her to the kitchen table, as Ellie's getting the tea and snacks ready to go.

"Sit down, sit. You can't take care of the rest of them this tired," and then there's tea in her hands, and a plate with biscuits and fruit in front of her, a warm blanket around her shoulders, and Ellie is glaring at Jon, like he somehow fucked something up, but he can't for the life of him think of what it could possibly be.

He doesn't have to wait long to find out what, though.

"Do you mean to tell me, Jonathan Frakes, that you don't have a good enough ear in his rooms to know when he's sick?"

Jon blinks. He's never been scolded for inadequate spying before.

His mom is shaking her head like he's some sort of massive failure, and then says, "I know I taught you better than that!"

"What?" Jon's thinking it, but Rey's the one who says it.

"Honey… That's his job. He can't be a good second-in-command if things like this sneak up and bite him." Ellie glares at Jon again. She's got an arm around Rey, and is gently stroking her back, and Rey's got wide eyes and doesn't know what to do with this, and Jon's actually a bit surprised, too. Yes, the fussing-over all went according to script, the dressing down for inadequate spying _isn't._

"I'm… sorry?" He tries, hoping that'll calm things down. "I… uh… didn't think bugging your room was appropriate?"

Mirina shakes her head again, but she does pass him a cup of tea, and it is the way he likes it. "We'll talk about this later."

"I'd… appreciate it if you didn't," Rey says, quietly. And as soon as she does, she knows exactly why this was set up this way, and then she glares at the ladies. "I'll just tell him next time. I've been busy, you know?"

Ellie smiles a bit. "It genuinely is his job to know every major and minor thing going on with both of you as far as it may impact his job. He can't properly diplomat if things like this come sneaking up at him. That said, it's your job to use the tools at your disposal, one of which happens to be Jon. You should never be this tired. And, if you had gotten a hold of him, I'm certain he'd have had all the medical staff you could have possibly wanted at your disposal in less than an hour."

Jon nods, emphatically.

"Are you genuinely trying to nurse twenty-five people? By yourself?" Mirina asks.

Rey sips the tea, and then eats a biscuit. She's so tired, but hungry now, too. "Not just by myself. Xanth, Savarah, and Cassie are helping."

"Savarah's fifteen, right?" Jon supplies. "And the oldest of the three of them."

Now she's glaring at him. But he doesn't care. If this can move the situation so that Rey gets the help she needs, and they don't end up in a situation like this again, he's comfortable with tattling on her.

Both Ellie and Mirina shake their heads. "Those poor children. We are sending a full medical group to them, aren't we Jon?"

Jon's not sure about _we,_ but the main point stands. "Done, Mom. Rey's friend Poe is picking them up as soon as they're ready to go."

"Good."

"I do have a medical droid at our settlement. It's not _just_ me and the kids."

"One droid for twenty-two people, all of whom are sick?" Ellie says. "That's what Pat's first sky command looked like, and it was fine, until they were under attack and more than three people were hurt at once. Then it was a disaster. There's a reason why all of the Stormtroopers are trained in basic first aid and triage skills, and every tech droid on these ships can jackleg medic if need be."

Rey hadn't known that. "All of them?"

"If the attack is bad enough, the codes are in place to get a roughly 1:2 ratio of care givers to people needing care," Ellie says. That idea wasn't Pat's, but he championed it and made sure it went live in the Empire and then over to the First Order. One med droid is more than sufficient most of the time. Until, of course, you're taking fire and you've got two people bleeding out and a third one slipping into shock, and the humans who are trained in first aid are also the humans in charge of the maneuvers that make sure that none of the rest of your ship gets shot to pieces.

Jon winces. "You don't want to see what happens if those codes go live, though. Most of the tech droids are set to shoot you up with enough morph that you won't care what comes next, diagnose the issues, cut off anything they can't immediately fix, cauterize any wounds, get you horizontal and warm so you don't slip into shock, and add you to the triage queue so that the most damaged people get attention from the real medics, first. The only thing they know how to do is immediately stabilize someone so they don't die waiting for a real medic."

Rey looks at him curiously. "Were you…"

He looks away. He really doesn't like thinking about those days. He likes talking about them less, but… "We're all trained in first, and likely second, aid. And I'm not saying I'm a good medic or anything, but I at least know not to cut an arm off just because it's broken."

All three of the ladies wince.

Jon looks at his tea, gets up, grabs a bottle, and pours a shot into it, then a bit more. Rey watches him do it, and for the first time it occurs to her that he drinks a lot more than everyone else she knows, save Poe. And it occurs to her that he's seen a lot more than everyone else she knows, save Poe.

His eyes meet hers, and she can almost feel him daring her to mention how much he drinks. She doesn't. That's not for today or tomorrow or… He's not her parents, and she doesn't remember them, or what they did to her well enough to call it into play. On top of that, she's got no… anything… for him. No answers, no real sense of if this is a problem or… Other than right now, he's feeling defensive about it, but…

Whatever this is, it's not for today.

Rey eats another biscuit, and then glances at Ellie and Mirina. "Now what?"

"Resting, for you," Ellie says. "Let me guess, if left to your own devices, you'd spend all your time hovering near Kylo, not sleeping properly, trying to make him feel better. But you've got the sick kids, too, so instead of getting the rest you need, you're trying to take care of everyone."

Rey half nods, and eats another biscuit.

Mirina glances to the bag Rey set down when she came in. "Is your dress in there?"

"Yes."

"Good, we'll get you set for… day after tomorrow, correct?"

Jon nods. "What do you know about the K'Arans?"

"Very little. They're outside my sphere," Mirina replies.

Ellie shakes her head. "I know they exist. They were tangentially part of the Empire, and the Old Republic before that, but between being far enough out on the Rim to make getting to them long and tedious, and keeping themselves to themselves, I don't know much beyond that. But while you sleep, we'll read. And talk. And _learn._ Come the day after tomorrow, you'll be ready."

And, almost magically, as Ellie says _sleep_ Rey feels her eyes drooping. A moment after that, Ellie's got an arm around her, is gently escorting her to Jon's room, and then tucking her into bed.

And for the first time that Rey can ever recall, someone snugs the blankets around her, pets her hair, kisses her forehead, and quietly shuts off the lights and door for her.

And then she's asleep.

* * *

"What did you put in her tea?" Jon asks.

"Nothing nearly as strong as what you put in yours. The poor girl's exhausted, between the chamomile, sleep wort, and not having to be in charge for a few hours, she was done for," Ellie says. "Now, how could you have possibly not known?"

Jon rolls his eyes. "I just didn't. Unlike them, I'm not actually capable of reading minds, and no one told me."

"Well, that needs to be rectified at once. Schiff knew within minutes of Kylo coming down with his cold. Pat had the intel an hour after that. C8 produces daily briefings on what he's doing, and you should absolutely be getting them."

Jon rolls his eyes. The downside of a droid like C8 is, that unless Kylo specifically tells him something, he won't deviate from his programming, and… Jon's official rank is still Lt. Colonel, which means C8's going to give him exactly _nothing_. He can just feel it. Kylo's so used to depending on him, that it never occurred to him that he'd have to _tell_ C8 to give him access. Because with mind-readers, who spend a lot of time with other mind-readers, remembering they have to explicitly, _verbally,_ communicate things can be iffy.

However, unlike C8, Kinear and Schiff bloody well know who he is and what he does and why he's still at Lt. Colonel. "Then why didn't _you_ tell me?" Jon says, pointedly, shooting back his tea.

Ellie waves that away. "It never even threatened to occur to any of us that you weren't in the know. As soon as Kylo's capable of giving an order again, he needs to make sure that you are in the loop. No, you don't have to literally bug his rooms," Ellie and Mirina share a look that Jon understands as _but you bloody well should, as well as any other room anyone who's of any value is in,_ "but you do need a direct line to anything and everything C8 knows. You should be getting daily updates on what Kylo is doing. And, like with Pat, C8 should know the only things he can't tell you are things he's specifically been ordered not to tell you."

"Fine. As soon as he's fit for human company again we'll get those orders in place."

"What's he down with?" Mirina asks.

"Hiffa."

The ladies wince.

Ellie half inclines her head. "That explains the smell. We'll make sure to get the janitorial staff in here, as well as laundry as soon as she's awake."

"Yes, I was hoping to get her into my shower before you stuck her in my bed." Jon's voice is beyond dry and into arid as he says that.

"It's just a mattress, Jon, we can get you a new one if they can't get the smell out," Mirina says.

Jon winces at that idea. "Says the woman who is still sleeping in the same bed she shared with my father."

"But not the same mattress. Good, gods, love, it's been thirty-three years."

"I _know._ "

Ellie's voice is gentle as she says, "They'll get it cleaned. You won't have to let go of it, not if you don't want to." She shakes her head a bit. "Never Hiffa, we've avoided that, but… Over the years, the kids brought home a lot of nasty crud, and… Blanie's cleaning enzyme, it'll take any stain, any scent off of anything. We used to go through it by the liter."

Jon sighs at that, too. He supposes he can't, not really, still smell Lane in their bed. It's been more than two years, and it's not like the sheets and blankets and pillowcases haven't been washed, a lot, in that time. Still…

Mirina squeezes his hand gently. He feels her finger brush over his wedding ring. "Okay, show us the dress and tell us about what our girl's going to have to do."

Jon pours himself another drink, this one almost entirely tea, pulls out Rey's dress, and starts to explain.

* * *

"So that's the short version. It's a culture that worships strength and power, consider conspicuous wealth a sign of both, and they're on the verge of ripping apart. We've got strength and power coming out our ears, so the K'Aar is looking to hire ours until whichever grandson grows up enough that he won't need us as a crutch any longer."

The ladies nod.

"So, you're saying Kylo was literally perfect for the job?" Mirina says. Say whatever you can or will about the Great Black Urus, he's basically the physical embodiment of human strength and power, sitting in the middle of the largest battleship in the galaxy, with the most impressive fleet flying around it, and all of it is at his command.

Jon cocks his head and sips his tea. "Basically. Except, of course, apparently, he's not able to kill a virus at a whim, so he's down for the next five or six days, and if we could get him up and talking, he'll poison anyone who gets near him, so…"

"So, absolutely no Kylo for this," Ellie finishes.

"I'm fairly certain he's not even aware of the fact Rey's not in his room anymore, and for that matter, I'm going to tell her to make sure C8 doesn't remind him that this is supposed to happen if he wakes up, because the last thing any of us want to do is to try and stuff his fever-blasted self back into his room before he gets everyone else sick."

"Sounds sensible," Mirina says. "Nothing like a nasty stomach bug to turn the tides against you."

"Indeed," Ellie says.

Jon's _certain_ there's a story behind that, but he's also certain that he doesn't want to know what it is, not right now.

"So, I've got to whip up something that looks like we're still in charge and in power and functional. I'm fairly sure I _can_ pull that off. The question is, will Grand—" Fuck it, he's talking to the man's wife, "Pat or Grand Admiral Schiff back me on this plan?"

Ellie smirks a bit. "Josh. The Grand Admiral's name is Josh, and if they didn't think that you were capable of joining them in the Grand Marshall's ranks you'd be too dead to care. Neither of them is stupid or tolerant of incompetents risking their personal survival."

Mirinia bristles a bit at that, but she doesn't say anything. Jon blinks. She didn't say anything because she knows that's how the game is played at this level, too. As long as he's good for the Order, and them, he'll flourish. And as soon as he's not…

That sends a chill down his spine. As a Lt. Colonel, as a _real_ Lt. Colonel, he's below notice. It doesn't much matter what he does, and who he's friends with, and how he plays the game, because he's just too little to be worth noticing.

As the potential third in the second highest rung of the Order…

He swallows.

Mirina pats his hand. "There's a code, love. And men like Josh and Pat play by it. That's how all the Imperials used to play the game. As long as your service record was good, your family would always be safe. But… If you became a problem, you wouldn't be one for long." She glances at his wedding picture. "That's a big part of eventually warming up to Lane. He knew the rules and played by them. I mean… you knew. You had to _know._ "

He knew. But there's knowing, and there's _knowing_ and he _knew,_ sort of. His previous commanding officer didn't just bugger off to parts unknown. He became a problem. A personal problem, for Jon, and a professional one for Lane, so Lane killed him, and that was that. And no one, not even Jon Frakes, blinked at it, because that's the way things worked.

So, yes, he _knew._ But there's also the moment when you realize that you personally can sign an order, and people will, literally, die because of it. And other people will, literally, kill because of it.

Or that, if you pull a blaster on someone, and use it on them, the only thing you'll have to do after is fill out some paperwork explaining why you pulled that blaster and used it.

And _no one_ thinks that's remotely inappropriate.

And that's a _lot_ to take in, because while it's true that people have died because of decisions Jon has made (like slightly thinning down the armor plate so he could save a few credits per unit there, and then shift those credits into a slightly better waste disposal system in the Stormtrooper armor) it's also true that he's never, actually, personally, killed anyone before.

And he was rather hoping not to ever change that.

And now… Both of the ladies sitting with him are saying, something, likely that he should be paying attention to, but…

At some point, he'll have to decide what he's willing to do, personally, to defend himself, his position here, and the Order as a whole.

He takes another drink of his tea.

But not today.

* * *

"Okay, med center has been delivered, now what?" Poe's voice on Jon's comm jerks him out of his planning session with his mother and Ellie.

"Do you know your way around the _Supremacy?_ "

"Not even remotely."

Jon rolls his eyes. "Great. Get back here, stuff your ship somewhere. Once you know your landing coordinates, let me know, and I'll make sure Artoo—"

"Who is on a different planet, overseeing setting up the fanciest medical bay I've ever heard of, let alone seen."

"Fuck…" Jon's head is in his hands.

His mom gently strokes his wrist. She mouths to him. "Go get him."

"Just let me know when you've got your landing assignment; I'll come find you."

"You have time for that?"

"My current second-in-command seems to think so."

Mirina smirks a bit at that, as she threads her needle and begins to lay down another line of embroidery to the gown she's got in her hands. Apparently, the K'Aran like _ornate._ She's not going to try to put Rey into something that looks K'Aran, just something that looks like they might have similar values.

Which means she's sewing for her life. Embroidering in thread of platinum and adding seed pearls and tiny emeralds to what would otherwise be a fairly plain dove gray dress. Once she's got the first motif done, though, the droids will be able to copy it along the hem and sleeves of the gown. Mirina Frakes is an amazing embroiderer, fast as fast can be, but she can still only do about two square centimeters an hour. Once this gets to the droids, they'll get up to ten centimeters per hour, per droid, and Jon's going to stuff every droid he can fit around this dress.

"All right. I'll hit the landing queue in about an hour. Anything else?" Poe asks.

"Yeah. I'm sending you a crash course of what we're supposed to be doing, who we're meeting, and why."

"Great. Studying." It's clear from his voice that book work was never Poe's favorite thing.

"Think of it as deep background on a security case."

"Ah. All right. See you soon."

Ellie and Mirina both look at Jon, curious as to whom he's been talking to.

Mirina's the one who asks. "So, he's _Rey's friend?_ "

Jon rubs his lips together. He's sure Ellie will recognize the name. He's not sure if his mother will. "Yeah. You know Rey's Maji-thing?"

They nod.

"Master Poe Dameron of the Maji. He's her… well, me, I guess."

Ellie's face is perfect. There's not a single tell on it. But he just _knows_ that she knows who Poe is. His mother, fortunately, doesn't. The last thing he needs right now is for her to have a melt down over the second-highest-ranked member of the Resistance joining in on this dance.

Which is also making him wonder why he's invited him to the dance, too, but…

Well, fuck, if they're moving to the Order of the Maji, and right now they're a tad light on Order, he might as well fill his ranks with Maji.

Which is as deeply as he's going to think about this right now, as he's working on sketching out something that'll make Poe looks like he belongs in the top diplomatic ranks of what will eventually be a galaxy-spanning organization in the peace, prosperity, and basic sentient dignity business.

(And if said outfit is doing nice things for Poe's hips and ass, well, he is only human.)

* * *

It takes Jon a moment to find Poe amid all of the _stuff_ in the… It's a loading bay… He's shaking his head. "Remind me to find you a better place to land."

"Kylo said something like that, too." He grins at Jon. "You look fried. So, what am I gearing up to swoop in at the last minute and save?"

Jon turns and nods them toward the exit, where they can catch a tram, and elevator, another tram, and… "The size of this place is stupid."

Poe shrugs. "It's a city."

"Yes, but that's remarkably inconvenient when you need it to be a palace."

"Ah…" He nods. "Fried… huh?"

"Uh…" Jon blinks. He hasn't answered Poe's question. "Fried. So, you do a lot of swooping in and saving at the last minute?"

Poe thinks about it, decides _not_ mentioning Starkiller is a good plan, and responds with, "Something of a specialty of mine. So…"

"Okay, here's the really sort version—"

"Are you just going to tell me what I read in your write up?"

"Yes."

"Okay, not what I'm looking for. I already read it, and just because I don't enjoy studying doesn't mean I'm bad at it. What the hell do you expect _me_ to do?"

Jon blinks. "Right. Uh… Put on whatever the hell outfit I come up with for you, show the fuck up, act charming, make people want to be here, make them feel like there's no problem we can't solve, and help keep Rey comfortable and calm, because she's going to a much better job of Lady Renning if she feels like a friendly face or two, besides mine, is cheering her on."

"I can do that."

"Good."

They walk a few more steps before Poe says, "Do you need my measurements or something?"

Jon laughs and laughs and laughs at that.

* * *

Poe has a few seconds to look around Jon's apartment before the introductions begin. It's a _nice_ place. The colors are pleasant, well-coordinated. Everything is tidy. Jon appears to have a few pet fish flitting around in a pristinely kept bowl. And…

Poe mentally grins. Pictures. Of Jon and an attractive man. But Jon has a _friend._ Who is female… So… Jon's pulling off his gloves, and… He does have a marriage band. Poe didn't imagine that the first time… So, either he and his husband are game to play with others, or his husband is no longer in the metaphorical… Poe glances to what is likely a wedding picture on the wall… if not literal, picture.

Interesting.

He'd been wondering if Jon had been looking him over a bit more carefully than was strictly business-like during their previous meetings. He didn't do anything… flirty, or express anything Poe would consider a direct sign of interest, but… He did _look,_ probably _._ Granted, Poe's more than used to catching the quick, discreet, look a man flashes when he's not sure the attention is welcome.

Then Jon speaks, "Poe, this is my mother, Mirina Frakes, and Lady Ellie Kinear. My secret weapons in the diplomacy department."

Poe's beyond amused to see that he's meeting Jon's mom, though he's also curious to get to interact with an… Imperial. He's heard about Ellie, so he knows she's something of a big deal, and he's not sure if she's an Imperial so much as... Well, he doesn't know. She pre-and post-dates the Empire, so… A survivor. She's a survivor, and in general, he's always gotten on well with survivors. They tend to recognize each other, and appreciate it, even if they aren't all of the same stripe when it comes to anything else.

That's part of what he liked so much about Leia.

He takes Mirina's hand first, gently kisses the back of it, looks her in the eyes with a big grin, "Charmed, ma'am. This is my first time actually working with your son, and I'm looking forward to it."

He sees Mirina just _look_ at Jon, and then lick her lips, smile at Poe, and say, "Charmed, as well. Thank you. And what is it you intend to do for my son?"

"Whatever he needs me to." Jon is behind Poe, so Poe doesn't see him swallow hard at that, or bite his lip, or _not_ blush, but he feels it.

He absolutely sees Ellie, who is in front of him, smirk at it. He steps over, and again takes her hand, and kisses the back of it, "Lady Kinear." He flashes her the same grin. "I understand we're in a time crunch and need a bit of daring-do to whip a miracle out of the ethers. Fortunately, that's my specialty."

And Ellie, knowing, likely in more detail than Poe himself does (After all, he _lived_ it. He didn't read the in-depth move by move reports on it after.) exactly what sort of last minute daring-do he's been able to whip out, nods slowly, and says, "You'll do."

Mirina raises an eyebrow at that. "Are the Maji in the miracle business?"

"Nope. But if needs be, we'll make one." He's still giving her his best, take-on-all-comers (or cocky-asshole) grin.

Jon smiles at him. And Poe wonders if that smile is a touch warmer than some of his previous ones, and then hands over two datapads.

"Miracle step one. K'Oanan and K'Ahuana. Identical twin boys, who are so identical that no one is entirely sure which one is the oldest any longer. Apparently, back when they were babies, a nanny stuck both of them in the bath at the same time, and, well, no clothing, and… And then when they were little, they'd get naked and pretend to be each other, and..."

"And no one's sure which one was actually born which any longer," Poe says.

"Exactly," Jon replies. "These are the files the K'Arans sent to us. The ones that _aren't_ supposed to get onto our servers. These are the completely non-official, will be denounced if we leak them, _internal_ assessments of both boys, written, from what I can tell, though, of course, there are no names on this, by the boys'—"

"'Boys,' are we talking like, ten-year-olds?" Poe asks.

"Technically, they're young men," Ellie adds. "Twenty-two-years old."

Poe nods. "Okay. Old enough they might pull this off. Young enough no one past thirty is comfortable with it."

That gets the other three, all past thirty, nodding.

Jon taps the datapad. "We think this report was written by their grandfather. The K'Aar of the K'Arans. Probably bits and pieces have been added by the other highest warlords. But this is the most… uncensored… report we're going to get on them, and I want you to know it inside out."

Poe takes the datapad. "Okay. And what am I going to do with this once I know it inside out?"

"I'm thinking I'll give the boys to you, and then set Rey on the K'Aar. We've got a meet and greet period where Kylo was _supposed_ to meet with the K'Aar, then talk with him about what he wanted out of this, get a feel for what's in that pad and what's not, and then he'd spend some time with each of the boys, get more of a feel for what they'd do and who they are, and discreetly hovering around the edges are our diplomacy wonks and Threepio, who really have studied up on this, also watching and seeing, and then _they'd_ come up with a plan, and Kylo'd either accept it and give it to the K'Aar, or reject it and offer up his own ideas."

"Okay, divide and conquer." Poe can handle that. "Rey can lay down her Force and, with any luck, soothe what's likely to be a somewhat miffed head of state, who if we're lucky, won't consider it a mortal insult that instead of getting a meeting with Kylo, we're fobbing him off on Rey and I."

"Exactly." Jon nods. "No one cares much if the boys like us. It'd be nice, because we're attempting to get something like friendly relationships with other nations, but it won't be the end of the Order if they don't take a shine to you. It will be an issue if the K'Aar thinks we're being rude to him."

"All right. More studying." Poe looks around. Ellie is in one of Jon's comfy chairs, a cup of tea by her side, and a collection of similar datapads nearby. Mirina is on the sofa, a… lot of fabric… Poe assumes it's a dress, but he's not entirely sure, in her lap, she appears to be sewing.

Jon's sitting at his… Poe's never seen one before, but he's heard of them. It's an actual drawing board, a slanted desk with a light over it. There's a glass of… it's clear, about two centimeters full, and he'd bet it's vodka, but he doesn't know it is, resting on a small shelf at the bottom.

"What are you doing?" Poe asks.

"Right now, trying to make Kylo's not-a-throne room look ready for them, and reconfiguring it so that I can stick Rey in the middle of it and have all of them look at her and see _the_ Empress."

Poe chuckles a bit. "Good luck with that."

"Thanks."

Poe glances around a bit more. He set the datapad down on the kitchen table. "Uh… Food?" It's well past the time he'd normally eat supper, and going past all the restaurants in the market section of the F-Deck did exactly nothing to take his mind off his stomach.

Jon blinks, "Oh, uh… Right." He taps his comm. "Kitchen services, this is Lt. Colonel Frakes."

"Yes, sir?"

"I need an order of…" He glances to Poe, who blinks. "Whatever you like," Jon says to him.

"Uh… Rugarian noodles and a brown ale?"

"Rugarian noodles and a brown ale."

"Yes, sir. Do you want the noodles hot, medium, or mild? What temperature on the brown ale?"

Poe blinks. He's used to military cuisine that comes in pre-fab bricks and you eat it by spraying it with water to hydrate it. "Medium. Room temperature."

"Medium. Room temperature."

"Done, sir. We'll have it up in about twenty minutes."

"Good. Frakes out."

Poe's still staring at him. "That's how it works?"

"For food. For officers. Enlisted eat in one of the messes or in one of the restaurants/booths or cafes on the C, D, or E decks. We're on the F-deck here, and if you wanted to take a walk, there's a market section about half a klick down the hall to the right, or two and a half, to the left, and there are restaurants and cafes there, too."

Poe blinks again. "Someone will just bring you the food?"

"Thing. Something. If I'd asked for a specific dish from a particular restaurant, something would deliver it, and charge my account. With the exception of the few head and sous chefs, everyone else in the kitchens or on food delivery is a droid. The food supply is too valuable and vulnerable to leave to humans."

"Poisons?" Poe asks. "We used to… Uh…" He glances at Mirina and Ellie. Imperials… First Order… He licks his lips. "When I was in security, one of my jobs was to come up with ways that my people could be compromised. Making sure the kitchens were secure was first on the list of any meeting with food."

Jon smirks slightly. He knows what Commander Dameron of the Resistance was likely thinking. "Yes, avoiding poisons, but also avoiding slips in basic hygiene. Droids don't forget to wash their hands. They don't sneeze."

Poe smirks back at him. "They don't catch Hiffa virus, and then give it to all their buddies the first day they get home when they're all in the kitchen processing the food they brought home."

Jon raises an eyebrow at Poe, sitting a little closer to him. "Is that what happened?"

Poe nods. "Chewie and Finn got home, and apparently Finn'd been exposed. The two of them had a full ship of fresh produce, so they lug it into the kitchen, along with the rest of the settlement, so they're all in there for _six_ hours, and…"

Jon's nodding. "And by the end of the night everyone but Rey and the lightlings are sick? You don't have air cycling in your buildings, do you?"

"Exactly, almost. Chewie's got Paige, and he's making sure she stays okay. But everyone else is down. And no. You don't put air cycling on buildings on a planet with a hospitable climate. Not if you're watching your credits."

"Paige didn't get it?"

"She got such a little dose Rey could take care of it, but she was it. Everyone else had too much."

"And you just happened to be out of town."

"Second luckiest damn day of my life, apparently."

Jon decides to push it. "What was the first?"

Poe grins. It's clear he's circling through a collection of possible responses to that, and it's also clear that _none_ of them are true, but before he comes up with something, probably along the lines of, _The day I met you,_ Mirina says, "A little less flirting, a little more work."

Jon rolls his eyes. "Yes, _Mom._ " He turns his attention back to Poe. "Anyway, food'll be here soon. Make yourself comfortable, and figure out how to gladhand two princelings in such a way that you'll have a good idea of who they really are when you're done."

* * *

The noodles are good. Surprisingly good. Stupidly good. No one outside of the Rugrath system has any right making these noodles these well. And yet…

Poe's reading. He's nursing his ale. He's sitting, leaning back, comfortable… And… well, confused.

He doesn't want it to show, but…

This is _not_ what he thought the _Supremacy_ was supposed to be like.

He's heard about Kylo's all black rooms. And, of course there are the chunks he's seen. Well, obviously an _interrogation_ room, a flight deck, or a loading bay aren't going to be particularly lush, but given how austere they were, he didn't think the F-Deck, let alone comfortable little flats like this, could possibly be a thing.

He's kind of annoyed that this bit is not only nicer than anything the Resistance had, but it's also on par with any New Republic base he was ever on.

And he can comfort himself with the fact that it's nicer than Resistance bases by the fact that Resistance bases were funded by charity and the personal funds of the higher ups, and in many cases the not-so-high-ups.

But, the New Republic… He sips his ale. He was an officer in the New Republic. He was on security for a _Senator._ He doesn't remember food delivery on tap. And he knows for a fact that a lot of the Senate employed their own, personal, loyal kitchen staffs because they didn't necessarily trust anyone else to cook for them.

Not an unwise decision.

After all, it's not like they didn't take advantage of the laxity of the occasional kitchen worker to make sure the right, or wrong, person didn't go where they were or weren't supposed to go. Or vote in certain things. Or…

He takes another sip. What's the line? _A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away?_ Something like that.

Still, it does irk him a bit that "Evil Inc." apparently does a better job of taking care of its people than the "Good Guys."

He thinks about that for a moment, and about Finn's stories. Apparently, "Evil Inc." does a better job taking care of its _officers_ than the "Good Guys."

That gets a sigh. That's likely part of how "Evil Inc." gets to stay in business. Keep the officers happy, and they've got a vested interest in keeping the men in line, and the "Good Guys" from winning.

He takes another sip of his ale, and glances around the room. Ellie's reading. Mirina is sewing. Occasionally they say something to each other. He can, almost, he's not sure if this is genuine, or if he just knows she's there, so he's imagining it, feel Rey sleeping. Jon's back to him, at the drawing board, working on something, slowly, maybe one sip every ten minutes, going through that glass of clear liquid, which, given how he's drinking it, definitely isn't water.

That's the point of being here, right? The hope that this isn't, and won't be, "Evil Inc." any longer. The prayer that he's thrown in with the right side, and…

He glances at the datapad in front of him, with all of the boys' secrets. They'd likely die if they knew how closely they were being watched.

Or, maybe, since they've been watched like this their whole lives, they're used to it.

This far into the report he's got one of the two he's leaning toward, but… He gets the sense the guy who wrote the report may also be leaning in that direction. Which might be another reason to bring them in. Get an impartial opinion.

He sighs and takes another drink. He rubs his Maji pendent between his thumb and forefinger. He can't fix the galaxy, but maybe, right here, right now, in this one issue, he can bring things a bit closer to balance.

And that's got to be worth something, right?


	16. The Rise of Lady Ren

2/5/2

Rey wakes up alone, disoriented, in a bed she doesn't know, that smells like a man who isn't Kylo, and for a full minute she goes dead still, eyes closed, pretending to still be asleep, listening carefully, trying to figure out what's going on, hoping that something hasn't gone horribly wrong.

Nothing. No sounds at all. Except… Humming. Right, humming, because she's on the _Supremacy._ Which has a constant low-grade hum, because it's a moving ship.

Jon's room. She sits up. That's why there are things like colors, and the bed is narrower, and it smells like… she's not sure. Cologne. That's in there, and… Jon… and… male… she just doesn't know what the rest of it is, but it's a scent she knows is _male_. Very much not their room at home, and not Kylo's room here.

 _Tired_ must have been an understatement if it took her that long to remember where she was, and why.

She glances at the chrono. _Tired_ must have also been an understatement, in that it's ten hours later, and all she wants to do is roll over and go back to sleep.

Ten hours… So… First shift, then. It's the middle of the night. Likely why she's not hearing any voices. She gets up, tucks the blanket back into place, and puts her shoes on. The door opens with a near silent swoosh, and in the main room she finds Poe on the sofa, snoring slightly, and Jon hunched over his drawing table, working on something.

"Hey," she says, voice quiet.

"Hey back," he keeps his voice quiet, too. "Good nap?"

"Yeah. Maybe. I think I need another one."

He smiles at that and nods back to the bed. "You're welcome to it."

She shakes her head. "Nah. I've got to go home, check in on everyone, see if Xanth and Critt have figured out a way to kick Hiffa in the butt."

Jon raises an eyebrow at that. "You can't just… magick it away? No, of course not, if you could, Kylo wouldn't be in bed."

"It doesn't work that way. I tried. Made everyone I tried on worse."

Jon winces.

"But Xanth might have a plan, and if he and Critt can work it, that'll be much more effective than what I did."

"That's good."

She's looking over Jon's shoulder. "What's that?"

"Me starting to re-arranging the meet and greet area." He's only got a few lines on the paper, but there are several crumpled ones on the floor behind him. Though as he adds a few more, she's getting a feel for where he's going.

That also gets a raised eyebrow, and Rey doesn't say it, but he can feel the _tell me more_ coming off of her.

"Okay, so this is a culture that pretty much worships strength and power. Physical strength and military power. Now, Kylo's about the size of a mountain, and when he feels like it, he can project a tangible wall of _don't fuck with me._ Plus, we're in the middle of _his_ ship, and it's the biggest, most weapon encrusted one in the galaxy. Now, there's nothing I can do about the ship angle. I can't just whisk up an armada for you on a whim. And I don't know if you can do the _don't fuck with me_ vibe, but if you can, I'd encourage it. I do know you are not 1.9 meters and 93 kilos of trained killer, so, obviously, I've got to do something so that first view of you makes them all understand that you are just as deadly as he is, and just as worthy of immediate, anal-puckering capitulation as he is."

Rey's eyes are wide, and it's clear to Jon which bit of that is shocking to her. He waves it off, "It's a…" Rey didn't go through basic First Order training. Technically, Jon didn't, either. He went through a program designed for officers from outside the First Order. That said, some of the sergeants who oversaw their first year of training had more than a few _colorful_ ways of describing different levels of fear. "You know… just pretend I said pants wetting, because it's the same basic idea."

Rey nods slowly. She looks at what Jon's drawing. "Looks a lot like a throne."

"Because it is. But, in deference to your man, we'll call it a large chair on a raised dias."

She rolls her eyes a bit and snerks.

"They make them that way so that you are literally, as well as metaphorically, higher than everyone around you. It's a visual trick to make people feel like you're better/more powerful than they are. Now, since they are literally coming here to hire our bigger/more powerful-ness, and since you don't have the physical body for it, I'm making do with staging the scene to make you look more… everything."

Rey sighs.

"None of that. They're expecting a warrior king, and I'm going to attempt to slide a warrior queen in on them, with no advanced warning, so, we're going to dress everything up. And, unlike, say, prettying things up and playing up the femme side, this attack requires you to be you. Maybe up your own personal _grrrr_ factor up a bit."

That's reassuring. "So, if I… I don't know, forget the right name or pick the wrong fork..."

"Don't forget the names. That part matters. That part _always_ matters. But they won't know the right fork, either, so don't worry about that."

Rey sighs at that. She looks around the room. "Your mom and Ellie?"

"Not sure about Ellie. Probably, hopefully, making sure we've got Pat and Schiff behind us on this. Mom's back at her place, with your dress and enough droids to fill her living room. She's in charge of the physical packaging of you as the warrior queen."

"And that means?"

"Fairly modest gown, lots of expensive details, they like money, too, and colors that are close to, but not exactly mirroring the Order."

"No head to toe black?"

"Yes, Lady Ren, I didn't think we needed to copy his style exactly. Though, I suppose, if you want to, we can run the fabric through a quick dye." Jon thinks on that for a moment. "Actually… I'll talk to Mom. We might do that."

Rey rubs her head. "I'm feeling less like a person and more like a prop by the moment."

Jon half-smiles at her. "When we get to plan one of these more than," he checks the chrono, "thirty-two hours in advance, we can get more of you as a person here, but… Honestly, we're using you as a placeholder. For this, you are a prop. We need someone to stick on a throne, and you're the next best thing to Kylo, so on that throne you go." He stretches out his hands in a _we're making do_ sort of gesture.

She nods. Then she looks over to Poe. "Uh?"

"He's delivered the medbay, deposited Artoo to make sure it got set up right, and now I've got him here on…" He sees the way Rey is watching him, and he just knows Poe's deep enough asleep he's not going to hear it, though he does lower his voice a bit, "Shit, honestly, I'm not really sure. It just feels right, so… He's here. I'm not sending you in flying solo."

Rey smiles a bit at that. "Wanted another friend, for me and you?"

"Yeah, maybe. I do know what, on a literal level, he's going to be doing. I'm giving him the twins, and you've got grandpa. He'll be getting an uncensored feel for the twins, who they really are and what they're really going to do if we give them this, and you'll be making sure the K'Aar feels like we're not brushing him off."

"I think I'm better at getting a feel for people than Poe is."

It's clear that she's talking about her Force skills, and that Jon had forgotten them. He recovers fast, though. "Yeah, but the chance that I can convince Grandpa that Poe belongs on that throne is just about non-existent, but I can convince him you do. Plus, Poe's plenty good enough at reading people to show two twenty-two-year-olds a good afternoon and charm them into revealing who they really are."

"We could put you on the throne."

Jon just laughs. He's quiet about it, not wanting to wake up Poe, but it's a good, deep one. When he finishes he says, wrapping an arm around Rey and giving her a swift hug. "Thanks, I needed that."

Rey decides not to press further on that one, and says, "We don't know who the boys are?"

"We know what's in the reports. We know what's in the top-secret, no-names-attached, we'll-deny-it-if-it-ever-gets-out report. But we want to know what they weren't willing to write down, even if it didn't have their names attached to it. What we want to know is the kind of stuff no one was willing to write down, and probably get confirmation of the things we've read between the lines. So, with any luck, you'll get Grandpa's uncensored view of the situation. Poe'll get a feel for the kids. I'll stage manage the whole thing. And by the end of the afternoon, the actual experts, who will be hovering in the back, listening, will know what's what, and give us a good plan for how to deal with this."

"And then what?"

"Then you sit down with the three of them, explain what the Order is suggesting, what we're willing to do to enforce that suggestion, and assuming they like it, they say yes, and our legal department talks to their wonks, and we get it all set up, and the credits come rolling in."

"You make it sound so easy."

There's an almost manic gleam to Jon's eyes as he says, "Easy, yeah, right, _easy_."

 _That's_ when Rey gets hit with how nervous, under the surface, Jon is about this.

She sighs at that, too. Then she rests a hand on his shoulder. She looks at the glass that's on his drawing board, but doesn't try to smell it to see if the clear liquid in it is water or vodka.

She wishes she could comfort him, tell him it's going to be okay, that this will all work out, but… She doesn't know, or feel, that that's true. She doesn't feel it isn't. There's… no impending sense of doom. Fear, she's afraid of failing, but she's not getting any pre-cog either way, about this.

"It's late, isn't it?"

"Early, technically."

"How about you get some sleep? I'm going to go to Kylo, spend some time with him, then home, see what's going on there. When do you need me back here?"

"Do you know when second shift starts?"

"Yes."

"Back here, then. I'll have breakfast brought up, and we'll get moving forward."

He takes a sip of his drink. Bringing it up to his face means it's close enough for Rey to smell it. It's not water.

She also notices that he's not moving in any way that's remotely close to suggesting he's going to his bed.

"Sleep?"

Jon sighs. "Rey… Uh… I know, given what you've been up to, it can't be avoided, but, you reek, and now my bed does, and…"

She winces. "Oh."

"Yeah. Once I get a laundry droid with clean linens up here, I'll get a rest, but…"

She nods. "I can't smell it anymore."

"Which is a blessing. That said, if you could… Get a shower and some clean clothing between now and then…"

"I can certainly get a shower. Uh… All of my clothing is in one of two rooms Kylo's been sick in."

He nods. "When you go back to Kylo, tell C8 to make sure the laundry service gets in there. Until then, if you need to, you can borrow a bathrobe from me. When you get back, I'm likely giving you to Mom and Ellie and Threepio. They'll get you ready for tomorrow."

"What will you be doing?"

"Overseeing turning his not-a-throne room back into a throne room. Figuring out what the hell I'm putting him," he gestures to Poe, "in to make him look like _The Maji._ Making sure that all the details for the meeting have been put into place properly. And likely sewing until my eyes fall out."

Rey looks curiously at him. "Can't you have a droid do that?"

"Yes," he touches the sketch on his drawing board, "but like sketching everything out, I find it relaxing. It's easier to see the problems, and the solutions, if I'm sewing or sketching. Hands busy, mind clear, problems solved."

Rey nods at that. "This isn't easy for you, either?"

"Not easy, no. And it's more not easy than it should have been, but… We'll pull through, and it'll be splendid." He's as much convincing himself as her. "Go, find your way to heal your loves."

* * *

Easier said than done.

All of this is easier said than done.

She goes to Kylo first, and he's curled into a little ball, on his side, under all the blankets, shivering slightly. And, having only been near the Hiffa clinging on her skin, her nose had re-adjusted, and now she can smell it hanging on Kylo again. It's on his skin, and in his hair, bleeding through every exhale, and poisoning his sweat.

That makes her wince. Both for her own nose, and for Jon's bedding. Hopefully the laundry droid will be there soon, and he can rest.

 _You awake?_ She thinks it quietly to him, and he doesn't stir. So she asks the med droid, "Is his fever higher?"

It nods at her.

She knows that's normal. It'll go up and down over the course of this. She just wishes it wouldn't, as she settles next to him, and slowly strokes his hair. It's sweaty, which she considers a good sign, because that means he's got enough fluids in him so that he can sweat.

She checks the bedding, smoothing it out, so his IV doesn't get tangled in it, and he fusses some, because she's letting cold air in that he's not appreciative of.

Rey curls around his back. He relaxes in her arms, shivering easing.

Rey kisses the back of his neck. _This, here, now_ is what she wants to do. Take care of Kylo. Hover around him and make him feel better with her touch. She doesn't want to be out there Lady Renning, and she doesn't want to go back to Lirium and be Mistress Rey who's supposed to know all the answers, and…

She just wants to be Rey, Kylo's _wife_ , taking care of her man, making him feel something approaching slightly better.

It's just… too fucking much.

Any one of these things she could… on their own… maybe…

Her eyes are burning. She's tired. Soul tired and body tired, and she can feel that she's going to start crying, and…

She rubs her eyes. She can't cry. Not here. She'll wake him up, and he needs to sleep, and if he figures out why she's crying that'll just make everything worse, and…

She pulls herself out of bed, and grabs a towel, and heads to the refresher.

Shower. A shower. Get a shower. She can do that. Just like scavenging. When the job's too big, break it down into each part.

Shower. Water on. Temperature to 43. Take off clothing.

Clothing.

Oh _fuck._

Her shoulders slump again. Her clothing is… nasty. When was the last time she put on fresh clothing, or got a shower for that matter? Rey's got no idea. She tosses it to the hamper, and half hopes it doesn't find it's way back here again.

Water. Water next. Standing about naked isn't doing the job. She sticks her hand under the water, it's up to temperature, so she steps in, and sighs.

It feels good.

Really good.

Hot water, liter upon liter of it sluicing down on her. She turns her face to the water, and feels it rushing over her, pulling away hours, days, a week? Has it been a week? Probably not a full week. Too long… Pulling away too long of taking care of everyone else and not taking care of herself.

 _You should never be this tired._

 _Using the tools at your disposal._

But, of course, they aren't tools. They're people. If they'd been _tools_ she could have picked them up and used them easily, because _tools_ have no expectation of what you're supposed to be and what you can handle, and tools don't judge you if you do it wrong, and _tools_ are still you taking care of things that you should be able to take care of.

 _Tools_ aren't asking for help. _Tools_ aren't admitting you don't know how to do this. _Tools_ aren't…

She has the sense of someone watching her. That's _unsettling_ because she knows Kylo's asleep and in bed, and he's the only one who should have been able to get in here without opening the door.

She lets her Force creep out, searching for… It's not alive. That's clear, and…

"LUKE!" Then she lowers her voice, because she'd again prefer not to wake up Kylo, who, on a good day, doesn't need to find her naked in the shower with his dead Uncle hanging around, and now, pretty much out of his head with a fever _really_ doesn't need to walk in on this.

She refuses to open her eyes and see what the hell it is he thinks he's doing here.

"I'm not looking. And… Uh… Well, it's not like I've got a body anymore. I never burned really hot in that direction anyway, but… I don't, at all, now."

She opens her eyes, and he is back to her, staring intently at the door.

"Does he really have an all black bathroom?"

"We're working on that."

They're both quiet. Finally, Rey says, "Look this is the first moment I've been enjoying in a while, and… While I might not mind company in the shower, you aren't the person I like showering with, so…"

Luke shrugs. "Enjoying? You're crying out loudly enough with the Force that I'm here, and I'd imagine the only reason he's not is that he's sick enough his sense are down."

She sighs at that, too, and reaches for the shower handle.

"You don't have to get out. Enjoy the water. It blew my mind the first time I got to have a real water shower. Nothing had ever felt like that before, and… especially after…" He doesn't keep talking, but she knows it was after the First Death Star, and what he'd done was just starting to sink in, and Leia had said, 'Go get a shower, it'll help…'

She's almost confused, and then remembers, "Right, Tattooine."

"Yes. Another nobody from a desert with a great destiny set up to go forth and…" he makes a pbthht sound. "I never even saw enough water in one place to get a shower until I was on a Rebel base. And we were moisture farmers, but… A really good season was two thousand liters more than what we personally used."

Rey nods at that, and turns so her back is to the water, letting it roll over her.

They're, again, quiet for a moment, before Luke says to her, "Leia and Han… they… always acted like they knew what they were doing. Always. With Han… I could read him well enough to know it was an act, and when you got to know him better, you could see how often he just… Didn't know. He was winging it most of the time, praying it'd work out. For a man who didn't, not really, even with all of us around him, believe in the Force, he certainly relied on it, a lot.

"But… Leia, and Lando, and… they just… always _knew._ Right, wrong, didn't matter. They knew what they were going to do.

"Obi Wan, calm and centered and just… perfect. He always knew, too.

"And I didn't. I tried. And they gave me ideas of where and how and all the rest, but… The New Jedi wasn't something I _wanted_ to do. But it was supposed to be part of the balance, and restoring the galaxy that came before the Empire and putting things back the way they were supposed to be, and I was the only one who could do it, and…"

"And?" Rey asks.

"I was never entirely sure if it was _right_. It _had_ to be right, you know? Destiny and everything, but… I didn't take the time to get into the Force and really _feel_ it."

"You didn't?"

He shrugs. "It was so blindingly, obviously, _right_ , what would have been the point?"

"Ah." She's not immediately seeing where this comes in.

"And I'm not sure if the Force would have… given me the map, you know? We say it does. It's in the ancient texts, but… I don't think it would have just laid it all out for me. Might have given me a better sense of purpose, though. Or more courage to find my own path."

Rey nods, and reaches for the shampoo. "You'll have to forgive me. I'm even more tired than I was the last time we talked, but… I'm not seeing where this is going. It's an awful pep talk, and…"

He waves that off. "Yeah. Okay, short version. You don't have to be all things for all people. And maybe some time in prayer would help you sort of what you need to do, or maybe not, but it likely won't hurt."

"That's advice I can take."

"Also, ask for help. The only person who's judging you for needing it is you."

"There are a lot of people who expect me to be—"

"Fuck them!"

"Luke!"

"What? Just because I don't usually curse doesn't mean I've never heard the word or can't figure out where it'd be appropriate in a conversation. I taught a school and spent fifteen years surrounded by mostly teenagers. I know more curse words in more different languages than Threepio. Frustrated fourteen-year-olds with creative vocabularies and the ability to project their frustrations are not, generally speaking, circumspect in their thoughts."

Rey sniggers a bit at that. She's been mentally blasted with more than a few choice phrases over her teaching career, too.

"And I know this, too. Okay, yes, literally, people are watching, and they are judging, and they all expect you to do or be different things. Fuck 'em. The ones who matter, to you, personally, and in the galaxy as a whole, are the ones who understand that you cannot do or be everything because you are human, and no human can do or be everything to everyone. Anyone else isn't worth the mental effort, so they don't count."

They're quiet again for a moment, and then Luke says, "Better pep talk?"

"Yeah… Luke?"

"Rey?"

"Do you really think there's some great destiny? I mean, now?"

He sighs. "I… I don't know. The sacred texts talk about it. The Jedi of old did. Vader and the Emperor did… Granted, they were talking about a destiny I threw off… So… I don't know. Maybe…" He turns so they can have eye contact, and this bit of the conversation is real, and serious enough, that Rey doesn't mind. "I wonder these days, how much of _destiny_ is a manipulation tactic. How much of it is a way to make people do the things you want them to do. 'You have to do this; it's your _destiny._ ' I've been… trying to understand what the Force has been teaching us over the last hundred years. Last thousand, too, I guess, but… Why Snoke? Why Palpatine? Why… Alderaan and the Hosnian system and… just stupid little petty bits and pieces. What's the point of that? What's the balance, and does it really matter, or are these the things we tell ourselves to make this…" he gestures to indicate the galaxy, universe at large… "make sense? Make it bearable, because being adrift and alone in the galaxy is too terrifying? And, I just don't know."

"What about faith? A lot of the religions I read about talk a lot about faith."

He shrugs. "On one level, faith is easy. I _know_ the Force is there because I _use it._ I'm here, talking with you, _dead_ because the Force is _real._ That's the easy level. Of course, that also doesn't actually require faith, because you and I are personally, tangibly, liv- existing it."

"Yeah, not what I mean by faith. Though, apparently, there are religions out there where you can't just… call on the power of your God and do stuff."

"And for people who can't touch the Force the way we do, obviously, faith takes on a different meaning, but… You've got to have faith… Again, real? Manipulation tactic? Coping mechanism? All three? I don't know. Trust in the Force. Okay, great. I was sure I was doing that when I was running the school. I _knew_ back when I was trying to pull Ben away from Han what the Force wanted. I was, also, in hindsight, wrong. But it was _real_ and earnest and… "

"You were wrong only if you assume the Force is always right?"

He half smiles at her. "Exactly. Or assume that my understanding of the Force, and The Force, were one and the same. According to what I was reading, what the Jedi had to say, every ancient text I got my hands on, I was doing exactly what Ben should have needed. I should have been able to guide him away from his dark, and turn him into a happy and serene Jedi. It's there in the books. Do this stuff, and the Force will give you success. The Force _wants_ us to be settled in the Light. So… Did I do a bad job of it? It worked for M'Gll, and Krenna, and Jamison, and Hella, and…" His voice goes quiet as he thinks of his Light students. "It worked more often than it didn't. So, was Ben just… wrong? Or were the directions wrong?" He looks so old right then. And Rey knows in her guts why he was terrified to teach her anything. "I know which of those answers I prefer, now, but…"

"But the answer you prefer now is also the one that absolves both of you of any guilt and failing."

"Yeah." He rolls his eyes and sighs a bit. "Shocking how that's the one that feels _right_ these days, huh? Of course, talk to Be—Obi Wan or Yoda and they're all fine with, 'Yep, you, and us. We all just failed miserably. The instructions are right. The old Jedi were right. We're just bad teachers.'"

"Yeah." She sighs. And then turns her face back to the water. "Luke. Thanks. This… is the sort of stuff I needed."

He nods, and she feels him vanish.

* * *

Everything didn't fall apart while she was gone.

Granted, with a new medbay… Well, the same old medbay, just… _outfitted_ beyond her wildest dreams… her primary value to the group, getting sick people to and from their beds to the IVs, has vanished.

Rearranging a bit apparently means that the back wall has been subbed out for an entire other room, filled with sixteen more beds and more… medical stuff… than Rey's ever seen. There's room for everyone in here now. MX-6 and Artoo are riding herd on a… herd, of little hovering droids, which, because they hover, don't take up as much room between the beds as they do, and all of them are making sure that everyone has all of the fluids, meds, and… anything else, they could possibly need.

The only thing the little hovering droids can't do it lift patients and talk, and MX-6 has both of those areas covered.

"Rey!" This time she's sure MX-6 is pleased to see her. "I see you found me some help."

She glances around. "Apparently." Jon wasn't kidding. _Everything_ they could have possibly needed is here.

So are most of the kids, too. Jacen seems to still be resting in his own cottage, and right now Finn's nowhere to be seen, likely also resting in his own cottage, but, everyone else is here.

She notices the smell of Hiffa, but it's significantly less intense than she'd expect it to be. "Uh… I was expecting… more mess… if everyone was all in one space."

"If Artoo hadn't brought fifty liters of hexadihydrazinelyne, it would be an intolerable mess, but as it is, we can keep up," MX-6 says.

"What's…" she gives up attempting to name that chemical.

"It's an anti-emetic."

She blinks. Right… Kylo's on one of them, too. That's why he's only running to the refresher two or three times a day.

"You weren't giving it out before…"

"Because we didn't have it."

"Ah… Is there anything else you'd want stocked but—"

"Not any more. Anything and everything I could possibly want is here. They set up an extra storage shed outside, and… I have medications for diseases I've never even heard of before. And the upgrades to my database to diagnose them, now."

"Okay…"

"I suppose the likelihood of you and yours exploring the wide reaching strands of the galaxy, and then getting into fire fights while you're there, coming back both wounded and infected are low, but should that happen, I'm ready for it, now."

"Excellent?"

"I think so." MX-6 appears to be quite pleased by this. And likely by the sound of seventeen sick people, mostly sleeping, though a few of them are just lying around feeling horrible.

And no one, at all, is throwing up.

* * *

Rey heads over to one of the lower bunks, where Torine is napping, and Xanth is sitting, cross-legged, at the end, quietly reading a story. Several of the Maji around him are either listening or drifting along.

Rey sits there for a moment, too, and, this is something she's never considered, but Xanth's reading is a medicine of its own, she thinks. His voice is soft and warm, the vocal equivalent of being wrapped in a warm blanket and offered a cup of perfect tea.

"You mind an interruption?" she asks.

Kven, Opal, and Blaine, who are the awake and listening Maji all answer with variations on, "No."

Xanth marks his spot, and then lays the datapad down. "Is this… From Kylo?"

Rey half nods. "From the Order, yes."

"It's…" he's still looking around. "Really impressive."

"Yeah. I… It didn't occur to me to ask. I didn't think it'd be… this."

"Yeah. Well… Anyway. It's here, and," he gestures around. "Suddenly our job got a whole lot easier. We're just… sort of keeping them company, now. Reading stories, holding hands, fluffing pillows, and adding or removing blankets as needed."

Rey nods at that, too. She looks across the room to where Critt is crashed out on his bunk. "You talk to Critt?"

"Nah. It's not so urgent anymore. He's mostly sleeping. MX says he's doing better. Fever's broken, but he's really tired and weak and feels like he was run over by every Favier we've got, twice, so…"

Rey nods again. "Resting is the best thing for him, then."

"I think so." He looks at the other Maji. "I talked with MX a bit about my idea, too. It thought of a downside. Maybe."

"What?" Rey's worried that this is going to be some sort of terrible thing, like her plan, but at least they didn't try it on anyone.

"Okay. You go through Hiffa, either regular, like them, or sped up, like Critt, Jacen, and Finn, and when you're done, you're immune to it. Your body kills so many Hiffas it builds up Hiffa killing specialists, and if Hiffa shows up again, it kills it dead on sight. MX thinks if we use my plan, especially from the beginning, that your system might not get to kill enough Hiffa to be immune to it when you're done. Might not be an issue here, now, but if we get good at this, and try to use it with other illnesses, it might be an issue then."

Rey thinks about that. "So, as long as we're really careful with re-infection vectors…"

"Yeah, Hiffa can't survive below 30 for more than a few hours, so go to a room, open the doors, give it two hours, and all of it's dead. But, say, back in the summer, that wouldn't have been an option, so… Reinfection might have been a real issue."

"Everything in the galaxy is a series of tradeoffs, isn't it?"

She's not sure if Xanth gets what she's saying by that, but he does reply with, "Yeah."

"Are you and Critt going to try anyway?"

"When he's feeling better, assuming anyone's still got live virus, sure. I think it's worth testing." Rey can feel that sitting here, in the medbay, that Xanth just figured out what he wants to do with the rest of his life. He wants to run the best medbay ever, and heal people, and find new and interesting ways to kill diseases that no one thought were killable before. And right this second, he's wondering if Critt may decide to be his long-term partner for this, because for him to swing it, he's going to need a darkling with an interest in healing.

She smiles at that.

"That sounds good to me, too. Tomorrow?"

Xanth shakes his head. "Day after, maybe. Jacen's up and moving around some. And we've seen Finn come in to check on Rose a few times, but Critt's just wrecked, and everyone else is pretty flat."

"It's under control and manageable, but not good?"

"Yeah."

"Okay. I probably won't be able to get here tomorrow, and maybe not again today."

"Did something go wrong with Kylo?"

She almost snorts a laugh at that. "No. He's snoozing away, killing Hiffa, and resting. No, it's the fact that he's supposed to be off being Master Ren, and he's in no condition for it, so apparently I'm supposed to step in and be Lady Ren, and…"

At this point, Savarah's drifted over, leaning against the wall behind Elias. "You're going to be great. We watched the footage of you at the First Night parties, and you were perfect. Looked like princess."

"What does a princess look like?" Rey asks, wondering if Savarah's got the image of the Handsome Prince and Princess in her mind.

"Like you in a fancy dress with pretty hair."

Rey laughs at that, too. "Thanks."

Savarah rubs her lips together. "Uh… Could I come?"

"Come where?"

"The court of Lady Ren?"

"Uhhh…" Rey's not panicking, but that idea does make her nervous, but she's not sure why.

"We talked about it, when we watched the video. You need people like us, who can go to these things, and blend in, and make people feel good about it, and pay attention, and… Jacen'll kill me if I get to go to one before he does, but…" Rey can feel that Savarah's really eager to get one over on Jacen. Critt might have been too sick to notice what Jacen was projecting, but Savarah wasn't, and right now… She's not angry, too much, or jealous, too much, after all, she knows that Critt prefers her, and she knows that Critt's an awfully spiffy person, so she understands why people would want him, but if she got a chance to poke Jacen some, she wouldn't say no.

"Not this time. If there's another Last Night style party, maybe, but… This is a mediation deal, so there's no room for someone to linger in the background just… making things go smoothly." Though as Rey thinks about it, building something like that in for future deals is probably a good plan. Then she thinks about it more, and realizes that's basically Jon's job and what _he's_ going to be doing at this thing. "I'll talk to Jon about it, for future ones, too. He might have an idea of how to use people like you, if you'd want to."

"Want to? Of course we want to. The others are all sick, but… If they weren't…"

"Rey…" Opal's voice this time, she hasn't opened her eyes, but she's apparently tracking the conversation.

"Yes, Opal?"

"Why don't we live with the Order? Cassie's wondered that, since it's become clear we're not… Hiding out from them."

Rey sighs at that, too. "I think… Because I don't, yet, really know what the Maji is or does, besides make sure you guys have a good place to live and decent lessons about how to… be… with and in the Force, it's easier for us to be out of the view of the galaxy at large. If we were on the _Supremacy_ I think we'd get a lot more attention—"

"And we wouldn't have Critt, that's for sure," Xanth says.

"If we'd started as part of the Order…" Rey says, "I don't think Kylo could have made it the Order, not the way it is now. And we wouldn't have… any of this, because Master Poe, who found most of you, wouldn't have helped me to set this up if he'd thought it was part of the First Order, back when we were starting up."

"Because he was with the Resistance," Opal says. "Granted, so we were."

"I know. So was I. I met Kylo, fighting for the Resistance."

They all stare at her. She notices she's getting a bit more attention from some of the other beds, and Cassie's heading over to listen, too.

And… okay… well… If this is the Handsome Prince and his Lady, and managing this story is part of the job… Well…

"You know how Master Finn and I met, right?" Rey starts, and from there she begins to tell a somewhat edited version of the story of her handsome prince, and how she saved him from the monster, and how he cut the monster in half, and how they started to drift into each other's orbit.

And, apparently, Xanth isn't the only one who can soothe sick people by telling a good story.

* * *

Food is good.

Food she doesn't have to cook for herself is better.

Food she doesn't have to cook for herself, sitting, waiting, hot and ready, in a room that doesn't smell like Hiffa (which also means it doesn't _taste_ like Hiffa) is even better.

Jon's looking pretty tired as he sits at his kitchen table, letting everyone else buzz around him, eating their fill, but he's also looking fairly pleased, too.

This, everyone, in one room, eating, getting ready to do this, with… twenty-six hours to go, is good.

"Nap soon?" Rey asks him.

"Yeah. Laundry got here about an hour ago. Soon as we're done. I'm going to crash."

"Good."

Poe's sitting next to Jon, tucking into his breakfast. "So, what do you want me doing while you crash? Sticking with the ladies?" He smiles at Mirina, Ellie, and Rey.

Rey can feel that they might not mind having Poe around, but he's also not part of their idea of how today with her is supposed to go.

And she can see that Poe knows that, too, but he's making sure that if she wants him around, he'll be there. She gives his hand a gentle squeeze. "They tell me part of what I'm supposed to do is learn how to navigate women-only spaces."

Ellie smirks a bit, but doesn't say anything as she spreads butter on her toast.

"Well, never let it be said I butted myself into a hen-party." Though it's clear that if he were _invited_ to one, say by the hen sitting next to him, that he'll butt his way in with the best of them.

Jon's pretty tired by this point. It's not the first time he's gone more than a day without sleep. It won't be the last, but, since Laundry left less than an hour ago, he didn't take a stim because he's hoping to sleep, so he's flagging seriously. So, if didn't have to, personally, oversee the throne room set up, that would likely increase not just the probability, but the duration of a good nap… "You've got command experience, right?" he says to Poe.

"Supposedly that's what the rank indicated."

"Right. Commander Dameron," Jon misses the way his mother's eyes light up at that. Commander is _not_ a First Order, or Order, or, for that matter New Republic rank. It is a Rebel one, though… Poe's got to be too young to have been part of the Rebellion. Even they weren't so hard up for people as to put toddlers in charge. She glances at Rey, and realizes it's got to be a Resistance rank. "My second-in-command, Emily, who is generally who I put in charge of stuff like this, is supposed to be running the Tactical Design wing these days, which, even though Ren kept forgetting, is also a full time job requiring a lot of attention and focus. So… I've got plans, and I've got people, and I can get this done on my own, but assuming you're feeling a desire to be useful, making sure they get it done right would be useful to me, and to her because instead of pausing her job to do mine, you could do it."

Poe's looking awfully pleased by that. "I can do that. Hell, not like I've never built anything before. I can likely toss in on getting it set up, too. The problem I can't fix with a welding torch doesn't exist."

That stops Jon and Mirina short. In their world, officers oversee, they don't… do.

Ellie smirks a bit, still pleased. In her world, or more correctly, Pat's, officers oversee, and _good_ officers, if there's a time crunch, or if they happen to be good at whatever it is, and there's nothing else more pressing for them to be doing, both of which appear to be describing Poe's current situation, _do_ , as well.

Poe and Rey don't miss that.

"Lady Kinear?" Poe asks.

"The first officer Pat served under in the Republic… this was, of course, a _long_ time ago… came up from Engineering. And if the men couldn't do whatever it was they needed to do because their tools weren't up to the job, he'd hop right in and fix them himself, rather than waiting on Engineering to get their bums over and take care of it. Sometimes he had other things he needed to be doing, but if he didn't, he'd take care of the problem himself. Pat always appreciated that."

"So, he'd step in and fix things, too?" Rey asks.

"Only in the metaphorical sense. There's a good many things our Pat can do, but anything involving fixing something with tools wasn't on the list. That said, if you ever needed someone to fix something involving people… He'd delegate if he was busy, and, especially as he went up the ranks, he often was, but… If he had the time, and one of his men needed him, he was there."

Poe cocks his head a bit. "Sounds like a good officer."

Ellie appreciates that. "One would hope that after seventy-five years of ordering people around, he'd be good at it."

Poe smirks a bit at that. "One would, but… Well, I'm sure you know, some commanders haven't had a new, or good, thought in decades, so…"

Ellie nods at him. "Oh, I _do._ " She smirks a bit at that. "Did you know… Well, you couldn't have, not personally, you aren't old enough… Did you know of General Hestor of the Amalia Wing?"

Poe smirks a bit back at her. "I've heard a story or two. Back when I was in officer school with the New Republic, he was in the curriculum."

That gets an intrigued, and irked, and… there are more layers there than Rey can easily read, but they aren't immediately angry, flush out of Mirina. She wonders a bit if Ellie's the one who came up with this idea, just to rub Poe and Mirinia together so she can sharpen up her people reading.

And as soon as she's had that thought, she notices Ellie looking oddly satisfied.

Her eyes don't narrow, but she does wonder. Then she says to Poe, "Desert orphans on the far edge of nowhere, haven't. What's the story with him?"

Ellie looks to Poe, likely curious to see how the Rebellion taught this.

"Hestor… He had to have been ancient… Uh… They finally took him down in… What was it? Ten BBY?"

"Something like that," Ellie replies. "And, from my perch, I'd have called him, a bit past middle-aged, but…"

Poe offers her a bit of a smile. "I know he predated the Empire. Made a name for himself during the Clone wars for one, very successful, attack. You know what a PBR-8 is?"

Rey, Mirina, and Jon shake their heads.

"Little two-wheeled scooter type things. You sit astride them, and use your hips and thighs to steer, leaving your hands free to fire, and with proper armor, you turn infantry into cavalry, but, unlike, say a CR-4 or Plusane 2, you can maneuver through things like a forest."

"Which is the terrain he was in the first time he did this," Ellie adds.

Poe nods. "So he masses a million men on those little things, and winds them through the trees, and obliterates the forces he's up against. He's more mobile than the enemy, so he can flank them, and get behind, and just crushes them. It was one of the most decisive victories of the war."

Ellie nods. "I would also add, that he's the one who designed the PBR-8. In addition to having won amazingly with them, they're also, his, personal, baby."

Poe nods at that, and takes a sip of his juice. "That makes sense. Anyway, end of the fight, he's got his General's stripes, and something of a reputation for being a genius tactician. Fast forward a bit, and the Empire's in play, and they toss him, and his PBR-8s into service in several other fights."

"And he does exactly the same thing, every time," Ellie replies

"And the first two or three, it works amazingly." Poe continues. "Which is likely why we studied in him officer school."

Ellie smirks a bit. "Because the first two or three, he's again, in tightly packed terrain where he needs a lot of motion, and there's plenty of cover, so heavy armor is less of a necessity."

"And he's fighting against a million guys all tightly packed together in huge, lumbering vehicles that are bogged down by the terrain."

Ellie nods at that. "Then came the battle of R'Lorh."

"Which is a swamp. It's filled with tightly packed vegetation. So maneuverability is still an issue. You want something light and small, but those wheels on the PBR aren't designed for mud and water. He got his guys down there, massed on the battle field, and they got massacred because the PBRs sink like the rocks they are."

Rey and Jon wince. Mirina looks embarrassed.

"It gets worse, doesn't it?" Rey asks.

Poe's grinning, enjoying this. "Let's just say, they were bad in swamps, worse on sand, a death trap on ice, and a fucking disaster on bare rock. And time after time after time, he kept doing the exact same thing."

"So, each time, each new terrain, he became even less effective because as soon as the enemy side found out they were fighting him, they immediately knew how to counter him," Ellie adds. She glances at Poe… "You know, there were stories… we could never get confirmation, but… It was rumored that your side used to poison decent Generals to get them out of play so Hestor could be brought in."

Poe just smiles. "Before my time. Literally, I was born in 2 ABY. But… If I'd heard that sort of rumor, I wouldn't have doubted it. And if my training had involved stories of how moving the people you want into positions where you need them, on both your side and the other's, well, you wouldn't have doubted it, either."

Ellie's eyes are knowing. "No, I wouldn't have doubted that, at all."

"I'll admit though, there was a question about him on our side…" Ellie raises an eyebrow. "How'd he stay in command so long? We thought the Emperor took men like him out on the second misstep. But, he was there for what? Thirty years?"

Ellie smiles a bit at that, too. "Let's put it this way. He was just so horribly bad at what he did… How could that be an advantage? But… If you look at the timeline, he fought a _lot_ of battles. And lost a _lot_ of them. But, really critical battles. Ones that mattered. He won all of them. His tactics suddenly changed. He—"

"Wasn't actually him." Poe doesn't say, _you fuckers,_ but it's clear he's thinking it. "You guys built up the worst general in the galaxy, and then we'd go in, sure we could beat him, and we won a lot of little, stupid battles against him, because he was terrible, and…"

"And when it mattered, we had someone who looked a whole lot like him, but wasn't him, who had real commanders who knew what they were doing, in play." Ellie's smile is bright, and then she looks to Rey. "Control the information around you. Control how people understand you. And then you can _use_ the expectations of the people around you to your advantage. Once the Rebellion knew they were going up against General Hestor, they'd send in their less-experienced commanders, and less-well-equipped troops, knowing they could beat him one-handed. Many times they were right. But when it _mattered,_ they weren't."

Mirina smirks a bit at that. Likely because that's a story of the Empire doing well. She adds, "And if something doesn't add up… Well, anyone can be lucky once or twice, but much beyond that, something's hinky."

"And you should have an easier than usual time figuring out what the _hinky_ thing is," Ellie adds. "Likewise, there are no contradictions. If someone is, for some reason, acting horribly out of character, like the Emperor not summarily executing Hestor, you _know_ you're missing information."

Poe adds a lopsided smile to that. "Leia always used to say, 'You can always trust a man to be himself.'"

Mirina stiffens at that mention, but Ellie nods. "There were a legion of things Organa and I never agreed on, but that would not have been one of them."

* * *

When breakfast wraps up, Ellie says to Rey, "I think… and… I know you probably won't like this, but… Hiffa reeks. It's not a subtle scent at all, and… we," she gesture to Mirina, "think this would go a lot better if you didn't smell like it for tomorrow. So… Go, spend some quality time with Kylo. Snuggle him, get another visit with your Maji, and then, once you've done that, you're going to join us, and then stay with us until after the meetings are all done. We'll have clean clothing for you, and special soap for your skin and hair. That way, when you meet the K'Aar, you won't have the scent of it lingering on your skin."

Ellie's right. She doesn't like that. "But…"

"We'll make sure that if anything happens C8 will get you, immediately." Mirina says, "But… it's on your skin and in your hair and… At least two showers, and we've got the soap for it, and probably some perfume, too, and new shampoo."

"The Princess in the stories doesn't smell like something died in a sulfur mine after rolling around in a vat of puke?" Rey's voice is dry as she says that, and… Actually, sarcasm does seem to help.

"Generally, no," Ellie replies. "Or if she does, no one mentions it because they'd prefer she didn't."

"The Princess, in the stories, has no bodily functions at all, and is made of light, good thoughts, beauty, and calm. This is also true of everyone around her. No one ever has to fart in a big meeting, and the Handsome Prince can ride for days on end to go rescue her without ever having to take a shit." Mirina's horrified to hear this coming out of Jon, "But, the Princess and the stories are also _fictional_ ," which is the first comment from Jon that's Rey's heard on this, and she rather likes how critical it is. He sighs a bit. "But… No meeting in the history of meetings ever went well when one participant smelled like death warmed over, so…"

Poe snerks at that. "Did I tell you the story of Leia meeting with the Kerath delegation?"

"No," Rey says. "Is it going to involve terrible smells?"

"And gross bodily excretions. The Kerath were a sort of sentient slug, distantly related to the Hutts, but less attractive by human standards."

Rey glares at him. "I can probably live without this story. At least now."

"I'll give you the punchline. It's not like we were in a battle or ill health. This is just a formal treaty discussion between a wannabe member of the New Republic, and Leia as the New Republic's representative. And we're all dressed up and fancy for the gathering, but… we're humans. Clean and spiffy humans, but humans none the less. They took one look at us, winced, and left. The translator told us that they couldn't take how bad we smelled."

Jon, who is clearly so tired he's hit the point where everything is funny, starts to giggle at that. "The stench of humanity insulted their sensitive nostrils?"

"They didn't have nostrils, more like… uh… stalks. Four, wet, slithery protrusions from the tops of what I'm going to call a head, with an eyeball on the end of each one. They were really fast though. We stepped in, and suddenly they just squirted this… mucus… and went zipping out of the room, gliding along on it."

By that point, everyone else is laughing, too.

* * *

As Rey's getting ready to go to Kylo, Poe catches her hand, and quietly says, while looking at Ellie and Mirina. "I've got my comm on me. No matter what they say, this does not have to be a you and them only sort of deal. You want company, you call, and I'll be there, okay?"

She nods.

He squeezes her hand. "Maji unity or something, right?"

"Or something. You okay with overseeing… The throne room?"

He waves that off. "I've run security on more of these than I can count. That's part of why I know how to build a lot of this stuff. Sometimes, you don't trust the guys setting the stuff up, you send someone in on the crew to make sure it's on the up and up."

Rey nods. "One day, I want to hear why you were doing security instead of flying around."

He gives her a little kiss on the cheek. "One day, I'll tell you."

Rey nods again, and vanishes, heading to Kylo's room.

* * *

For a heartbeat, in the… space… between Jon's room and Kylo's, Rey's not sure if she'd prefer Kylo be awake, where she could interact with him, some, but risk him picking up on what's going on, or asleep, and just snuggle up with him, but miss out on a bit of conversation, and… him.

And then her wishes don't matter, because she's there, and… "You up?" she asks, quietly.

He rolls over, eyes closed, but facing her, and shivering a little less. "Sort of. I know you're here. Don't ask me to open my eyes, though."

"Oh… sweetie." As pet names go, she's not loving that one, either. It doesn't quite feel right. He doesn't seem to mind, and she settles on the bed behind him, snuggling up.

"I think I may have burned through any off time this month. It's been… At least three days, right?"

She holds him a little tighter, and kisses the back of his neck. "At least."

She feels him swallow, and curl tighter into her. "At least? Am I better off not knowing how long I've been down?"

"Probably."

She feels a spark of annoyance at that, but it's smothered by tired and sore and more tired and achy and cold… He's so cold.

His teeth are chattering, so he switches to mentally talking. _How are things going on out there? C8 just tells me to rest._

"C8's right. There's nothing going on out there that we're not handling just fine." She's relieved to see he doesn't ask, who, specifically _we_ are, or what, precisely it is, they're handling. "Xanth has an idea for dark-style healing. When Critt's up and moving around more, we're going to try it out."

Kylo has the same reaction Critt did. _Dark doesn't heal._

"Nope, but it changes things and destroys them, and right now the problem is you've got a virus that needs some changing and destroying." She feels Kylo perk up a bit at that idea. "Yeah, I just need a darkling who's healthy enough to spare some energy, and Xanth's got an idea of how to use dark to modify the virus so it can't reproduce. Light to bolster the immune system, a little, help it… focus the fight against the virus that can reproduce. Dark to sterilize as much of it as possible. You'll still be sick, but not as bad or long."

He nods. _That's…_ She can feel he's intrigued but too tired to really think about it.

"Go back to sleep, love. Hopefully, day after tomorrow, we'll get you feeling better."

He sighs a bit, and relaxes a little in her arms, and is asleep.

For a long time, Rey just holds him.

* * *

Rey leaves Lirium after another quick visit. And like before, with a herd of med-droids, every speck of medication they could possibly need, and plenty of time on their hands, the only thing left to do is wait.

Then she's back in Kylo's office.

"C8?"

"I'm here, Lady Ren." She sees the glow of his eyes light up, and hears him step forward. _Black droid in a black room. We've really got to repaint or something in here._ "I need to get to Mirina Frake's room, and I don't know how."

"She's in suite 22A in the first hallway on the aftward side of the I-Deck."

Rey smiles a little, and then stops, she doesn't need to pretend she knows what she's doing, not here, and not with C8. "I have no idea how to get there."

"Ah. You'll go to the elevator in the Master's courtyard. From there punch in F Deck. Get off, take a tram to the twenty-second subsection. Then take the first elevator you see that goes up single floors. Hit I-Deck. You'll likely need to use your… Do you have an ID chit?"

"No."

"Certain floors require appropriate access to get to. I-Deck among them. We're on AAA here, and I believe fewer than twenty people have an ID that can access this floor right now. I can't make you an ID of your own, though I am setting the order for one to be made. Would you mind looking at me, with your face neutral?"

Rey does.

The glow of his eyes blinks out for a second, followed by, "Excellent. That's a good image. IDs require your image and prints, but I know they're in the system now. By the time you get back, I'll have an ID chit for you." He thinks for a moment. "And a proper comm link. For now, I'll call ahead to Mistress Frakes, let her know you're coming, and she can meet you at the correct elevator."

"Thank you."

"You're welcome, Lady Ren."

"You can call me Rey."

"I'm sure I can, but it doesn't seem appropriate. I do not call him Kylo."

"Okay." She pauses for a moment, thinking. "You take orders from me?"

"That's entirely likely. I suppose you could come up with something I won't do, but it's unlikely."

"But you don't take orders from Jon?"

"I have not been given any orders allowing me to take orders from the Lt. Commander. As long as the Master is present, I'll do whatever the Lt. Colonel requests, because I know the Master approves, but as of this time, he has not given access to the Lt. Colonel to my programs."

"If I told you to do that, would you?"

"Yes."

"First of all, anything you can share with Kinear or Schiff, you can share with Jon."

C8 nods.

"Second of all, why can I do that, but Jon couldn't?"

"He is your _husband_ , Mistress. You are his legal next of kin, and have the right to life or death decisions in his place. If, like now, he is incapacitated, you get to make decisions for him."

"Are you saying I'm the… Master of the Order… right now?"

"For all practical purposes, yes. Obviously, if you were to try something upsetting, something the Master clearly would not approve, there would likely be issues, but assuming you continue to do things he would likely do… Yes."

Rey's very proud of the fact that she does not whimper at that.

* * *

Rey steps out into the courtyard. That's a good word. She likes that one. The courtyard of the court of Ren, that… just happens to have the start of a…

 _FUCK!_

Okay. She saw the sketch, but, she didn't get the scale Jon was aiming at. Raised dias… This thing is…

She's staring at it, moving forward, when Poe, who's… got a welding torch in hand, and is literally helping the Stormtroopers build the thing, with BB-8 sitting next to him, going over some of the finer detail welds… sees her, and puts his torch down to join her.

"It's going to be impressive," he says to her.

She's still staring at it. "It's half as tall as I am." And more than four meters across, and… It's fucking _huge._

He's happily nodding. "Oh yeah." There's a spark in his eye. "Kylo's boy knows how to put on a show, I'll give him that."

She looks around more. There are… They can't actually be Stormtroopers, not anymore. They aren't in armor, and… Maintenance workers, maybe? There are a few of them rolling out some light gray carpet. Some are putting up new hangings, half of them are black or white with the Order Hexagon on it, and she's assuming the other half have to be the flag of the K'Aran system. Another two are in the midst of setting up some sort of luncheon spot overlooking the galaxy. There's the crew Poe was helping with, building a scaffolding for the dais, which, as Rey looks at it closer, she realizes is a series of graduated hexagons, with her not-a-throne at the top. A few others are painting, slapping a light gray on the walls, leaving the floor and the pillars black.

"Who's in charge of the painting?"

"CT-6672," Poe says gesturing to a man with a spray gun in one hand on an elevated platform, covering a part of the far wall.

"Do you think he'd paint Kylo's office if I asked?"

"He seems like a decent chap, so assuming he knows who you are, he'd likely paint anything you asked. Here's the real question, if you paint Kylo's office whatever that gray is, will Jon get in a snit about somehow messing up his eventual grand design for they look of things?"

Rey thinks about it. "Maybe if he had a design in the works for the office, but right now I don't think he does, and… It's _so_ black in there. And… If I'm going to be… doing this… I want to be able to see what I'm doing."

"It's all black in there?"

"You haven't seen?"

"When would I have?"

"Okay, come on." She takes Poe into Kylo's office, and then introduces C8.

Poe's just staring at black on black on black, and shakes his head. "Yeah, this needs some color... or something."

"C8… Can you write up an order to get the painters to do the walls, just the walls in here, the same color they're doing the walls out there?"

"Of course, Lady Ren."

"Don't change anything else. Just the walls. I… It'll be easy to change back if need be, right?"

Poe shrugs. "It's just paint. Shouldn't take more than a few hours of effort, likely less since they aren't doing it by hand."

Rey nods at that. Then she sighs. If she's going to Lady Ren… well, she'll Lady Ren.

They can yell at her later if it's an issue.

* * *

Elevator. F-Deck. Tram…

She's never ridden the tram before. When she and Kylo are here, they wander around, but they say in the one subsection, so…

Speaking of which. She checks, she's in the 11th subsection, and… Good there are signs. Ten's behind her. Twelve's in front. So, Twenty-two's got to be in front, too.

She watches one of the trams go by. They're faster than walking, probably about jogging speed. It takes her a few moments to figure out where it'll stop, and then she sprints ahead so she can be waiting with the other people for it.

And for a moment, she's just a woman, in okay clothing, standing with a group of other people, but then she notices them start to smell her, and suddenly they're all shifting away.

Okay, the ladies are right. She's got to decontam her hair and skin before dealing with people.

She also notices them start to really look at her, and one of them recognizes her, and… Oh, that's not good. Why does Lady Ren reek? What's going on? Is this a problem? Is she just bad at hygiene? Rey can feel the gossip getting ready to start, and pulls up her do-not-recognize. The person who was wondering stares at her for another moment, blinks, squints, shakes her head, and then goes back to waiting for the tram. (And steps a little further away from Rey.)

* * *

Rey thought she had a sense of the scale of the _Supremacy._

Apparently, that was wrong.

Honestly wrong. There had been downed Star Destroyers on Jakku, and one of them was one of her favorite scavenging finds. Yes, before she was born, people had gone through it, taking, _almost_ everything of value. But… There were nooks and crannies, hidden corners, rooms collapsed into the sand, and crushed against rock, that bigger people just… either couldn't imagine were there, or couldn't get into.

But she could. And did. As much as a person could know that ship inside and out, she did.

Hell, she flew the _Falcon through_ that destroyer.

So, in her mind, the _Supremacy_ was, basically, the same ship, just with a different shape, and a bit bigger.

It's not.

Not that she enjoyed doing it, but she could walk from one end of the Destroyer to the other in a bit more than an hour. Not quite two klicks, and if it had been in one piece, and not filled with sand and debris, she likely could have done it in less than fifteen minutes.

Sitting in the tram, moving much too slow for her liking, she's getting the concept that the _Supremacy_ is _huge._

She's staring at it, face set, determined. If she's going to be the _Lady_ of this… ship… Order… _thing_ she needs to get to know it. Inside and out. This should be… maybe not her home. It's too big for that. But her… domain.

Tomorrow… Okay, not tomorrow. The K'Aran delegation is _tomorrow_ (there's a huge, sweeping pile of nervous, she beats that down.) The day after, an hour a day, at that speed she'll be at this for years, but… she doesn't have more free time than that. An hour a day, she's going to spend exploring this ship and what's here, and…

If this is hers… well, it should be _hers._

* * *

"I was starting to wonder if I needed to send out a set of guards to find you," Mirina says when Rey gets within speaking distance.

Rey raises her eyebrows. "To see if I'd gotten lost or run off?"

"Either, both?"

Rey stares at Mirina. Who can and is _seeing_ her. Through her 'do not recognize' spell. "Do I look different to you?"

Mirina looks her up and down. "Should you?"

"Uh… No."

"Good to know. Come." Mirina hits the elevator button, and the group of people also looking to go up step aside as they notice Rey. Or smell her.

When the doors open, they're the only two to step in. Mirina smirks a bit. "I suppose that's one way to get a somewhat private conversation on this ship."

Rey shrugs. "I suppose. You said you've got… soap…"

"Everything you could want or need. You'll have a nice bath, maybe do some reading while you're in there, and then we'll begin."

"Wonderful." A wave of reticence washes over her, and Mirina catches it.

"It will be."

The elevator to I-Deck is quick. "What are on G and H?" Rey asks as they exit the elevator.

"Not much," Mirina says.

Rey's looking around at I. What she can see is a very long, very empty, mostly open space, with ten hallways spreading off of it. "Not much is true here, too."

Mirina nods. "Now." She nods down a gray hallway. "That won't always be true." They walk through the empty space. Rey figures it mirrors the market section two floors below them. Eventually, it may be filled with shops like the F-Deck. They continue to walk to the first of the hallways, and once there, Mirina says, "This section is apartments. Suites, really, leftovers from the Last Night/First Day celebrations. I had a few maintenance people work on mine a bit, modify it." She taps a door that looks a lot like every other door they've passed, though there is a number on it, I-1-22:A-C.

"I-Deck, first Hallway, twenty-second subsection, apartment A… to C?"

"They knocked out some walls, rearranged a few things, made sure I had better light. You need good light to sew. Eventually, I'll make sure I've got a professional space in the market area, but right now I need storage and work space, so…" she gestures as they enter.

Given how Jon's rooms look, tidy, organized, attractive and bright, she was expecting that of Mirina's.

But… This is a room filled with bolts of fabrics in what look like haphazard piles to Rey, several long tables, six droids whirling away, fingers… for lack of a better word, whizzing about on what Rey recognizes as the dress she'd brought to Mirina. Behind that, there's another table, with more droids working on… She's fairly sure it's a men's jacket, but beyond that, she's clueless as to what it is.

"This is the work space. Usually, guests would come in the other door, but I wanted you to take a look at it." She gestures to the dress. It was dove gray when she saw it last, and the under dress still is, though the over dress is black now.

"Jon mentioned the dye job to you."

Mirina cocks her head. "No. If he thought of it, it was a good idea, though. This needed a bit more contrast." She watches Rey look at the dress under construction. "Eventually, I'll show you what the K'Aran women wear, and go over why we're doing this, but I'll start here, part of what we're doing is showing off wealth. K'Aran men understand their women as… ornaments, for lack of a better word. In public, their job is to show off the money and power of the man in question."

"I don't want to know how much the…" she doesn't know the name of half of the little sparkly gems on the dress, "embellishments cost, do I?"

"Let's put it this way. This is my personal stash of _embellishments_ , and when this is done, I'll take them back, and sub in paste ones, so the dress will still look right, but, as of right now, Kylo cannot afford this dress, and it's expensive enough I don't want to charge the Order for it."

Rey doesn't wheeze at that. She does say, "And they'll… know that. Just by looking?"

"They'll expect it. I could possibly get paste gems past the K'Aar, but it's certain that whomever is going with him as his chief diplomat _will_ be able to tell the difference. And in order to give due honor to your man, to show off his power through you, you need to be a testament to what he can provide you. Basically, if he's willing to lay down the sort of credits that can buy this dress, something that you'd likely only wear once and never be seen in again, he's more than flush enough to take care of any issues the K'Aran may have."

Rye nods slowly. "I'm an… extension of his worth?"

"For this, yes. This'll play differently in other situations, in some places he'll be an extension of _your_ worth, but since they're a straight up Patriarchy, a big part of what you'll be doing is displaying the luxury in which Kylo can keep you."

Rey bites her lip. "I'm… some sort of pampered pet?"

Mirina shoots her a very sharp look. "No. And, for that matter, neither are their women, but that's what you, and they, are _supposed_ to be, _according to the men_. Since we're going to drastically flip the script on them by removing Kylo from it, we're going to go heavy on the look of the traditional mores, so they aren't too horribly off foot. The more comfortable you can keep people, the easier they are to move in the direction you want them to go. So, at least visually, we're going to signal that we… understand and appreciate their values."

"Does that mean I just sit there… quietly… and let Jon do all the talking?"

Mirina snorts. "Absolutely not. You are _the queen._ Jon may be male, but he's still, in the grand scheme of things, a servant. And allowing him to speak over you would be an insult to you, and thus, Kylo. You are there in his stead, as his proxy, and you will demand, and be regarded with, the same honor and deference your man would get. The only person at this thing approaching your rank, and since he's here asking for our help, he is below you, is the K'Aar. And _everyone_ in that room will know that."

"And if Kylo were there?"

"That would be a different story, but he's not, so we don't have to worry about it."

"That's where being a pampered pet comes in, doesn't it?"

Mirina smiles a little. "Only so far as things look."

Rey exhales long and slow, and glances at the dress. "It's pretty."

"Thank you. Now, let's get you in the bath. I want you to get a shower, scrub everything first, then the bath, get a good long soak with the oils I've got laid aside, then back into the shower, scrub everything again, and then, and only then, out you get. The reports are on a datapad near the tub, so you can read while you soak. Ellie will be here shortly, and then we'll begin getting you ready to be Lady Ren."

Rey sighs. Then she squares her shoulders, and follows Mirina out of the work room, into an apartment that looks much more like what she was expecting. Lots of space, good light, overly lush and comfortable furniture, more pinks and rose and cream colors than she would have expected, but… It's functional and attractive and polished.

The bathroom is even prettier. There is a shower, and a bath, and stacks of towels, and more soaps and shampoos that Rey's ever before seen.

"Do you need help?"

"I think I've got this," Rey says, picking up a small, squishy sphere of what she thinks might be one of the oils for the bath. "I'll yell if I can't figure out what to do."

"Good. Take at least an hour. Try to relax. I'd offer you a glass of wine, but I don't want you slipping in there. We'll have supper when you're done."

"Okay."

* * *

"Mistress Rey should be with Mistress Frakes in her rooms," R4-6837, Jon's secretary says to Threepio.

"Excellent. Give me the coordinates of her room, and I'll join them there."

"Of course, sir." R4-6837 rattles off Mistress Frakes's rooms.

"And how is the Lt. Colonel doing?"

"I'm sure he's fine. He sent me a note to tell me that besides you, no one with a rank below Grand Marshal was allowed to disturb him today."

"I'll make sure to check in with him myself after I finish with Mistress Ren."

"I'll let him know that."

"Thank you, R4-6837."

"You're welcome, General."

* * *

It takes Threepio longer than he'd like to get to Mirinia Frakes' rooms. Jon has floated the idea of turning ZZ, YY, and XX into the official meditation section of the _Supremacy_ and to a degree, especially now as he's cruising through the _Supremacy,_ waiting to get to a meeting, he likes it.

That said… the I-Deck is better situated to the rest of the Officer's corps. It's larger. It doesn't have its own flight deck, so that's a drawback compared to where Jon's thinking…

Tradeoffs. Realistically, it will be a long time before they'll need more space than the three decks Jon's thinking of can provide. Realistically, one of those new dreadnoughts will be done before they're approaching crowded on those decks, so…

He gets to I:1:22: A-C, and just as he's about to knock, he makes the decision, and then gives the orders. As soon as feasible, he's moving his offices, and making sure there's a collection of suites of rooms on ZZ for any visitors to the _Supremacy_. Time to consolidate. They can't afford to be spending hours just moving from one side of the ship to the other.

Then he knocks.

* * *

Another shower feels good to Rey. The soap and shampoo… Does the job and then some. Like Kylo after the sonic, she feels sterilized. Nothing of… anything… still on her skin.

Soak for an hour or so. It seems like a waste of time, but she assumes Mirina knows what she's talking about, and it's not like Rey's adverse to getting a soak. Granted, bath time is more fun with Kylo.

She sinks into the bath after the water's full, and looks at the datapad. She does need to read what's on it, but…

Her motivation to do so is as limp as her soaking wet hair.

She settles deeper into the water, and thinks of what Luke said. _More time in prayer…_

It won't hurt.

And maybe it will help.

* * *

"Ah good, we've been—Where's the food?" Mirina asks, and then chokes on as she realizes the droid on the other side of the door is not there to deliver their supper. She blinks slowly as she recognizes who is standing in front of her. _Of course._

"I have no idea where your food is, Madam. I am General See-Threepio, Order Diplomatic Service, and I've been told Mistress Rey is here. I've come to debrief her."

Mirina steps back, allowing the golden droid to enter her rooms. Mostly, she's just too shocked, at first, to react. A million news holos are flashing in her mind, and in the background of many of them, there stands a golden droid. Older memories, rise, too. Meetings. A pretty young woman, a secret, the golden droid, who discreetly, because he understood discretion, and secrets, asked for a private meeting.

A protocol droid, working with and near the senate, would, of course, know where his mistress should go for a… change in her wardrobe, should said change be necessary.

It's as he's stepping into her room, that Mirina clears the fog of too many memories to notice something. He just _introduced_ himself. Granted it's been more than fifty years, and she's not the woman she was when they last met. Time may have barely touched Threepio, alighting on his arm, which is red now, but it did not gently caress Mirina. She's not the spitting image of who she was. And, it's possible he only knows the _room_ he needed to go to. She wouldn't put it past Jon to leave a little detail like _whose_ room Mistress Rey was in.

"Mirina Frakes, General." She doesn't offer a hand.

He nods briefly. "Madam Frakes. Is Mistress Rey here?"

Mirina's watching him. It's abundantly clear that he has absolutely _no_ idea who she is.

But he should.

Very interesting.

"She is, General. Right now she's getting a bath. Then she'll join us for supper and getting ready for tomorrow."

Threepio nods at that, too.

Mirina watches him stand in her living room. "Didn't you belong to Leia Organa?"

He glances at her. His voice is mild, neutral, but Mirina's got the sense he might be annoyed. "I worked with General Organa, but, no, I did not _belong_ to her. I am a fully sentient non-biological being, and thus _cannot_ belong to someone else."

"I see." Well, his personality certainly changed over the years. See-Threepio, servant of Padme Amidala, a… gift from the husband she wasn't supposed to have, wouldn't have dared to speak to her that way. Fifty years did produce some changes, then, beyond the red arm.

"Do you? It seems many people see a metal body and assume a lack of conscious or will. Neither of which are true of me."

Mirina mutters _simply lovely_ , and then says, "And let me guess, you're on the forefront of droid rights, aren't you?"

"It would be silly for me not to be. That said, if you are not, one might wonder why you appear to be helping to arrange a diplomatic meeting of a service that promoted a droid to General."

"I find myself asking that often. Do you mind if I ask _who_ promoted you to your rank?"

"The Master himself."

"Ah… You'll forgive the question, but, if this is the third generation of Skywalkers you've served, in what way do you not belong to them?"

Threepio can't glare, but she has the sense he'd like to. Then the sense of surprise. Skywalker. That's got to him. Then Mirina blinks, hard. This is a _droid._ These are the kinds of reactions she picks up on _people_ without even having to think about them, but this is _not a person._

Except, apparently, he is. That throws her for a loop. Before he can even begin to answer she covers with, "Well, General, you're a bit early. Rey will be out in half an hour or so. Ellie isn't here, yet, and the food's on order. But, please, be comfortable… Uh… Normally I'd offer you a drink and a seat, but…"

"I do not drink. I do sit."

Mirina gestures to one of the chairs in her living space. "I'm still working on Rey's dress and Jon's uniform, if you don't mind, I'll go back to that."

"I do not."

* * *

Threepio watches Madam Frakes step out of her room. He takes the moment necessary to get himself sitting down, always a much longer and more drawn out endeavor than he'd prefer. There isn't time for it tonight, but… Soon, he needs a long dip in a hot oil bath, and… He really needs to consider an upgrade to his knee, hip, and ankle joints if he's to interface with humans regularly, and have them see him as an equal or superior.

And he's distracting himself from what matters. Mirina Frakes. He's been in the game too long to miss when someone recognizes him, but… He's got _nothing_ on her.

At all.

But he _should._ That's abundantly clear from how she reacted to him.

There's no possible way she'd react to him like that if they don't _know_ each other. And he _doesn't._ He scans through his internal documents on her. Not much. Permission to come aboard. Assignment to this room. A work order to expand, and apparently, upgrade, it. He's not certain if Jon bothered to look at what his mother did with this space before he signed off on it, nor does he think it matters. Much. He glances around, and scans the internal documents. Well, if accounting fussed about how much was spent on this space, they've had the good sense not to put it in the reports.

He has a good database on Jon. Every step he's made since he signed his name to a recruiting contract with the First Order. If he could look shocked, a mild expression of it would have crossed his face when he put together those glowing fitness evals from Jon's commanding officer, and then the marriage license to said officer, but… Honestly, these things happen. Beyond that, Jon's record is… well, spotless. He does his job. He does it well. He actually probably earned those glowing evals. And when Tactical Design was obliterated in the _Raddus_ attack on the _Supremacy_ (Threepio's not sure how to feel about that.) Jon single-handedly rebuilt it from the ground up, to the point of apparently scrounging parts of broken machinery and droids to get his production lines back up.

That doesn't tell him much, if anything about Marina, though.

He keeps looking. He has an older, and it takes him longer to find it, file on her husband. Apparently, at some point in the offing the First Order took custody of the Empire's files, so he scans through them.

A competent, functional logistical officer. Nothing particularly noteworthy about him. His home was on Coruscant, where he must have lived with Mirina. There's an address. Given where they lived they had more money than his pay grade suggested.

So, one of them was old money from the upper echelons of Coruscant.

That tells him very little about why he should know her. Possibly… He was there, in that general neighborhood, frequently, in the service of Bail, but… There's nothing in his memory banks that involves Mirina.

Bail conjures another memory. _Three generations of Skywalkers._ He's got the sense that _that_ should tell him a whole lot about why he should know her, except, of course, for the fact that, if you really stretched the name to the breaking point, he's worked for _two generations of Skywalkers_.

He, unfortunately, also has the sense that Mirina did _not_ misspeak.

He supposes she could have meant Luke, Leia, and now Ben, but…

He knows she didn't.

"Drat." He says it quietly, contemplatively. When Artoo gets back, and they have a few free moments, he's going to have to ask about the time before his memories begin.

* * *

A billion Reys stretching out into infinity before and behind her.

This time, an irked expression lights all of their faces, before they vanish, save for the real Rey.

She's alone in the cave with the mirror. She steps toward it, seeing shadows. Herself… probably. It was her last time.

This time, when she touches the mirror, it resolves itself in an image of her in the Last Night gown, her hair up, makeup perfect. That holds for a moment. Then it's her on Lirium, in her winter gear. Her in the desert, wind whipping the drapes of her tunic. It settles on her, here, now, wet, naked, alone.

"It's always me." She looks around, and it's just her, the cave, and the mirror.

She stares at the ceiling, exasperation pouring out of her. "There's supposed to be guidance! I'm supposed to feel… settled! Like… you've got a plan for me, or something!" Her voice echoes in the cave as she stands there, staring at herself.

Guidance, settled, they don't come. Wet, pruney toes and fingers do.

A heady desire to be able to talk to Kylo about this, that comes, too. His own experience with praying to the Force, what he's seen, and… hell, letting him see it and see if he's got any insight, because just her… Right now, it's doing nothing for her.

She scrubs again, wraps her hair in the towel, and her body in a robe, and goes out to face the Ladies.

* * *

It's not just the ladies. Though Ellie and Mirina are there. Threepio is, too.

She smiles, genuinely, to see him.

"Mistress Ren."

"I see we're being formal, General."

He glances to Mirina and Ellie, and it's clear he's thinking that they are not in private.

Rey understands, nods, and says, "Okay. Lady Ren, reporting for duty, now what?"

Mirina's apparently got the stage first. In her living room, where they're sitting, she has a large… Rey's not sure, it looks a bit like a datapad bolted to a wall, but she doesn't think that's a thing. Whatever it is, Mirina waves at it, it turns on, and there are images of women on it.

"From everything I can tell, this is K'Aran high fashion for women."

"Can tell?" Ellie asks.

"They don't exactly interact much with the wider galaxy, so it took some doing to find images. These are internal, from their own news and entertainment services, and since I don't speak the language, and the—"

"You're watching a gathering of the royal family from three years ago. It's coming of age ceremony for the twin princes," Threepio says. "Adequate translators should never be a problem on this ship. Just ask your son for one, and you'll have it."

"Noted," Mirina says.

The ladies in the pictures are small, plump, round of hip and belly and breast. If Rey knew the word voluptuous, she might apply it to the ladies. Two of them are visibly round with child. Before Mirina can start talking about the clothing, Threepio adds, "Weight and fertility are both status symbols in this culture, both for the woman in question, and as a reflection on her man. We have all of this in our databases. Perhaps, if there is a next time, you might attempt to work directly with our department," Threepio adds.

Mirina glances at him, but doesn't actually say anything to that. She is surprised to see that _General_ Threepio's thorough enough to engage in a culture on that level.

"Is everyone going to be…" Rey's trying not to wince. Between decades of near starvation and Plutt, anything with enough flesh to form large floppy rolls just… gets to her. "plump?"

"Only the women. A woman who is well-fed, preferably pregnant, with many other children, and well-dressed is a woman whose husband is lavishly providing for her. All of her needs have been met, and any want she might desire is available," Threepio says.

Rey glares at the image. Her flat, muscly body is already failing miserably at this.

"None of that," Ellie replies. "We're showing them we understand their culture, not that we're members of it. Do you have any images of the men?"

"I didn't think I'd need one," Mirina says.

"They are seafaring, and nomadic culture. This image is from the high fashion, colder latitude, winter season. During the warmer months, they move closer to the equator, and clothing becomes more casual. High necked tunics, trousers, boots, and vests are popular in more formal settings for men. In the more relaxed seasons, kilts or a kaftan is considered appropriate menswear."

Mirina's just _staring_ at Threepio. "You pay attention to all of this?"

"Madam, I can process billions of pieces of information per second, there's no reason for me _not_ to 'pay attention' to details like this. Unlike a human, I don't have to prioritize in order to prevent myself from becoming swamped in details."

Ellie decides that now's a really good time to get attention back to Rey, and why they're doing this. "You are going in as a warrior queen, Rey. We want to indicate we're aware of their values, and that some of ours overlap, but if you look too much like one of their women, they'll disregard you as anything other than a gem in Kylo's crown."

That helps, some. Rey relaxes, a little.

"Okay," Ellie continues, "look at the image. The clothing, not the ladies under them. What do you see?"

Rey looks. "Uh… Okay… They're wearing gowns. They cover from the neck to the ground. Some sort of coat over the gown. Sparkly. There are a lot of little gems on the dresses and coats?"

Mirina says, "Yes. And they're made of a fabric I can't get my hands on, but is similar to slenisan silk."

"Which my dress is made of?"

"Lords, no!" Mirina laughs at the idea. "The spiders that spin that silk only produce enough for three meters a year. We don't have the resources to buy it."

"And we don't have the pull to borrow it, either," Ellie adds. "No, your dress is silk, from silk worms, but the gems, and the patterning on the hem and sleeves are similar and so is the cut. Yours is a little lower cut to help show off your Order pendant, but otherwise the shape is similar."

"Oh." Rey looks at the dresses. "So this… Helps them feel more comfortable?"

"We certainly hope so, Mistress," Threepio says. "We're also doing our best to provide them with something approaching local food customs when they're here."

"Okay, familiar, but not identical," Rey says.

"Exactly," Mirina replies.

"Great. So… dress me up, then what? How do I… warrior queen?"

Ellie smiles at this. "For the most part, just be yourself in a fancy dress. They've come to us because they need strength, and it's your job to make sure they understand that no matter what, we've got it, and that we're willing to sell it to them."

Rey inclines her head a bit.

Mirina adds, "You've survived the desert and neglect, fought Kylo and beat him, fought the Praetorian guard and won, all you have to do is let that shine through. Help them to see that, though you are a woman in a pretty dress, you can give them what they need."

"And what do they need?" Rey knows that's in the datapads she was supposed to be reading in the bath, but she hasn't read them, yet.

"In the short term, someone from the outside to pick which grandson will succeed the K'Aar. In the longer term, the power to enforce the succession," Threepio replies. "Here, let us begin at the beginning, what you'll be doing, specifically and concretely, tomorrow. In my experience, it's always easier to make plans and deal with whatever is coming your way, when you know as much as you can about it."

Rey nods. "Thank you, General."

"You're welcome, Mistress. First and foremost, Galactic Standard is not their primary language, though everyone visiting us will speak it perfectly, and should one of them say something, in your hearing, in anything other than Galactic Standard it is a direct insult and should be treated as such."

Rey nods. "Okay. How do I… respond to an insult?"

"That, Mistress Rey, depends on the severity of the insult. For something like that, ignore the first time, and if there's a second, a direct, open-handed, slap across the face will suffice."

Rey's eyebrows raise. Then she smiles a little. "I think I can handle that."

Threepio continues, "If there's a third, and unless they're looking to start a war with us, there won't be a third, you may break the nose of the person who insults you."

"I can really handle that. Should I have my staff at hand for this?" Fancy, expensive dress _and_ her lightstaff… That feels like an… aesthetic… that's the word Kylo would use… she can get behind.

"In other circumstances, yes," Threepio replies. "If we were doing this on their territory, you absolutely would be armed, but since boilerplate rules of the Order is that _no one_ gets on this ship armed, you won't have any visible weapons on you."

"Ah." Rey's a little disappointed by that, but she can understand why they don't let armed guests on the _Supremacy._

"You won't have any weapons on you, period," Mirina says. "We're already pushing their boundaries with you on that chair, showing up armed for something like this, especially since this isn't a culture where people wear ceremonial arms, would be an insult to them. A suggestion that we don't consider them to be coming here in good faith."

"There will however, be several security people in the room, and they will be armed to the teeth, and possibly have weapons between their teeth," Ellie adds.

Threepio cocks his head. That seems likely. "Now, you will already be on your throne when the K'Aran delegation will be led in. This moment is a greeting from you, Mistress of the Order, to Urathan, K'Aar of the K'Aran. Everyone else in both groups will remain silent. Neither of you will bow, though both of you will nod to the other, indicating that this is a meeting of equals, though, of course, everyone in the room knows that you are extending equality as a courtesy. We outgun and outpower the K'Aran system by lightyears. It's true they have more people, but we have more guns."

Rey's nodding. "What happens after we nod?"

"You will say, 'K'rith, hlamay onna imir j'ketta wol.'"

Rey sighs, loudly, and then mimics Threepio's words. "What do they mean?"

"Roughly, 'Welcome esteemed visitor, take comfort in our holdings.'"

"Exactly?"

"'Welcome Great Shark, he who tames the waves, feast upon our whales.' Their first planet is mostly ocean, and the idioms of a primarily seafaring people have stuck."

Rey nods, not knowing what a whale is and only sketchy on the concept of sharks.

"From then, you'll move to introduce everyone else."

"I can do that…" Then something occurs to Rey. "Who is going to be at this?"

"Colonel Jefferies and I will be meeting with the K'Arans at their rooms and bringing them to the meeting, so you'll be introducing Lt. Colonel Frakes, though I likely wouldn't mention his rank, it's a bit low for a gathering like this. There will be a few other members of the Diplomatic Corps in tow, but they will be observing, not part of the official gathering."

That springs a few questions in Rey's mind, first of all, "What about Poe?"

"Is Master Dameron here?" Threepio looks like he really would have appreciated a briefing on that.

"Yes, and he'll be joining the gathering. Jon's putting him in charge of the boys…"

Threepio nods. "That makes sense. We do not have Master Ren, so… Introductions by rank, and consider Master Dameron equivalent to Jon. Introduce Jon first, because this is an Order ship."

"Whose rank I'm not mentioning."

"Not unless he's got the sense to stick a Grand Marshal's stripe on his sleeve between now and then."

"No stripe. No stripes, at all, he's redesigned the whole look, but yes, I've just about finished up a Grand Marshall's formal dress uniform," Mirina adds. "That was the second table you saw when you came in," she says to Rey.

Rey's nodding, making herself memorize this.

Ellie can see what she's doing. "We'll also have a step by step cheat sheet for you. You don't have to memorize it all in one go."

"Good." That lets Rey get to her second question. She gestures to Ellie, "You won't be there?"

"Oh no. Not Pat or Josh, either."

Threepio takes over. "Part of why they are seeking us out, is that they are looking for strength, and power, and _youth._ The current K'Aar is seventy-three years old. The average male K'Aran lives to seventy. He is in good health for his age, but he is, by their standards, _old._ They are seeking the promise of people who are young enough to come up with a plan, and still be around ten years from now when we're done with it. Unfortunately—" He glances to Ellie.

"Don't fret, General. We both know that Pat and I have lived beyond our expected lifetimes and then some. And we know that ten year plans are a thing we're making mostly for our children and grandchildren. But while these bodies consent to draw breath, and our minds continue to stay sharp, we are willing and eager to serve."

Threepio inclines his head. "Will you forgive me if I say, your reputation indicates _serve_ is not exactly what you and your man do?"

"Will you somehow figure a way to scroll time back and take those words out of the air if I say, no?"

"That seems unlikely."

"Exactly." She glances to Rey, "and that's how _polite_ insults work. No slaps across the face for that, but we both know exactly what we've said to each other."

Threepio cocks his head. "Indeed. That said, the sentient who thinks you serve anything other than yourself is too stupid or innocent to be on this level, so…" And it's clear that's a warning, for Rey.

Ellie smiles. "I see we understand each other, perfectly, General."

Rey makes herself not offer up a long, drawn out sigh. "After I introduce everyone?"

"Ah, yes. After our introductions. Their side will introduce their people. Then I assume Master Dameron will take the boys and their handlers and… I don't know what they're going to do. The original plan was Master Ren strolling with them around a few of the more impressive flight decks, showing off a few of the CityKillers, and talking with them. I imagine Master Dameron will engage in a variation on that, while you, Jon, the K'Aar, Ilnor K'Rith, his diplomatic head, and my connection to the K'Aran dynasty, and I will discuss the boys outside of their hearing, and then have lunch, talking about what they think the ideal solution for the problem is."

"Are we… supposed to just give them his idea solution?"

Threepio shakes his head. "Not necessarily. We need to take it into account, understand what they're hoping for, but if we can find something better, they will appreciate it. Part of getting us into play is to see what someone who doesn't have a vested interest in any given outcome can come up with, and part of it is making sure any solution we come up with, we can enforce.

"If we settle on one son, and the warlords decide to challenge that, it's our job to enforce our settlement. So, the more difficult it looks to be to enforce our settlement, the more expensive this job becomes for us."

"And we want to make money on it, not spend it?" Rey asks.

"Exactly. The hope is that we'll decide on a solution, send men to the K'Aran system to keep an eye on things and report back, and if all goes well, they'll spend a quiet ten years there, managing the recruiting stations, keeping an eye on things, and we'll happily invest our income. If they don't, we'll be getting the call and coming in, armada at the ready, backing whatever side we agreed to back."

Rey nods at that. "Okay. Lunch. Talk things over. Then what?"

"Then the boys will join us. They will be formally presented to you. Now, this was supposed to be the time that Master Ren would have been getting to know them, but Master Dameron is doing it while you're speaking with the K'Aar, so it's likely we'll be moving directly to the part where we chat with our own people, and come up with a plan of attack, so to speak.

"Then we'll offer it up to them. They'll have as much time to deliberate on our offer as they like, though we've been told they'll likely decide in less than an hour. Quickness of thought, and decisive action are also both considered signs of great man in their culture. 'Dithering' is looked down upon as a weakness."

Ellie smiles a bit at that. "Cultures that value _fast, decisive_ action are cultures that you can generally outfight if you survive the first few battles."

Threepio nods. "Generally, yes. Long-term strategic thinking, unless it comes to them in a lightning strike, is not their strong suit. But, we are hoping we won't ever have to fight them. And if we do, as of this point we so massively outgun them that a battle against them really shouldn't take more than a day or two."

"Citykillers?" Rey asks.

"Citykillers. They have a large space navy, with plentiful fighter pilots, but we only have to get fifty or so Citykillers through their defenses to utterly destroy their manufacturing base and economy." And, as if he didn't just rattle off how they could end the K'Aran system, Threepio continues with, "Once we've given our solution, and they've accepted or rejected it, we'll finish off with a formal dinner. They'll spend the night. In the morning, you'll see them off, and they'll return to the K'Aran system, hopefully with a signed deal, and with even more luck, we'll be sending troops, and getting credits back, in the next few days."

"That simple," Rey says.

Ellie gives her hand a little squeeze. "Easy as pie."

"Aren't pies rather complicated to cook?" Rey asks. She's eaten some, but never made one.

Mirina smirks a bit. "Exactly."

* * *

They hear a quiet snick sound, followed by a louder buzz, and then Mirina gets up to check on the sewing droids. A moment later, she's back with Rey's dress draped over her arm.

"Well, let's see how it looks." She hands it over and Rey heads back to Mirina's room to try the dress on.

It's heavy. The gems and embroidery, which as she looks closely at it is motifs of some sort of delicate butterfly and intricate knots in… silver maybe? It's a bright shiny silver color. Tiny emeralds and pearls and… embellishments… adorn the knots and butterflies, make them sparkle in the dim light of Mirina's rooms.

Rey's nervous about touching this, afraid she might damage it somehow, but… She grits her teeth. If she breaks it, well, they shouldn't have put her in something so expensive anyway.

She drops the robe on the floor, and pulls the under dress on. It's soft. She likes that. Heavy but _soft._ It covers from her chest to the floor. Her Order of the Maji pendent is visible, but she doesn't have much, she presses her breasts up and together, any… real cleavage. Not without the help of a bra or something.

The overdress is a bit rougher, the fabric has a lightly nubby texture. The sleeves are very long. If she's supposed to be a warrior queen… No one in their right mind would wear something like this to attempt to fight in. It's… floppy and distracting, and it would get in the way.

But, that's likely part of the point. The Warrior Queen on her own throne doesn't need to fight. She'll fight when she's not in the midst of her own territory.

That feels likely to be true.

Put this on, stand up, welcome guests, sit on her throne, talk to people, listen, and then offer a suggestion. This shouldn't be _that_ difficult.

Add in her Force skills… Anything the K'Aar doesn't want to say about his grandsons, and likely anything those grandsons don't want her to know… She should find them fairly easily.

So… find the right answer… If there is a right answer… That's a sick-making thought, maybe, like healing, there is no right answer. This whole thing is just going to be a collection of tradeoffs. Rey sighs at that, fairly sure that _that's_ a lesson she's learned.

No right answers, just tradeoffs.

She stares at herself in the mirror, wishing that she could rest assured in the idea of _right._

* * *

"Oh… Mistress," Threepio's voice is soft when Rey comes out in her gown. He might not have much use for Kylo, as Kylo, but as the man who puts Rey into position to do things like this… As… a continuation of the Organa line, and the chance for a history that was killed much too early to finally come to fruition...

For that, he can tolerate a lot of Kylo.

Especially if he doesn't have to personally interact with him.

"General," Rey says, a little half smile, half grimace on her face. She can feel Ellie and Mirina are looking at her critically, expecting to find a way to improve the image. But Threepio is just enjoying this.

"Taking you back in time, General?" Mirina asks.

Rey offers Threepio a curious look when he nods. "The cut is different, of course, and the hair much less elaborate, but, if you could have stood by them, you would have looked like you belonged beside Leia and Breha."

"The Pacifist Queen who raised a spy turned general, who became the mother-in-law to a warrior queen," Ellie says.

His voice is soft, but definitive as he says, "Who raised a leader. Princess, Senator, General… she was always a leader. The title didn't matter." He can't smile to Rey, but she feels the warmth of it, the grimace drops from her face. "The title was just there to help other people understand who they were talking to, but it always came down to her internal, and I hope to think, eternal, _Leia_. And I do see much of that shining through you right now."

Rey smiles at him, feeling her eyes flush hot, and blinking she says, "Thank you."

"You are welcome, Mistress. Now, let us begin on the backstory of the potential K'Aran heirs…"


	17. The Grand Marshall and The Commander

2/5/2

Jon wakes up as second shift slips into third.

His head thuds back onto his pillow, hoping he might grab another hour or two of sleep. Rest now, eat, work through the night, grab a stim in the morning, and crash again after the formal diner.

He's had longer days.

But he's awake, his brain is buzzing, there are things he hasn't checked in on yet, and…

His eyes peel open, and he's up.

* * *

Details… So many details. Threepio's got Rey. Good. Dress done. Great. His mom says he's got his new dress uniform ready to go, too. Excellent. The K'Aran delegation is… His secretary tracks that down for him as he's heading toward the throne room. Fourteen hours away… All right.

Food? He checks in with the Chef of the _Supremacy,_ who sounds a bit miffed to be dealing with him. Possibly because, technically, at least right now, he outranks Jon, and doesn't appreciate him micro-managing, but… Well, he's the fucking Grand Marshall, or he will be as soon as he puts that new uniform on, and he'll micro-manage as he sees fit.

Food is prepped and will be ready to go as necessary. When the K'Arans get here, they'll be greeted by Colonel Jefferies and General Threepio, led to their suite… (He reroutes himself to make sure he visits the suite before going to down Kylo's throne room) offered refreshments and the time to settle themselves.

He checks is chrono. Eighteen hours until he, and Rey, and Poe will formally meet the K'Arans.

By then, he'll have all of his players up and ready to go… Except… Shit. He doesn't have anything to put Poe in yet, and he hasn't seen the 'suit' Poe doesn't think he'll think is good enough.

Okay… He comms his second-in-command, who is technically the head of Tactical Design these days, and isn't, actually, supposed to be doing diplomacy stuff, but… He needs more people, and he doesn't have them, yet. "Hey, Em, can you get my bolts of 12-45-6, 45-2-54, and 28-9-12 to my rooms."

"Sure, Boss. New project?"

"Something like that."

"Another suit for the Master?" After all those are _good_ fabrics. Not the sort of thing you'd generally use for armor. "You expanding his palette?"

"Nah, this one's not for him. He's too cool toned for those colors. Ummm…" He rubs his hand through his hair… "Get me the box with the metal samples in it. The fancy ones, okay? And my tin snips and files."

"I can do that. What are you planning?"

"Not entirely sure yet, but I'll show you pictures soon."

"Good."

"Oh, and… the bolt of 163-09-88."

"You're making something with leather?"

Jon sighs. "Maybe. With any luck it won't be a disaster."

"Good luck."

"Thanks. I need it."

* * *

Jon double, and then triple, checks the K'Aran suite. It _screams_ wealth. Everything in the place is beyond sleek, gilded, (metaphorically if not literally, though he's noticing silver accents abound) and rare. He smiles a bit, they've even got flowers in the bedrooms.

Flowers…

He's on his comm, "Threepio, did you check the flowers in—"

"Yes, Jon, I did."

"Good. Didn't want any surprises like last time."

"The only surprise waiting for you is how Rey's going to look in the dress, and I'm willing to say it'll be a pleasant one."

"Good, that's the kind of surprise I want. I take it you're with Mom, Rey, and Ellie right now?"

"I am. We're going over everything we know about everyone attending the meeting. We should wrap that up in a few hours, and after that I think we're going to leave Rey to have some time on her own."

He hears a soft, muffled voice in the background of the comm. He assumes that's Rey agreeing to time on her own.

"Okay, good. Comm me if you need me. I'm off to check on the throne room that isn't."

"Yes, sir."

"Tell Rey, Poe and I will be at Mom's room at two past the start of second shift tomorrow."

"I will." He comms off with Threepio and begins the trek to the not-a-throne-room.

* * *

The landing bay the K'Aran delegation will land at is twenty-one levels below the floor their suite is on. It will take time to get from the one to the other, though it's mostly a long elevator ride.

That said, the trek from their suite to Kylo's throne room is an hour and a half, mostly through the K-Deck. It's not the fastest way to get from their suite to Kylo's rooms, but it does involve them going through the main fighter deck. Fifty-eight point six klicks of fighters, more fighters, additional fighters, and then, even more fighters should do an adequate job of showing off that, if needs be, they can bring quite a bit of "fight" to a fight.

And, of course, that's just the _main_ fighter deck. The view from the floor of K-Deck allows you to see up to O-Deck. And each of those floors is also stuffed full of anything and everything that a good pilot can use to kill people.

And, of course, those are just the _fighters._ Bombers, CityKillers, land weaponry, all of that is elsewhere.

They want strength, well, they're gonna walk through a metric shit ton of it.

He's grinning a little at that, somewhat wishing he was going to be joining them on this walk, but when he planned this, he'd been intending to be keeping Kylo in the right mood for this, and now he's got Rey, so… Maybe next time he'll get to be a part of the group that shows off the _Supremacy._

He shrugs a bit. Besides, all he actually knows about the ships around him is they look cool and kill things. Force forbid they ask him any real questions about this stuff.

* * *

Ninety-six minutes. Longer than Jon wanted to spend on the trek, but he also wants to make sure that every step of this is good to go, and it is.

The scale alone of this place should sell what they're offering more than any response they could come up with.

They want power?

They want big?

Oh, he's gonna give it to them.

Jon closes his eyes as the elevator door to the throne room opens, and then, once it's full open, he opens his eyes and sighs.

A billion kilos fall off his shoulders.

The walls are light gray. The pillars and doors are still black. The carpet is gray, it looks rich and lush, glinting a bit, like the not-quite-velvet it is. From the close wall, the Order's hex in black and white hangs, interspersed with the K'Aran's blues and greens. He's been told the large golden thing in the middle of the blue and green is a narwhal, but he's got no idea what, other than that golden thing, a narwhal might be.

Rey's dais and throne… The dais rises not quite a meter off the floor, and it's gleaming polished black hexagons with white edges, just like the Order hex. Rey's throne… He's very satisfied to see it came out properly. The chair itself is stained ebon wood, whorls of black and gray. (He took his inspiration from Kylo's marriage band.) The seat is white. Rey in her black and gray should pop against the light color.

The table is set. Order black and white blended with K'Aran greens and blues.

There are ornamental spheres of water floating around through the courtyard, with various water living critters in them.

He double checks the drinks menu… Yes. Perfect. The preferred cocktails of the K'Aar are on rotation and ready to go.

In fact, everything in here looks so perfect, and so ready, and… He checks his chrono. They should still be working. That makes him wonder if just adding Poe to the work crew sped them up this much.

He glances around again. The throne room is empty.

And… He appears to have lost Poe.

 _Shit._

* * *

"Poe?"

Poe's eyeing the walls of Kylo's office when he gets Jon's voice on his comm. "Hey buddy. Have a good nap?"

Jon sounds slightly irked by that question. "Yes, lovely. Where are you?"

Poe laughs. "Afraid you lost me?"

"Well… Yes, actually. It's a huge ship."

"Where are you?"

"Throne room."

"Then walk through the door to his office, and see what happens when you let Lady Ren do some Lady Renning."

Jon's not sure if he's feeling the floor dropping out under his feet or not. They aren't entertaining the K'Aran in there, but this is where everyone on their side of it will be gathering for the chat and decide what they're going to offer— "Oh."

Poe's grinning at him, spattered with pain, and he's got a crew of maintenance workers cleaning up a painting project as a small droid and C8 appear to be chatting about something. "Rey decided to do the walls to match."

Jon's looking around. "This is… nice." He sees C8. _Really_ sees him. The droid usually blends into the background so thoroughly it's easy to miss him, but not anymore.

"Yeah, really lightens up the mood of the place."

"You… got all of this done?"

Poe nods to the crew. "We did. They're good men. One of my best friends used to do maintenance on this ship, and… whatever else is true about you guys, you train men to fix things right, and do it fast. I just offered up a few dirty tricks learned having to scrap things together on the fly."

Jon blinks at that. "Okay." He looks around again. Then he looks at Poe. Dirty, little sweaty, paint in his hair and on his clothing, grease on his hands from putting together the dais. He mentally bites his lip and whimpers, but doesn't let it get to his face.

Poe who also doesn't have an outfit for tomorrow. Work. Work that's got to happen, fast. "I think we've got to get moving from here," Jon says.

Poe nods at that, and then says, "Yx, you guys got it from here?"

YX-4489 waves him off. "Sure Commander. Pleasure working with you."

"And you. I'll say 'Hi' to Finn for you."

"Thank you."

He turns back to Jon, smiles, and says, "I'm all yours."

"Commander?" Jon asks as they head out of the office.

"Like I said, that's the one that mattered to me."

Jon nods.

Poe adds, "Plus, on this ship, Master Poe's kind of asking to get my ass kicked. It's one thing if I'm with the kids. Hell, more than half of them just call me Poe. But here especially… Commander'll do me just fine."

"I think we're going to introduce you to the K'Aran delegation as Master Dameron of the Maji."

"I can live with that. But with Kylo's men, I don't need to be worming into his territory."

That makes sense to Jon.

* * *

As they're walking through the F-Deck, Poe says, "So, what's the plan for tonight? The throne room's been beaten into submission. I'm sure most of the details are done or in motion. Even the napkins are folded to spec. So, now… Kick back, relax, have a drink and shoot the shit until morning?"

Jon laughs, hard, at that.

"Yeah, maybe for you." He gestures to the F-deck. "Let me see what you've got in the way of a suit, and then you're free."

"What'll you be doing?"

"Depending on how close to right you were with, 'not that I'd think' on the decent suit front, I may be making one for you. Otherwise I'll be going over every detail of tomorrow, twice, and likely popping in on my mom to double check on Rey."

"Jon, you've got to relax, or you're going to burst a blood vessel."

The look on Jon's face might be called a smile, or a grimace, depending on how well you knew him. "That's what the day after tomorrow is for. Or are you going to tell me you aren't tense on the eve of a battle?"

Poe bats that away. "Well, for a lot of them, they didn't waltz up ahead of time and tell me they were coming, but, sure, when I knew… Before is tense. Or doing stupid shit to fight tense. During is…" Poe rolls his lips together, really looking at Jon, and then shakes his head. "Closest you've ever been to a fight was basic training, wasn't it?"

"I watched Kylo shove a lightsaber through a man's balls from about six meters away. Then he snapped his neck while he was writhing on the floor, hurting too badly to scream. Is that close enough?"

Poe winces. That's not what he'd call a fight. He'd likely call that a murder, but he's assuming Kylo had a good reason for it. "I'm sure that made sense to him, but…" He cringes.

"Multiply that by the fifty thousand other people who watched him do it. And it made sense to him because the guy was fucking the trainees, whether they wanted to, or not."

"Ah. Yeah. Well…" Not a murder then. He doesn't have the full story on that, but he knows enough about what happened on Jakku to put the dots together and figure that's going to be a sensitive topic for Rey and anyone who loves her. "That's a… way to make sure that doesn't happen again, I guess."

"On the most literal level of that one trainer isn't going to do it again, yes, indeed. I've been told training is getting better, but that's not my department. And, yes, besides watching Kylo fight, the last time I got into a fight, I was in basic training, and even then, my preferred weapon was a sniper's rifle."

Poe traces his eyes over Jon. Keen eye, good with detail, likely given what he does, good with math and distances, patient. "I can see that. And the reason I brought it up is… well, unless you've really been in one, you can't, not really, get it, but… You're not tense or nervous or… anything… when you're fighting. It's…" Poe smiles a little, again. "It's fucking perfect, is what it is, and I know we're not supposed to say that, but…" He looks a little wistful. "Nothing else feels like it. After, when the adrenaline crashes, and you get shaky, and you love all your loves that little bit more because you lived and they did, too. That's different. That's when you get nervous, and that's when you party that much harder just because you can. But during…" he sighs.

"I get some of that. Just, playing for different stakes."

"What's on the table for us?"

"If we do this well, come up with a plan they like, manage to get them to stick around long enough for us to give them a plan—"

"You think they're going to take one look at Rey and leave?"

"I'm afraid they might. It's not a society where women do things like this, but… they are a birth right monarchy, and she's the closest thing I've got to something like the kind of succession they might have, for Kylo, so… Anyway, if they don't bugger off when they see her, and they do take our advice, we get eight billion credits, a good relationship with the K'Aran, and with any luck, more of these contracts."

Poe whistles slow and low. "That's a hell of a hand."

"And that's why, the day after tomorrow, I can relax."

* * *

"Food?" Poe asks as they continue to walk through the F-Deck. He's eyeing the eateries and cafes.

"I'll order for us. You get into my shower, get cleaned up, show me the suit on you, and by the time that's done, food'll be up, and we can eat and talk and work."

"Sounds like a date."

Jon raises an eyebrow. "I really hope not."

Poe smirks at that. "Good."

Jon nods to the end of the market zone, and the third hallway from the aftword side. "That one is mine."

Poe nods back at him. "I remember."

"Good with directions."

"I bloody well have to be. Not like space has a lot of landmarks. And the ones that it does have, _move._ "

"Isn't that why you've got the navi?" Jon asks, looking at BB trailing beside Poe.

BB-8 chirps at him.

"He didn't mean it, buddy. He just doesn't know any better." Poe says to BB, and to Jon he says, "BB's a hell of a lot more than a navi program. But yes, he does that, too. Still the navi is for making sure you get where you want to go. If you're dog-fighting…"

"Right. Of course. It's probably really easy to get disoriented in space zipping around."

" _Really._ "

They take a few more steps. "What do you want to eat?" Jon asks.

"I'm easy. I like pretty much everything." Poe thinks about it, and about tomorrow. He sighs. "Okay, nothing more than medium level heat, or I'll be up all night with heartburn. Can't toss back the chilies like I used to."

Jon smirks at that. He remembers a similar conversation with Lane. "Not twenty-two any more."

"For which, most of the time, I'm grateful."

"Most of the time. I suppose tomorrow will be a reminder of all the fun twenty-two was, or wasn't."

"I'm not saying twenty-two wasn't fun." Though Jon gets the sense Poe's lying about that. "But I wouldn't go back."

Jon nods at that. "I had a blast at twenty-two. Mom hadn't booted me out yet, so I was mostly going to parties and sewing. Nothing darker or deeper than if I'd gotten a seam right, or if the client liked the sketch, and who I was going to take to bed."

"Fun and easy."

"Fun and easy, and kind of boring, and…" Jon smiles at him a little. "I wouldn't go back. Twenty-five or seven, maybe, but not twenty-two."

Poe wiggles his hand a bit to indicate he understands that.

* * *

Once they get back to Jon's place, there's a moment of standing around followed by Jon sort of jerking into motion. "Refresher, right. You don't want to grab your suit, go all the way back to your ship, and then back here again."

"Not unless you're looking to kill two and a half hours."

"I'd really rather not."

"In the morning, I saw you've got something in there, but… Shower? Sonic? I didn't see any controls, so…"

Jon leads him toward his bathroom. "Yeah, it's not tricky once you know how to work it, but the first time, someone's got to show you how to. I've got water and sonic. Sonic is free. We've got to pay for water, but… I just prefer it."

Poe smiles at that. "My current ship's got a shower. Micah's got a hetabex fuel conversion system, so I've got all the water I could want, but everything before that had a sonic or was too small for anything but a hygiene pack, and… that first few minutes under real water after, say, six months of living in a ship…"

"I _know_." Jon grins at him on that one. "Trainees only have access to a sonic, and when I just started here, I had better things to use my credits on." He glances at the bag Poe had over his shoulder when he joined them. "You have your kit in there?"

Poe winces a bit. He's got his suit in there, because he was supposed to show it to Jon. And he's always got a change of clothing in there and a toothbrush, because he's never entirely sure when he'll need them, but it hadn't occurred to him there'd be a several hour commute back and forth to his ship, so the rest of his gear is in his refresher, in there. "Shit, no. Will I put you out if I use yours?"

"No." Jon opens the door to the refresher. He crosses to the sink, grabs his razor and quickly switches out the old blade for a fresh one. "Everything else you could need is in there," he gestures to the glass enclosed shower. Then he slides the door open, and gently touches the wall just below the shower head. The tile glows, and a menu comes up. He taps once, "That sets it for water, what temperature?"

"Thirty-nine?"

He taps the screen again, and pulls his arm back as the water starts to flow. "Just nudge it up or down to change the temp. It'll take a minute or so to get warmed up. Towels are under the sink. I'll lay the suit out."

"Thanks."

"You're welcome."

* * *

Poe does not moan, loudly, when he steps under the water. It's a quiet, dignified sort of salute to whatever bit of the Force decided that hot water should feel so damn good on sore muscles. It's not like he was killing himself out there today, but… It's abundantly clear, on a lot of levels, that he is not twenty-two any longer. Apparently, if he spends hours building and painting his left shoulder just _aches._ So, he is taking advantage of hot water sluicing down on him, easing said ache. (He supposes at some point he should ask Kylo what they charge officers for water so he can get Jon some sort of equally nice present back, but… With his luck, Kylo won't know.)

He lingers under the water for another moment, and then attempts to figure out which of the way too many bottles in the shower is soap or shampoo.

Jon's got… He's picking up bottles… Body soap. Facial soap. Hair soap. Hair Masque. Conditioner. Moisturizer. Shaving soap. Post-shave balm. Dr. Feelgood's Motion Potion. Poe's hand goes limp when he reads that, and he almost drops the bottle. Then he gets a good grip on it and bites the meat of his thumb so he doesn't laugh loud enough for Jon to hear.

He's grinning as he turns the bottle around, and… Yep, it's specifically designed to be "Extra slick and super long lasting for good, clean, shower-time fun."

 _Shit…_ Now there's an image. Jon's already way too damn pretty, and him jerking it here in this shower… Poe bites his lip. He puts the motion potion down, and reaches for the last bottle, wondering what else Jon may have in here. He can't imagine there's anything else the man might slather on his skin or hair… Though why said hair looks so soft and said skin so practically edible is no longer a mystery. Jon _takes care_ of himself.

Poe pauses for a moment. There is the husband. Maybe only some of this stuff is Jon's… But… No. One soap, one shampoo, lots of other do-dads, but only one of each of the basic cleansing items. He glances to the razor… Only one of them. If the husband is still around, they share.

He looks at the motion potion, and a flood of images that raise Poe's body temperature, and make his hand go drifting to his shaft, go cascading through his mind. Jon on his own in here… Jon and his man in here… _Fuck!_

He reaches for the last bottle, curious as to what else Jon or his man could possibly be putting on himself. There's nothing written on it, and he can't see anything that looks like a lid on it. Poe flips it over and sees the shape around the small hole in the bottom. _Oh._ Well, now he knows what Jon does with the motion potion. A smirk spreads even wider across his face, as he puts the wank sleeve down.

Then he looks at his own shaft, which he's been absently stroking, and it's happily standing at attention at the idea of any of this. He tells it to go the fuck back to sleep. There'll be a time and place for spinning out the fantasy of Jon covered in soap suds, jerking it in his shower, maybe… maybe just because Poe wants to watch him do it.

Maybe, he'd put on a show for him.

Shit… Maybe, he could be in the shower with him, and the husband could watch both of them. The man in the pictures is good looking, and if he and Jon play around enough for Jon to have a _friend_ …

Maybe, he could be their _friend,_ too?

 _Force, get between the two of them… suck and fuck at once…_ Poe shudders and gives his shaft a good, firm squeeze. And then a long pull. And then… He's got a job to do, and he's been standing around in here too long babying his shoulder, and… And… maybe if he asked nicely Jon would rub his shoulder… Maybe the husband would come home while Jon's rubbing his shoulder. Maybe he'd want to _help._

 _Stop it!_ Those images are doing exactly nothing to deflate his shaft.

Firmly flicking the top of it with his fingernail on the other hand, does.

Forcing his brain to stop thinking about sucking Jon down with the husband watching them while seeing how much fun that sleeve is helps even more.

And when he's out of the shower, with his hair a hell of a lot smoother and softer than usual, he's feeling pretty damn normal.

And, by the time he's got his pants on, all of his various appendages are behaving themselves.

* * *

When Poe gets out of Jon's bedroom, Jon blinks at him. He was not expecting _that. That's_ … "Nice!"

"Nice?" Poe asks, stepping closer to him, and turning around so he can see the whole suit.

"Yeah, that's a legitimately good suit. You not only clean up well…" He notices the stubble. "Didn't shave?"

"Morning. No point to doing it now, I'd just have to do it again, then. Gotta shave twice a day if I want to keep clean shaven, and my skin doesn't much like that."

Jon nods. "Okay." His eyes go roaming up and down Poe's suit, but, and this is a first for Poe, he appears to be looking _at the suit_ as opposed to _him in a suit._ "The color suits you, the cut is good, and the fit is a touch snug, but I can tell that's intentional. After working with Kylo and Rey… and… well…" Jon looks uncomfortable at letting that sentence go on that long.

Poe arches an eyebrow at Jon.

Jon opens and closes his mouth, and then commits to it. "No one ever accused the Resistance of being stylish. Rumor has it you guys went out of your way to find the ugliest clothing possible and never, ever spent even a single credit on anything beyond the barest functionality. Plebeian sentiments or something."

Poe rolls his eyes. "Or something." He sits next to Jon at the kitchen table, and pulls the plate that's not in front of Jon to him. Dinner appears to be some sort of curry and flat breads. "You run an entire battle fleet on charity, good will, and the luck of the Force and see how spiffy your uniforms are."

Jon figures that's a legitimate point. "Yes, well, I didn't have to. Between Snoke's policies and the people who got rich off of them, me and mine never wanted for material goods." Jon glances around at everything from the room to the food that was delivered while Poe was in his refresher, figuring that also makes the point. He reaches for the bottle of vodka. "We drinking?"

"One. We're both supposed to be sharp tomorrow," Poe replies.

"Do you have to stop at one to be sharp in the morning?"

"No. And you don't either, but we're going to because we're adults with an important job to do, right?"

Jon pours them a glass each. Big for a shot, but not multiple servings. "Of course."

Poe takes a sip. It's good vodka, too. He touches the glass, and also looks around at everything around them. "When you aren't stealing everything that isn't nailed down, and then the taking a crowbar to the ones that are, it's _tricky_ to keep yourself in nice things, like pretty uniforms," Though he notes, that, apparently, while he was in the shower, Jon changed into his laying about at home clothing, a gray shirt and trousers. "good booze, and comfy apartments."

That gets an amused look from Jon. It's true that the First Order did take, a lot. But that's not where most, or even a significant minority of its funding came from. Jon smirks. "You ever talk to Kylo about how much money we owe?"

Poe raises and eyebrow. "Owe?"

"Yes, _owe_. That's a big chunk of why this contract, and any contracts that may spawn because of it matter so much. The Order is something in the range of 27 trillion credits in debt, and that's _after_ Snoke blew up the Hosnian system, and the banks on it, and Kylo liquidated our largest creditor and stole their holdings. People lend you that kind of money when they think you can _win._ They may not have liked Snoke, or thought he was doing the right thing, but they knew they'd get rich off of him, so the money came pouring in."

Poe sips his drink, feeling smug. "Pouring right into Starkiller, which I personally led the attack on, and blew the fuck up."

They stare at each other for a long moment.

Jon nods slowly, _looking_ at Poe, eyes roaming up and down his body, seeing his physical person, here, now, and his image of the fighter pilot destroying the single largest military weapon ever created. "Among other things, yes. A huge chunk of it was here, in the Supremacy. More in the rest of the fleet. Some sprinkled throughout the 60,000 planets Snoke had men on." He keeps looking at Poe, sitting, leaning back, legs wide, in gray and teal silk/wool blend suit, looking beyond cool and confident. Well, if this ship is going to explode before it gets out of dock, might as well do it now… He takes a long swallow of his drink. Maybe it won't burn so much if the alcohol gives him a little armor. "I've… wondered… what the hell did you all think you were going to do against Snoke? If Kylo hadn't turned… I mean… I'm a fucking design officer. The closest they let me to a fight is watching people train in the armor I made to make sure it works. But even I knew you didn't have the numbers to even get close to winning this. You took out Starkiller, apparently personally, crippled the _Supremacy,_ we still had more than two million men and five hundred thousand fighters left. You had, what, one ship?"

Poe shrugs at that. "There are two sayings, among the old Rebels, well, some of them. The Church of the Force ones don't really believe in the idea of Hell, but… The first one is this: It's better to rule in Hell than to serve in Heaven. The second is this: Your place in Hell is determined by the size of the honor guard you bring with you." Poe offers Jon a knife sharp smile. "I figure mine's at over 2.5 million. I mean, I know, compared to say, Hux or Tarkin, that's a piddly sum, but for a flyboy from Yavin IV, that's not a bad count, you know?"

Jon decides not to attempt to put a number on how many people he's indirectly killed by working for the First Order. More than he's comfortable with. "No, it's not. So, was that it, just nibble away, kill as many as you can, because… You couldn't stand the First Order?"

"Couldn't stand them," Poe shakes his head. "It's not like this is jizz music or mushrooms or something. There's a difference between personal preference and not idly sitting by and letting evil eat the galaxy."

Jon's eyes are cold. "Is there? I'd say have a chat with my Mom about that, but honestly, I don't want the headache. I'll sum it up like this, a group of terrorists spent twenty years sniping at a democratically elected government, claiming to be for a 'Republic' even though a functioning and legal Republic put that government into power. It's possible, thought I don't genuinely know, that that sniping goaded Tarkin into destroying Alderaan. Maybe that was just an excuse. But Alderaan was nineteen _years_ into a civil war started when a group of _rebels_ lost an election and decided they wouldn't abide by it.

"Tell me, Poe, when the Rebellion started to attack Empire outposts and military targets, was that _evil?_ Did your Mom sign up before or after Alderaan, and if she signed up before, was it because of the Empire's attacks on 'civilian' targets, all of which were either retribution for terror attacks or places hiding terrorists?"

Poe shakes his head. "I'm not going there, and you don't get to go there, either, because we're not talking about the Empire, but about the First Order, and for all you can claim the Empire were the good guys—"

"I'm not claiming they were the good guys, I'm claiming they were the _legal_ guys. Figuring out who the good guys are is a different job."

"Maybe, but that's beside the point, because there was absolutely _nothing_ legal about the First Order, and those are the guys I signed up to fight, so let's keep it here, and now, and between you and I, and not between your Dad and my Mom."

Jon nods. "Fair enough. Well then… If memory serves, there was nothing _legal_ about you and yours, either. You overthrew one legitimate government to set up a second republic, and as soon as it refused to go the way you wanted it, off you went on your own… So… Again, legal and good might not be the same thing, but how are we figuring out what evil is, beyond things you just don't happen to like, if we toss aside any formal idea of law?"

Poe spends a moment staring at Jon. "You know, for a guy who dropped out of school and spent most of his life sewing and as a party boy, you're way too well-versed in this stuff."

Jon smirks, and then takes a bite of his supper. "You don't have a good argument, do you?"

Poe's eyes flash. "Don't kill people who aren't threatening you. There's the baseline. Evil is fucking with people who aren't fucking with you. That's as fancy as I need to get. One day, maybe Rey'll dress it up prettier, but I'm good there."

Jon inclines his head a bit. "I can live with that." Then he says, voice quieter, "And… if your side had lost the war, you'd be damn good at arguments for why they weren't evil just for existing, too. You'd probably know all there is to say about legal and moral might not be the same thing, but without law, all you've got for moral is personal preference, so it's got to start somewhere, with some shared concept of law, because otherwise you just get trillions of different ideas of evil."

"Fine. I'm still going with my version of evil, and I'm okay with that, too. I don't… need a billion other voices to agree with me on this. Snoke was fucking with people all over the galaxy who weren't fucking with him, who never wanted to fuck with him, and the New Republic, who were supposed to protect the fucked-with, wouldn't get off their asses and do it. Leia left—"

"Got tossed out."

That gets a glare out of Poe.

"I'm just saying, would she have left if they hadn't booted her out? Or like her father, would she have decided to try and work it from the inside?"

Poe's eyes narrow. He thinks… "She would have left. She hadn't said anything about it, not yet, but… It was there. I could feel it coming. You can't… Her whole world, literal world, was blown up… And after that… You can't just… sit on your ass and do nothing."

Jon nods. He shrugs a bit, his body language making it clear he's done a lot of ass sitting over the years, then looks at the chronometer, and the suit on Poe, which is really nice and absolutely won't work for this, and sighs. Assuming he doesn't want to be sewing _while_ they're going to meet Rey, he's got ten hours to get this done. Less eating, more working. "It's a good suit. It looks really nice on you. And if I was going to take you somewhere elegant, it'd be great. That said, the K'Arans want something that screams power and wealth, and not in an understated sort of way, so…"

Poe raises an eyebrow at him, understanding that they're tabling larger issues for right now. "So…"

"How do you feel about chocolate brown and coppers?"

"I've worn screaming orange flight suits. Brown and copper I can deal with."

"Good."

* * *

Dinner's done. Poe offered to wash the dishes, and Jon just looked confused by that. Apparently, the droid who brought the food will take the dishes away when it comes back with breakfast. So, a quick rinse, put them back in the box they came in, and off they'll go in the morning.

Poe's not sure what to do with himself. He sent BB back to their ship, keep watch on things, but now he's just sort of sitting around, as Jon's unrolling bolts of fabric. He's on the floor, kneeling next to the fabric, a deep, dark brown… Poe thinks it might be velvet, and he can't imagine what Jon's going to do with it, but… He's the professional.

He looks around, supposedly, he could be 'relaxing' but that feels wrong while Jon's working. He watches Jon work, which is certainly a pretty sight. There's a man who belongs on his knees. Then he glances to the pictures of Jon and the handsome man.

Husband.

He's got to be Jon's husband. Jon's wearing a marriage band. Poe does a little math, figures he's been in Jon's company, his _home_ for going on fifteen hours now, and there's been no sight of the man, or mention.

"Is your… husband… stationed on a different ship?" That feels like a safe way to get near the question.

Jon's head snaps up, and he goes dead still before saying, "No."

Poe's maybe not the smartest man to ever draw breath, but he can _feel_ the wave of _back off_ radiating off of Jon on that question. Poe just knows that the Husband is no longer in the literal picture. He's dead or divorced or… gone somehow.

"Oh. Okay. Uh… The boys, tomorrow. I'm supposed to show them around and get to know them, right?"

"That's the idea." Jon looks a lot more comfortable talking about tomorrow.

"Give me the specs for the ship."

Jon blinks at him.

"They'll ask questions, and look, I can spin a story like no one's business, and I know enough about ships that whatever I come up with will at least make sense, but if you want me to impress them with how big and strong and powerful this is, I need to know something about it beyond, 'See that bay there, that's where I stole a TIE, and slipped the whole First Order to escape with my friend Finn.'"

Jon blinks. "That's how you met Finn?" He's, of course, heard of the infamous Finn, and met his wife, but never him.

"Apparently he'd gotten Captain Phasma's attention, and not in a good way."

Jon winces. "Reconditioning?"

Poe nods. "I've never asked what's involved in that, but I take it that's not good."

"I don't know, either. Me and mine… There's a reason we've got names and not numbers, but… I've never heard anyone say anything about it to indicate that anyone thinks it was fun."

Poe nods at that. "Anyway, Finn comes to the conclusion he needs to be somewhere other than the _Supremacy._ Ren had me, and was trying to pull everything out of my brain, so I _needed_ to be somewhere else, too. So, it's a good story, and I tell it well, but me hot-tailing it off the _Supremacy_ might not be exactly the image you're looking for."

Jon nods. "You're not wrong about that. It's… just…"

Poe raises an eyebrow.

"I don't know if I can get what you're looking for," and it's also clear that Jon's not entirely comfortable handing that over to Poe even if he could get it.

Poe grins at him. "Last I checked, Grand Marshall, you should have access to anything your little heart desires. That's what having a rank like that means. You ask for Stormtroopers to dance in front of you scattering lilac petals across your path, and they ask how many of them do you want, and do you want pink, purple, or white lilacs."

Jon starts to giggle at that image. When he stops, he says, "I have a feeling requesting something like that is how you immediately lose a rank like Grand Marshall."

"Or, at least, Kylo just hits you with that look. You know the one, where you've said or done something so far outside of anything approaching his experience his brain just freezes up and he's got to reboot before he can deal with it."

Jon sniggers at that, too. "Oh yeah, I've seen that look." He's smiling as he thinks, because that look is amusing, and then it's not, because that look generally goes along with something that if anyone who'd been even a quarter competent at raising kids had had Kylo, he wouldn't have that look on his face. The smile starts to fall, then he says, "You knew his Mom, right? I mean… really knew her?"

"I don't know about _really._ I like to think I did, but she was my boss, so…"

"Okay. Seriously. Part of my job is training him in things he should have learned as a teenager."

Poe's looking at Jon curiously. He's, of course, noticed that Ren's got some holes in how he behaves compared to normal people, but he thought that was just… Ren. The idea that he never learned in the first place didn't occur to him. "Like what, table manners?"

"No, those he got. Like…" Jon thinks. "Like how to use cologne, or it's okay to be attracted to women who aren't Rey, or if you get out of the refresher, and there's someone else in the room when you get out, the towel goes around your waist, not your hair."

Poe covers his mouth to stifle the laugh. "Oh, Jon…"

"Where the hell were his parents? Okay, Jedi school is apparently… lacking… in basic how to be a human in society skills, fine, but… I'm honestly shocked he knows how to shave. And I still don't know if he doesn't use deodorant because he and Rey think he smells fine as is, or if he doesn't know it's a thing."

Poe makes his eyebrows drop. Apparently Jon's spent quite a bit more intimate time with Kylo than he has. Though, as he thinks about different afternoons and days spent working with Rey, especially when it was still summer. He shakes his head. "They just don't know it's a thing."

"Great. Well… I mean… I can say a lot to him, but I'm not about to start up a conversation with, 'Hey, do you smell that way after a workout intentionally?'"

Poe smirks at that. "I can see that. Meanwhile, as the asshole pseudo-older brother, I can cover that one." He's actually rather enjoying the mental image of taking care of that. He might even tell Finn about it. That should make his decade.

"Yeah, but you shouldn't have to. Luke or… whoever, should have sat his ass down two decades ago and explained this to him."

Poe shrugs. "Jedi… I don't know. They were supposed to be apart, right? Not really people in society, right? At least, that's as best as I know about it. And Kylo's said things about how they weren't supposed to want or get attached or be anything other than Jedi, so maybe it was a way to help keep temptation at bay… People generally don't want to be near me after a hot day with no deodorant… But… Okay, yeah, you'd think the towel thing…"

"You'd think! Maybe he was just pranking me, but he seemed on the level with it." Jon's watching Poe, waiting.

"Right… Uh… Leia. I knew she had a son. She had a few pictures of him in her office. One of her and Han and Ben, but… I thought Ben was a lot younger than he was, because he was like, six or seven in the picture. A decade went by, and he was still six or seven in the picture, and it occurred to me that if I thought he was younger than he was, everyone else likely did, too, so they'd be looking for a kid, not a teen or young man.

"And, you have to realize, Leia was a target. I worked security for her, and people were _constantly_ trying to take her out or down. I am good at this sort of thing because I _needed_ to be. She wasn't, by a long shot, the only member of the senate who kept her family far away and hidden. She didn't like it, but it was safer that way."

"She didn't go home at night to her family?"

"Not when I was there, but… I got there at seventeen… so that puts Kylo at twelve, and… He was already with Luke then. I don't know what it was like before he went to Luke. Not from Leia's point of view.

"So, I knew Ben existed. I met Han a few times, saw him more. I saw Luke, once. The day he showed up is the day the pictures went away. And Han did, too. I never saw him again. And Leia never mentioned Ben again.

"Kylo captured me, and I'm smartass-ing my way through interrogation, because that's what I do, and I had no idea he was her son. He just about went nuclear at the idea that I was the best pilot in the Resistance. Apparently, that's who he'd wanted to be before it all went pear-shaped.

"Before that mission… There was a chance the First Order would be there. We didn't exactly want them to show up, because that would complicate things, but we also knew Ren was looking for the same map I was, so he _might_ show up, and I had orders to take out anyone I could, anyone I saw, and if that meant Kylo, that meant Kylo, too. I got a good shot at him. Fucker can stop laser bolts with the Force, which is a snazzy trick, but if he couldn't have, I'd have shot him dead, and gotten a medal for it."

Jon blinks. "And she would have pinned it to your chest."

"Yeah."

Jon sighs at that. "She sounds hard."

Poe shrugs a bit. "Hard like a diamond. Sharp and bright and sparkly. Strong, too. Funny… But… You'd have to be, right? A soft person would have been crushed by the weight of it."

Jon shrugs a bit, too. "I suppose." He looks at the fabric on the floor in front of him, and begins to lay the pattern out on it. "Do you think she wanted him?"

"I never got the sense she didn't, but I mean… he was there before I met her, so… They didn't have any other kids. And… well… Apparently, his birthday is _exactly_ ten months after the Battle of Endor, so… Not like he couldn't have been an oops."

"Let me guess, Battle of Endor was a big celebration day for Rebels."

"Second only to Concordance Day."

Jon rolls his eyes.

"Stop that, didn't you guys have Empire Day?"

"We might have. I think my mom's mentioned it. But by the time I was on the scene, openly celebrating it was a one way ticket to prison, so it's not like it was part of my childhood."

Poe feels that line. There's a glib reply on his lips, but he stops before he say it. "That was real for you? Growing up, afraid that…"

"My mom or oldest sister or brothers-in-law were going to get tossed in jail? Yeah, it was. Earliest dream I can remember was a nightmare of New Republic Gendarmes coming to our house to take Mom away."

"Your mom is a dressmaker."

Jon just sighs at that, a long, drawn out sound. "Apparently more than that, but, no I didn't know that. Not then. Not until… what, last week? I could feel she was nervous all the time. I was too young to understand, but her clients would whisper about who got taken, or who was going away… 'Extended vacation in beautiful Celjonia courtesy of the New Republic,' I didn't know that was sarcasm until I was twelve or so and got to hear about what the Empire did to Celjonia, and then understood why the New Republic used it as a prison planet for Imperials. She'd always stiffen up a bit when she'd see a Gendarme. If one was walking toward us on the street, she's pull me a little closer, hold my hand a little tighter, and fix her smile bright and steady, and her gaze straight ahead. Her _Happy New Republican_ look." There's a _lot_ in how Jon says that.

Poe's not entirely sure what to do with it. "Home for me is… was… Yavin IV."

Jon nods. Even he paid enough attention in school to know Yavin IV. "Let me guess, you never saw an actual Imperial…"

"Until I was seventeen and assigned to Leia's protection detail." He shrugs some. "They weren't… you know, real people. Faceless monsters on the holovids. Literally faceless, we always saw the pictures of them wearing the armor. Even on Coruscant… There would be whispers about un- or barely-reformed Imperials, but… Those were whispers. I didn't see a real one until I was standing around, being security at a hearing where a few of the prisoners were testifying. There were rumors, even that many years after the war, that someone would try to kill them to keep them from talking."

Jon's eyes are hot, but his voice is mild as he says, "Yes, I know. I had to watch those vids, too. And a lot of those trials. Part of why I dropped out of school. As a teenager, I had a difficult time not getting pissed at those, and… Well, we couldn't afford to have the New Republic looking too closely at us. We were Happy New Republicans," he flashes Poe his version of his mother's smile, "all getting along in peace and harmony with the new order of things."

"What did your Dad do? Design the bloody Death Star? Run the work camps? Pull the trigger on Alderaan? I mean… Okay, yeah, I'm sure it sucked, but… They didn't just throw Imperials in jail right and left with no good reason. I know we had rules of war, and any Imperial who didn't violate them didn't go to jail. They wouldn't have put your family away just for being… Imperials."

"That's not how I understood it. That's not how a lot of kids on Coruscant understood it." Poe knows that. Growing up, he'd play Rebels and Imperials, and everyone wanted to be a Rebel because the whole point of the game was pretty much to pile onto the Imperials and beat the shit out of them. "That's not how it was taught to us. And… maybe it's because we were on the outs and they were on the rise, but… If you were part of an Imperial family, you took a _lot_ of shit."

"So, you weren't sitting in a class full of other Imperial kids?"

"A few. Most of my classmates were the kids of senators or the people who made their money catering to them. Some were old Coruscanti families like mine. All of our teachers, best I knew, all teachers on the planet, had to be approved by the New Republic, make sure we were getting the _right_ sorts of lessons. You know, so _history couldn't repeat itself_."

Poe chews his lip. "We didn't go there earlier. You side stepped it, but… Do you think the Empire were the good guys?"

Jon shrugs. "Yes? No? I… don't know. Obviously not for the average person wandering about on Alderaan on the wrong day. But I also know, speaking of those rules of war, that if you run a bloody rebellion on a planet, you make it a fucking target, and you don't get to bitch when it gets blown to pieces. It'd be one thing if they'd picked Alderaan at random, but they didn't. Bail Organa was not some random guy who just happened to live on that planet. Leia Organa was _not_ an innocent bystander picked at random. And I also know there were a lot of planets on the verge of starvation that The Empire got up and working and eating again. I know a lot of the local wars were crushed, and peace popped up all over the galaxy in places that hadn't had it for decades. I know they took out unpopular local regimes, and popular ones, too. And I know they cracked down _hard_ on smugglers, organized crime, the drug and prostitution trade. A lot of people liked that. And I know there were planets that were lush and flush that they crippled to keep power, and… I know the work camps were real. I know the prison camps weren't just filled with criminals. I know collectivized farming was used as a weapon on some planets to starve people into submission, and I know the food it raised was often sent to other planets to end famines. So, I don't know. For some people, in some places, at some times, yes. For others, in other places, at other times, no.

"I know they were the legal guys. They were voted in in a clean election, and supposedly that's the kind of thing that matters, right? Consent of the governed? I think that's what they called it in school. That was the claim of why the New Republic were the good guys. They had the consent of the governed."

"Yeah. That's how we learned it. And we also learned it as people have the right to withdraw that consent and demand a new government. That was why the Empire didn't have legal standing. When the Senate finally got enough votes together to demand the removal of Palpatine, he dissolved the senate."

"Hence the Rebellion and Resistance and whatnot. Though if memory serves, the Rebellion had been going on for _nineteen years_ when they finally won that vote."

"Yeah."

Jon finishes pinning the pattern to the fabric. "So… If you can bugger off whenever the powers that be go against you, what's the point of a democracy?" Jon makes a mental note to fly that by Kylo at some point, too. After all, right now, anyone who doesn't want to stay can leave, and theoretically, at some point they'll be voting on this stuff, so…

"No idea. I'm much better at the blow shit up side of this." He half smiles a bit, but it's not a happy look. "From everything I can see, you're getting that Grand Marshall because you're good at this stuff. I got Admiral because besides Leia and Connix, I had the most seniority, and it sounds good when you're going to try and talk a few battle cruisers out of someone. I'm… not a tactician. I'm not particularly good with supply lines or… any of the billion things you need to run an army. I was just… there, and looked good in a suit, and could talk a good line."

Jon looks at the patterns in front of him. "Kylo likes talking to me, supposedly because I _know_ stuff about politics and culture and how things are supposed to look." Jon looks up at Poe and rolls his eyes. "And I hate the fact that the only reason it looks like I know this stuff is because someone abysmally failed at training him to be a human being in this galaxy. If he'd been even minimally prepared for-"

Poe stands up, crosses the room, and kneels next to Jon, resting a hand on his shoulder. "I think he likes talking to you, because you're good to talk to. And because you do hate the fact that he didn't get what he needed as a kid. That's probably more empathy than he ever got from anyone who wasn't Rey before a few months ago."

"That's appalling." Their eyes meet, and hold, for a long second.

"I know." Poe lets go of Jon's shoulder, and looks down at the pattern on the fabric. "Are those going to be velvet trousers?"

"Yes."

"Why…." Poe's just looking. It's clear he's shifting them away from the heavier topics again.

Jon's fine with that. They probably don't need to leap headfirst all the way into the deep end at once. "It's a culture that values wealth, power, and strength. I'm sticking you in an outfit that oozes the first two, and it's your job to look like you've got piles of the last and you're just choosing not to do anything with it."

"You're saying I don't normally look like I've got piles of strength?" Poe asks with a raised eyebrow, and just possibly, flexing a bit.

"I'm saying they're expecting Kylo, who is a fucking mountain of a man, and you aren't."

Poe sighs. Kylo's got half a head, and likely fifteen kilos of muscle on him. "That's fair." Then he looks Jon in the eyes. "So, I'm not a mountain, but I've got a very good head on my shoulders for things that fly. Get me the specs. Let me study. And I'll blow them away with how well I know this ship tomorrow."

And for a heartbeat, it feels… bizarre, like looking over the edge of a cliff. But a cliff behind glass. Jon feels like he knows he can't fall, but the sense of it is still real.

Poe's not going to fuck him over with this. He _knows_ that.

And it still feels like a massive leap of faith to both order up, and then give _Admiral Dameron of the Resistance_ , the full technical specs of the _Supremacy._

But he does it anyway, because if this is going to work, he's got to trust the people around him.

* * *

It's later.

A _lot_ later.

Poe's taken off his jacket, undone his tie and tucked it in a pocket, rolled up his sleeves, nursed his way, slowly through two glasses of tea (Jon was horrified to see him pour his tea over ice in a tall glass. "It's good, try it!" "Are you out of your mind? Ice, in tea? Are you going to tell me you drink vodka warm next?" "No, but ricewine's good hot." "Heathen!") and read over more pages of technical specifications than he can count. He's fairly sure, at this point, the only people who know more about the make-up of the _Supremacy_ are droids.

Some of the bits are fascinating. Some of it make him want to get off this floating death trap, _fast._ It's still holding together, so… Yeah, that's a good thing, but… Whoever made it went wild on the weapons and put hull integrity so far down the list of priorities he's stunned it doesn't lose chunks every time it hits hyperspeed.

Hell, for all he knows, it does.

He stretches, working the kinks out of his neck, and reminds himself that he's looking at the original specs, and in the intervening years, hopefully, things have been improved. (Apparently, even for the Grand Marshall, some things are just not going to be shaken loose, among them, the up to date specs of the _Supremacy._ Pretty much, they told Jon that if he showed up, in person, with Kylo, he could look at a copy of one specific section of the ship, in Engineering, with the Head Engineer next to him, making sure he didn't compromise anything or remove anything. Something about Grand Admiral Schiff tightening up security on the ship build, or something. Jon didn't feel like fussing, so he's got the original specs, which are more than close enough for Poe to BS a hell of a story tomorrow.)

He looks over at Jon, who is still on the floor, working on something. There's a droid next to him basting pieces of fabric together. The droid makes a little beeping sound, and then stops.

Jon glances at it, and then at Poe, who's watching him. For a second, Poe almost feels flustered at getting caught looking, but he knows what to do with that. He flashes his best grin, and then says, "Looks like your sewing machine wants your attention."

"He does." Jon's eyes linger on his. "Up you get, pants off, let's see how these things fit."

That widens Poe's smile.

He puts the pad down, steps out from the kitchen table, and toes off his shoes. He carefully, with full eye contact, undoes each of the buttons on his vest. Then he slowly, deliberately undoes his belt. Jon stares at him as he does it, eyes on his fingers, and then he seems to mentally pinch himself, and the tenor of his gaze shifts.

He also tosses the trousers at Poe. "Try them on. We've got…" He checks the chrono. "Eight hours for me to get this done, assuming I'm not going to be marching you through the decks in your skivvies, sewing as we head to Rey, so…"

Poe pulls off his trousers which much less fanfare, and then slips on the new ones. "They feel nice." He's never contemplated velvet trousers before, but the fabric feels good against his skin.

Jon's looking at him now, too. This doesn't feel sexy, or romantic, or… anything. This is professional. "You've got bigger thighs than I thought. Go sit down, make sure they're still comfortable."

Poe does. He sits, gets up, walks around, sits again. "They're good. Little snug, but I like that."

Jon's nodding. "They are." Then his eyes flicker a bit, and he's really looking at Poe under the trousers, and how they just sort of cling to his hips and thighs. "Yeah, they are."

Poe, his back to Jon, pulling them off, and maybe, just maybe, giving him a bit of a show, smiles at that.

* * *

Jon's putting together the strap that will keep Poe's cloak in place. He's kneeling on the floor, carefully gluing each piece into place. If he was doing it right, he'd be wiring it, but… There just isn't time for that. It's based on the idea of scale armor, small squares of highly reflective copper, patina-ed dull brown copper, more blinding shined red-gold, and cerise-stained brall wood, all overlapping each other on a flexible belt that will go from his left shoulder, around his chest, under his right arm, and across his back to his left shoulder again, securing his cloak.

Poe glances down at it as he places a glass of water next to Jon. "Shiny mirror-ed strap? I'll look like you peeled a disco ball and put it on me."

Jon blinks, and then _looks_ at Poe. Then he blinks again. "You know what a disco ball is?"

After all, there are clubs, and places that have disco balls, and Jon has been to several of them. Some of his very best memories with Lane involve one of those clubs. But… Jon's never seen one at a place that didn't cater to a sort of… particular… narrow… clientele. The sort of place a man like Poe would _never…_ Well, maybe not _never…_ There have been some bits tonight that are indication Poe might not be quite as narrow as Jon was originally thinking, or if he is, he's narrow for men, but… Still… Poe wouldn't dare to set a foot in a club like that.

Except, well, maybe he would.

"Of course I do. I've been to a party before. I'm not Kylo, for the Force's sake. We had parties in the New Republic. Hell, even in the Resistance we could, on occasion, scrape up enough credits to go out drinking and dancing. Speaking of Kylo, were you going to dip him in sparkles for this, and if so, how fast were you intending to run away once he saw what you were going to do with him?"

Jon mentally winces and backtracks, in the parts of the galaxy he's been, he knows the sorts of clubs that might have a disco ball, but from the way Poe just said it, it sounds a hell of a lot more common where he's from. Still, a little spark leaps up at the fact that he knows what one is… _Don't get your hopes up._ Yeah, Poe's laying on the double entendres tonight, but some men think that's just… fun.

And… If Poe is what Jon fantasizes about, narrow for women, officially, publicly, with just a little niggling thought in the back of his mind about, maybe, occasionally, kissing a boy, double entendres might be all he can get out of the man.

Fortunately, Poe takes Jon's momentary quiet as him debating what Kylo would have done to him had he attempted to get him into an ornate velvet and glitter outfit.

"Uh, no. Just his formal blacks. There's enough power and strength coming of his physical body, and the fabric's good enough, I wasn't worried about conspicuously signaling wealth on top of it. I mean, we're standing in _his_ ship, and it's the largest one in the galaxy."

"The man who's rich enough _not_ to show it off." Poe nods to the strap. "For the record, I don't mind some glitz, but if we ever do this again, tone it down some, please."

"For the record, once this is over, we can sit down and talk about the look of the Maji when you're off being _The Maji,_ but right now, since we're winging this with," he checks his chronometer, "six and a half hours to go, you're just going to have to go with what I put you in."

"You're pretty bossy for a man on his knees."

Jon blinks again at that, too, wondering how much of a double entendre that was meant to be. "You've got no idea."

Poe grins down at him, keeps the eye contact up, and then says, "What if I wanted one?"

Okay, that _absolutely_ is flirting, so… "Get us through this, and maybe I'll give you one."

"Yes, sir."

He really, really needs not to be staring at Poe's crotch, and the lovely bulge there, which is more or less right at eye... mouth level right now, thinking about how many other ways he can get Poe to call him sir, and get back to making sure that strap look right. He tears his eyes away from Poe and looks at the strap some more, and then decides that, if it reminds Poe of a disco ball, and not scale armor… He starts picking the bits of metal off. Just leather. Good, supple, leather, snug around Poe's chest, draping over…

Maybe, if things go really well tomorrow, it might be between Poe's teeth, biting down on the leather, muffling his moans, as he-

Okay, he's _really_ got to stop thinking about that.

* * *

It's a discreet tube. Smaller than Jon's thumb. They're standard issue among the Order, and fit into a small pocket sewn into the left thigh of the standard uniform trousers.

With six hours to go until he needs to be _done,_ when he's starting to seriously flag, Jon pulls it out, removes the lid, and pops one of the tabs between his molars, biting down, hard, feeling the bitter hiss of the stim cap breaking, and then closes his eyes for a moment as the rush of energy floods through him, making him feel alive again.

Poe looks across at him, from where he's reading up on more of the _Supremacy_ specs, making sure he's ready to show off the _Supremacy_ and get to know the boys as he does so.

"You okay?"

"I am now." He offers the tube to Poe. "You need one, or if you get a nap can you keep going without collapsing?"

Poe understands what Jon's got in the tube. "Uh… Nap." He checks the chronometer. He's cutting it short, but, six hours should do him well enough. A bit of tea on top of that, and he'll be good to go. "I… uh… don't use those."

Jon raises an eyebrow. "They're perfectly safe. I've been up to… shit… uh ten of them a week at one point. You get jittery, and they say you shouldn't go more than three cycles on them without natural sleep, but if you need to keep going…"

"Yeah. Don't get me wrong; I've been on them, too. But… I make bad decisions on them. You know… You feel like you can take on everything and anything and you're right about everything and…" He can see the way Jon's looking at him. "No?"

Jon shakes his head. "Uh, not for me. Jittery and wired sometimes. Wide awake. Heart beats a little too fast. Ultra-confident isn't on the list."

"Oh."

They're both quiet. Jon keeps eyeing Poe, and Poe puts his datapad down. "You guys… Well, Kylo, captured me. I was at Tuunal, had been there for… three hours… ten flying to get there. Kylo knocked me out, which isn't exactly restful, and I wake up in interrogation, which also wasn't restful. Finn got me out… I don't know how many hours later. Too many. I get us off the _Supremacy._ That was… exciting… We get shot down on Jakku. More not so restful hours unconscious. Then slogging through the desert. Not restful and dehydrated likely with a concussion. Stole a ship. Got back to the Resistance. Took an anti-stim, got four hours of sleep before the next attack. From there we roll right into Starkiller. That was enough adrenaline to kill a man. Get done with Starkiller, get another anti-stim, two hours of rest before your entire Navy shows up, and by that point I'm downing stims like they're candy. We had… three days I think, time gets blurry after too many stims, of a fighting retreat, you bring out your big boys, and I come up with a plan to get the last of our people out, before we get crushed by Peavy and his dreadnaught.

"And, you know what, with that many stims in my body I was sure I had the perfect, Force-blessed plan. And you know what, it _fucking worked_. One in a million shot, and it _worked. I stood down the Fulminatrix,_ one lone X-wing against you're whole fucking navy, fast talked Hux into knots, and we got our people out. So, I've got a direct line on the _Fulminatrix_ , and three bombers, and a small but functional navy behind me, and I take them in. Dreadnaughts… If you can take one of those babies out…

"Leia told me to call off the attack. I had direct orders to retreat, and I didn't do it. The Force was smiling on me and I couldn't make a wrong decision. I took my whole fleet in, and we killed the _Fulminatrix_. But… We lost three quarters of our fleet, too. And unlike you bastards, we didn't have replacements.

"She demoted me when I got back, slapped me, too. Didn't send me to the brig. She probably should have. Holdo _definitely_ should have. I'm guessing we were at more than a week since I'd had actual rest at that point. More stims.

"You bastards show up, blow the shit out of our ships. Leia's out of it. Holdo is second-in-command at that point. Granted, even demoted, so many of us are dead, I'm third-in-command at that point. She won't tell me her plan, doesn't like me, and I'm not exactly her biggest fan either, and… So, more stims, and I'm running a mutiny.

"Cause, you know, I'm making _good decisions_ and _really_ need to be in command at that point.

"Leia wakes up and shoots my ass, and eventually I get some sleep and…" Poe looks to the ceiling. "Fuck."

"Holdo wouldn't tell you her plan?" Jon's voice is intense, and Poe's got the sense there's something important there, but he doesn't know what.

"Nah. Part of it was putting me in my place. Part of it was just bad command skills. I know, I know, when does a Vice Admiral have to explain herself to a Captain? Never. But you know what, when you're down to fewer than five hundred people, and that Captain has worked with most of them, and ten minutes previous he was a fucking Commander, AND he's the guy who blew up fucking Starkiller, AND he's the one who came up with the plan that got the civilians out, AND you're playing the destruction of the _Fulminatrix_ as a win because you don't want to completely fuck morale, AND fewer than two hundred of them know you, you bloody well take the fucking time to explain it to the Captain or you throw his ass in the brig, or else he raises a mutiny against you, because from what he can see you've frozen and are going to get all of us killed with indecision."

"What was the plan?" Jon's voice is quiet.

"Crait. There was a refuge on Crait. Let our ships go. You guys would chase us, but only focus on the big ones. The little ones were shielded. They could slip away to Crait, and you'd think you'd killed us when you blew up the last of the ships."

"Cutting the _Supremacy_ in half?" Jon's voice doesn't tremble, but it's so hot, even Poe can feel it.

"If that was part of the plan, she never told us about it. But, she also didn't get off the _Raddus_ when we evacuated, so… The shields didn't hold. You guys were picking us off, one by one, and could see where we were going… I don't know if she rammed the _Supremacy_ to give the rest of us an out, or if that was always the plan, or… I don't know. She didn't exactly like me, and I was unconscious anyway." Poe tries a smile, and it comes off flat. "Anyway, no stims for me. Not anymore."

Jon nods, and tucks the tube back into his trousers. His voice isn't shaking, but he can feel his pulse in his ears and eyes. "If you had known her plan, would you have mutinied?"

"No." That prickles, electric, through Jon. But Poe's not done. "I would have talked to her. The thing I knew, that she didn't, was that there was a way to fuck with the tracker you guys had on us. We had to find a refuge within range of the little ships because we couldn't jump to hyperspace, because you guys were tracking us through hyperspace. If we'd been working on killing that tracker, all of us, together, we likely could have slipped it, jumped to hyperspace, and gotten clean away." Jon relaxes, a bit, hearing that. "Don't get me wrong, I'm obviously stupid enough to run an attack with bad chances of winning, but I'm not into literal suicide missions." Poe's quiet for a moment, and then almost laughs. "I never thought to wonder how many stims she was on at that point. Not like any of us had had a restful week."

Jon's very quiet, staring at the picture on the wall, behind Poe. Then he says, "You asked about where my husband is."

Poe nods. "Yeah." He feels the shiver down his back.

"Kylo had told me you ran the mutiny against Holdo. That was the only reason I was willing to work with you."

That shiver morphs into a tight ball of dread in his stomach. "Okay…"

Jon looks around at his apartment. "This is home. His home before it was mine. We're… organized so you're above or below your station, but Lane didn't start in Tactical Design. He, originally, was in Shipping Logistics, but he was good enough at seeing how making each bit work better made everything else work better, and Tactical Design was a morass at that point, so they shifted him over. That's how he got his Major's stripes. He didn't move. He liked this apartment, and wanted to stay in it, and didn't mind the fact that getting from here to Tactical Design took close to an hour and a half. He told me he liked the enforced thinking time. Not much to do besides think when you're on the tram going from here to there. He said a lot of the time, he needed that quiet space.

"1,298,092 people died when she ran her ship through the _Supremacy._ As best they could tell, she hit five levels below where Tactical Design used to be." Poe winces. He knows where this story is going. "Lane was on duty. If our apartment hadn't been here, and if I hadn't worked a double the day before…" Jon shakes his head. "Stupid fucking problem. The filtration systems on the Stormtrooper's backs jutted out just a bit too far, messing with range of motion in their arms, and I'd spent sixteen hours playing with it, trying to pare it down by half a centimeter… He told me to leave it be and go to bed. So… I did. And… uh… I half woke up when he went to work, gave him a kiss, and woke up for real when my face smacked into the ceiling because we didn't have gravity any longer."

Poe closes his eyes and nods. "I'm sorry."

"Me, too." Jon looks to the door to his bedroom. "Go, crash. Get your nap. I need you bright and shiny for the K'Aran delegation."

Poe nods. He takes a step over, and gently squeezes Jon's shoulder before saying, "Yeah. Bright and shiny. No problems."

* * *

As soon as the door to Jon's room closes, Poe wants to kick himself in the ass with both feet.

 _Shit._

 _SHIT._

 _SHIIIIITTTTT!_

Then he decides that as soon as he's up and moving again, he's going to kick Kylo in the ass, too, because the absolute least the man could have done was mention that Jon's husband was fucking _dead_ and the bastard died in the attack on the _Supremacy._

Except, of course, that would require Kylo knowing things like what the least possible thing he could have done to smooth this over would have been.

Which brings him back to Jon, who's sitting out there, sewing away, still wearing his fucking marriage band two bloody years later, in his husband's apartment with pictures of them still up, and

 _SHHHIIIIITTTTTTTT!_

It's been _years_ since he's seen someone he's been more than vaguely interested in. Since he's wanted more than a dance and a shag. Decades since that someone also liked men, and, of course… He's still in bloody mourning.

Poe wants to collapse on the bed and moan into the pillows, and if he were in his own bunk he'd fucking do it, but… SHIIIITTTT! This is the bed Jon and his husband used to share and the idea of flopping onto it to curse the heavens that this shit _never_ fucking works out for him is just… Too fucking much.

He gets undressed. He, unusually for him, when he gets to sleep in a bed, leaves his skivvies on. He carefully, respectfully, turns down the sheets and blankets, and slips into bed. Jon's bed. The bed he should be sharing with his husband if Holdo hadn't plowed through the _Supremacy._ If the _Supremacy_ hadn't tracked them through hyperspace. If they hadn't been at war. If Snoke had kept his ass in the unknown regions. If…

A billion ifs didn't happen.

A million concrete things did.

Meaning right here, right now, Jon's in his living room, finishing up a suit for Poe. And Poe's lying here, thinking about a lot of things he'd prefer not to think of, from the ring he wears on a chain around his neck. The ring he shouldn't have, because it should have been on Micah's finger when…

But it wasn't.

And Jon's got a ring without a mate, too.

And…

Two years. Everyone moves at their own speed. Poe knows that. Two years after, he was dating, well, fucking again. And he was… sober whenever he was on duty… Sometimes he had to take a stim to do that, too, but… Jon's drinking habits are suddenly making a lot more sense. Whatever else he is, he's not just a party boy with nebulously defined borders between on duty and off duty. Two years… Poe wasn't flying again yet, other than occasional transport duty. He couldn't bear to be even near a fighter, and Leia was kind enough to indulge him on that. Jon's… still doing the job. And a hell of a lot more. But… work can be a distraction. Leia gave him a spot in her physical security team, and he buried himself in it, learned it inside and out, and did it every hour of the day he could, and Poe's willing to bet that's exactly what Jon's done with Tactical Design and whatever the hell he's calling what he does now.

Jon's got a friend, but… fucking hell, she might just be a _friend._ Or he's got someone he's fooling around with, but there's no way it's more than that, not with him still living in a shrine to his husband and their marriage.

" _Fuck."_ There's barely any voice to it. He'd been flirting up one side and down the other with him, and he'd gotten the hint that at least some of those looks were getting some interest in return, poor boy just about popped a stand with that 'on his knees' comment, but…

He rolls over, face in the pillow, inhaling… He can smell Jon's shampoo and cologne in the fabric. He wants to smell it on his skin. Wants to lick it off him. Wants… a lot.

And he just knows, in his heart and soul and shaft, that if they get to the post-mediation dinner with a signed contract in hand, he can pin Jon with a good long stare, lick his lips, and get him into bed. He knows it.

Poe sighs. A lot of men got him into bed not long after Micah died, too.

And it's all they got.

He can see Jon, the wave of his hair, those fucking blue eyes, and the suggestion of his body under his clothing, and… Force, they'd be _so good_ together _._

He makes himself close his eyes and breathe deeply. Makes himself relax into the pillows and mattress. He's always been good at getting himself to sleep when he needs it, and tonight he does.

He makes himself drift, and his mind go soft, and it does, flitting about as it seeks sleep.

He's thinking about talking with Jon. And enjoying it. A lot more than any other conversation he's had in a long time.

The scent of him is in the pillow. His words are in Poe's mind.

And he knows he's falling hard, and fast, and likely stupid.

And more than that, he knows, that if he's going to get what he wants out of this, he's going to have to wait. Jon's not ready for him, yet.

But he knows, starting to drift off, that he can wait, and likely should, because this is going to be worth it.

Notes:

Hey guys!

Okay, I can feel it now. "Wait, who the hell is Micah? You're cheating Keryl, whipping up a new character on us out of nowhere with no backstory!"

Guilty. (Ish. If you were reading closely and have an amazing memory, you'll have noticed that Poe's ship is named Micah… But, really that's not exactly playing by the rules here.)

So, when I began to write Jon, a billion years ago, I didn't know I was creating a second Dark/Light Order/Maji relationship. Eventually, as my version of Poe took more shape, I knew I'd be going there, but that was well after I had Jon and just about all of his backstory in hand. (For any of my Shards readers, Jon may look a tad familiar. You met him the first time as Dr. Sam Allen, Jimmy's Assistant ME. He's morphed a bit, but the core Sam became the core Jon. I'm a firm believer in making sure my OCs live forever, in one form or another.)

And as I was doing that, I noticed I'd set him and Poe up to mirror each other in a lot of ways, subconsciously. (Dead parents, Jon wears his wedding ring still, Poe wears his mother's wedding ring, dark/light, both lost a parent to the Battle of Endor, blah, blah, blah.) None of those were intentional until I was re-reading and noticed I'd been doing it. (Sometimes the muse knows where I'm going before the brain does, but sooner or later the brain catches up.)

Micah's intentional. I don't write in order. So the first time Micah shows up is further along in the story, but written months ago. He's been part of my idea of Poe for at least six months, though I didn't intend to bring him up for a while, yet. But then I got here, and we got to the reveal of Lane, and… Well, that's the sort of thing that's got to get Poe thinking of Micah.

Even before I had an idea of Micah, I knew that Poe needed to have had at least one serious relationship. A guy gets to 38-years-old, and if he's never had a real relationship of some sort, that's not just a red flag, that's a parade route full of red flags. And while Poe's got issues, those aren't the sorts of issues I wanted for him.

Anyway, just know that we'll get more of the Micah story eventually. You will know who this dude is and why he matters, and also a lot more of why Poe is who he is.

Point the second. Yeah, I'm getting heavy into the politics here, because… mostly because neither Jon nor Poe has enough Force sensitivity to just float along on the idea of this is right because it feels that way. Rey and Kylo are sort of feeling their way through it. Jon and Poe have to become intentional moral thinkers because it's not enough to just sort of feel it. (Yeah, we're into the philosophy part of porn with philosophy. I promise cum shots in the not wildly distant future. But first, more politics! Yeah, I know. ;) )

The reason I'm bringing this up is that I think it's important to make it clear that I, personally, do not approve of or think the Empire are the good guys.

But they absolutely were the legal guys.

And legal is not good. Democratically elected is not good. The "will of the people" does not make something good. Anyone with a role playing background is familiar with both lawful good and lawful evil. And in the StarWars universe we've got a LOT of lawful evil.

But even evil, even regimes intentionally designed to fuck over as many people as humanly possible, will, for some people, at some times, in some ways, be the "good guys." (Not to put too fine a point on it, but until 1942, the Nazis made life significantly better for Joe Average German Dude, and a hell of a lot better for Loyal Party Member Dude. You cannot maintain power if you make life better for no one but yourself.)

The only question is, how much collateral damage are you willing to inflict, and to whom, to get your 'good guys' into play? (In a galaxy the size of the Star Wars one, the genocide of Alderaan is likely about the equivalent of the massacre of Hiroshima. Take that for whatever it's worth.)

As Kylo and the Order get more up and running, and develop more of a political philosophy, you'll get to see more of my ideals of a good/just regime, but even that will hurt people. Because we don't live in a fairy tale, and there is no happily ever after, and the handsome prince and his lady aren't actually magic and can't make everything work out just by willing it.

As Rey was thinking last chapter, it's all a series of tradeoffs. It's not that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter (though that's obviously true), it's that one man's justice is ALWAYS bought at the cost of another man's oppression. (Which, fairytale-land, and the real world, does it's best to gloss over.)

Anyway, that's enough of that. More fun next week, when the Queen of the Order comes into her own!

Happy reading!

Keryl


	18. The Queen of the Order

2/6/2

Rey wanted to wake up rested, full of purpose, ready to put on Lady Ren like a dress, and then, somehow, get through the day without messing it up, and then peel her right back off again, and go crash with Kylo for a while.

Actually, she wanted to wake up spooned in Kylo's arms, at home, both of them healthy, have a whole lot of sex, and then go back to sleep, and then have a normal, boring, mucking-about-with-the-kids-at-Lirium sort of day.

She really woke up in Mirina's guest room, because, apparently guest rooms are a thing people who entertain regularly have. The bed is good. The room is comfortable. There are plenty of pillows, and the fabrics are soft, and… for a good ten to twenty seconds she can think about that before being submerged in a full body wave of _NERVOUS._

One step at a time. She tamps down nervous with instructions, and following them. Can't get nervous about peeling back the blanket. No one can mess up peeling back the blanket and setting your feet on the floor.

So, get up, put on robe, eat, wash up, don't wash hair, get back into robe, then hair, make up, get dressed, eat another snack, wait for Jon and Poe to show up…

Instructions help.

She can… drift probably isn't the right word, but she can focus on each step, one bit at a time.

Get up. Push blankets back, put feet on the floor, pull on robe, go to the main room, interact with Mirina, who's vastly too chipper this morning, eat…

Each one, one step at a time.

Get one done, move to the next, get that one done, move to the one after…

Keep going.

And one step at a time, the morning flows away, and Lady Ren, or at least a very nice dress, and pretty hair, and good makeup, comes into play.

* * *

It's easier with Jon and Poe.

Mirina feels like she's watching every second, looking for something out of place, something _wrong._ Some mark or fault she can fix and send Rey out in _perfect_ Lady Ren style.

Jon and Poe… Maybe she gets a little of that off of Jon, but mostly he's eyeing Poe.

Though there's probably a good reason for that… She's blinking. Okay, she knew Jon cleaned up well for formal things. Actually, no 'cleans up' implies there are times when Jon doesn't look spiffy and in charge. Jon _always_ (at least to Rey) looks ready to meet with the highest of the high delegations, and do it with style. Today's no different, he carries himself with ease in his new Grand Marshall dress uniform, and… He just looks like he belongs in it.

His uniform is… Different. He either feels her thinking about it as they walk toward Kylo's—her—throne room, or sees the way she's looking. "If there's any perk to no longer being the First Order, let alone having this rank, it's that I don't have to look like Imperial re-tread."

She nods at that. She's not sure, entirely, what she's looking at. Trousers, boots, okay, she knows them. A white shirt, with a black cuffs, and an Order hex on the left cuff. Okay. She's not sure if the next layer is a vest or armor. She can't entirely tell if it's a very fine flexible metal or fabric. She can see it's got a high collar, and that four of his Order hexes are on the collar. Five hexes, that's the mark of the Grand Marshall, she knows that. Over the vest he's got…it's sort of like a jacket, and sort of like a long vest, in black, with a darker black lapel, and no sleeves. "Current uniforms?"

"Are completely functional, have a full production line up and going, and well-stocked. We'll eventually switch over, but not before using up the old ones."

Rey nods. She knows Jon isn't thinking of a version of what he's wearing for the rest of the Order. Likely because this appears to be designed and cut to look excellent on _him._

So, she's not, on any level, surprised that Jon looks well, like Jon, in a perfectly fitted outfit, showing off his new rank.

Poe was the surprise. She should have guessed that if Jon was in charge of dressing him, which is likely why he's eyeing Poe up and down, keeping all of the details in mind, Poe would look… Dashing. It's not a word she's ever thought before, but… Poe's dashing.

He's got Poe in browns and coppers, and a long flowing cape, and there are… shoulder plates, at least that's what she's going to call them, and he looks… bigger. Not taller, so much, but less narrow, and… He looks _dashing._

Put the two of them together and… Hell, they can go off and be the Handsome Pilot and his Grand Marshal… That idea amuses Rey too much. She thinks a bit about the time when she and Kylo won't be doing this, and wonders if the Handsome Pilot and his Grand Marshall… Or maybe the Master and the Master… Or The Master and Commander… Hell, it doesn't matter.

They're there, the three of them, supposedly posh and regal, and ready (maybe) to meet the K'Aran delegation and be gracious and useful and…

Meet the K'Aran delegation. She's been doing her best not to think too much on that, but they're in the elevator, heading down, toward the throne room, so there's really not all that much else she can think about, and her stomach is tightening up, and the dress is too long and too hot, and her makeup feels fake and…

Poe squeezes her hand. "Out of your head, you. Stay right here, right now. That's how flying works. Here, now, each heartbeat at a time. Deep breathing. The Force has you. Trust it."

Rey swallows, squeezes his hand back, closes her eyes, breathes deeply, and lets herself feel the flow of it.

She'd told it to the kids. Find the balance point.

Her breath holds. Right here, right now, her and her alone…

She senses it. _There._

Her shoulders straighten a little, and Jon grins as he feels her pull up Lady Ren.

Poe kisses the back of her hand. "Okay, let's go make ourselves, and your man, proud."

* * *

She's on the throne, and… It's a fucking throne. She's higher than everyone else in the room. Jon's on her right, and Poe's on her left, and they're both two steps down so her head is higher than theirs.

She's looking straight ahead as the doors to the elevator open, revealing the K'Aran delegation, led by Threepio, into Kylo's… her… throne room.

"Showtime, Lady Ren," Poe says, voice barely above a whisper, as the K'Aran delegation begins the long walk toward them.

Rey rolls her eyes a bit, and then says, very quiet, "Of course, Commander Dameron."

"Head back, shoulders back, eyes forward. You can kick the ass of everyone in this room, and they'll thank you if you do," Poe adds, voice quiet.

Jon nods along, pleasantly smiling, and adds, also quietly, "That's a pretty accurate read on their culture." They're halfway through the room. "Also remember, we _want_ them. If this works out, it will be good for us. They _need_ us. If this doesn't work out, they're looking at a massive civil war and millions dead. We are in a way better position than they are."

Rey grits her teeth but keeps smiling. "Is that supposed to be comforting?" _If I fail today, millions will die._ Her pulse spikes at that.

Jon inclines his head a bit, nodding to one of the K'Aran dignitaries. "I find it so. No matter what happens, tomorrow we'll be no worse off than we were yesterday. That isn't true for them. They're _motivated_ to make this work."

Rey supposes that's one way to look at it.

The walk is over.

The K'Aar of the K'Aran stands before her. He's gray of hair, and getting spindly, with sun browned, weathered skin, but his posture is straight, and his eyes are clear.

He sees her, and she can feel the confusion, though he doesn't let it show on his face.

Threepio says, voice clear and precise. "Mistress Rey of the Maji, Urathan K'Aar of the K'Aran."

He nods to her.

She stands, and nods back to him.

 _Showtime indeed._

* * *

For a few moments, Rey feels like this is going pretty well. K'Aar and his grandsons are in front of them. K'Aar nods to her. She nods to them. Threepio announces who she is, but not why she's there. She takes two steps forward, and one step down, but as Jon had reminded her, she doesn't descend all the way to the floor, she stays on the step so the K'Aar has to look up at her, and gently clasps hands with the K'Aar.

When he lets go, she says her little, "Welcome to the Order," routine, the K'Aar does his bit of saying how pleased he is by their hospitality, and it looks like it's going fine.

She's actually feeling like she can breathe.

Poe snags both of the grandsons, and heads them off to get a feel for them.

And what should have been the time where Kylo got to speak with K'Aar alone to get his feel for what's happening starts off wrong the second it's the two of them, Jon, Ilnor K'Rith, the K'Aar's top adviser, and Threepio, alone.

K'Aar is glaring, both at his adviser, who likely set this up, who's glaring at Threepio, who was likely his contact on this, and at Rey, who is very clearly _not_ Master Ren.

"We were supposed to meet with _Master Ren_." _Who the bloody fuck are you?_ is unspoken but clear in his question. Apparently, "Mistress Rey of the Maji," wasn't precisely as enlightening as he'd have liked.

"And we're well aware of that Urathan K'Aar, but he's currently unavailable, so Lady Rey is here in his stead," Jon says, smoothly.

The older man turns toward Rey, looking utterly unimpressed. "If I'd wanted to be judged by a child I could have picked one from home."

Rey's about to blush. She's ten seconds into this and already failing and… Poe's not here, but she can feel his advice, and how if he was here, he'd mentally kick her in the ass for blushing. She straightens her spine, makes her eyes cool, and then she looks at Urathan, really looks at him, trying to figure out what's going on here, because it's got to be deeper than her age.

And it is. He's nervous. So nervous, if this doesn't work, everything he's ever lived for is going to fall apart. Part of it is that he's _tired._ No… tired is a symptom. He's heartsick. This was his one last hope, his only hope since his son died, and it's falling apart. Under that, his son died, and he never got to grieve because he's the K'Aar of the K'Aran and he has to _lead._ He's _old._ He can't keep up the fight much longer, on top of that, he doesn't want to. He's supposed to be enjoying a well-deserved retirement, finally getting to do all of the things he put off while he was building his empire. All of that fell to ashes when his son died, and now, if any sort of peace is going to hold he needs someone strong, someone younger and with more force, more power, than he can bring to bear to keep everyone in line.

And as best he can tell, the best option he has for that is Master Ren. Finding out Ren had moved into the protection and enforcement game was the first good news he'd seen since his son died, and now…

Now, he doesn't have Ren. He's got a pretty little girl, who… he's not even sure if this is Ren's wife, lover, friend, religious adviser, usurper, or what, standing in front of him, and worse, he doesn't know if Ren's brushing him off, has a better deal going, or is also about to lose his own head as the political wheels spin.

Find his needs, and use them to get what she needs… What the Order _needs._ Which means… she has to be strong. And she has to project stability. For K'Aar, because without a show of strength he can't see her as someone who can save him.

"Take a walk with me, K'Aar?"

Granted, there isn't exactly copious walking space here. They're in Kylo's not-exactly-a-throne-room… Courtyard, maybe. But it's long enough to stroll with him to the far side and look at the stars spinning past them.

His eyes narrow, but he offers her his arm. He is, after all, _polite._ And whomever, _Mistress Rey_ may be, she's obviously high status, _a lady._ She takes it, her hand on his, laying lightly on his, and focuses her Force. "Do you know the Jedi?"

His teeth are gritting. She's tightening the hold on his hand. Not visibly. It's all Force work, but she can feel the bones shift and grind against each other. She intensifies the hold.

His bones are old and aren't enjoying the pressure she's laying on them. Much more than a mere child, or a lady, should be able to apply. If she were a man, this would be an insult, an assault, but she's a woman, and if he lets it be known that he's in pain, he'll lose status.

"Heard of them, Mistress," grunts out of him.

"Good. One of the greatest, most powerful Jedi ever, was named Yoda. To this day, no one knows what Yoda was. There have been no others of his kind ever noted. That said, he was tiny, barely a meter tall. He walked with a cane, and hobbled a bit. Nothing about him looked imposing," she can feel that she's got five of the bones in his hand just on the verge of breaking. Rey holds it, there. Apparently, her healing sense is good for something else, too. "Many people looked at him, saw a tiny green thing, with wispy white hair, an archaic command of the Galactic standard tongue, and decided that he couldn't bring any real power to a situation. Most of them died underestimating him."

"Yes, Mistress," hisses out of his throat as Rey relaxes her hold.

She makes her voice hard as she says, "I think you'll find, that there's _nothing_ Master Ren can do for you that I can't." Then she releases his hand from her Force.

He nods, pulls his hand away from her, rubbing it, flexing his fingers, wincing. "And, may I ask where your Lord is?"

She's about to answer that, and then remembers that she has to bring her own power to bare here. It's not enough to be here in Kylo's stead. "He may be everyone else here's Lord, but he's not mine. He's not my master. My love and balance, yes. My equal, definitely. But not my Master."

"Ah." He's still waiting for an answer.

Rey takes the moment to dig a bit deeper into his mind. "Are you married, K'Aar?"

"Yes."

"Long and well?"

He smiles at that. "Also yes."

"And do you, on occasion, set out to do something, and have your wife look at you, and say, 'No?'"

"Rarely." Though she can feel his memory of the last time it happened is bright, and slightly embarrassed, in his mind.

"But when she says it, it's for a good reason?"

"I've often found that to be true."

Rey smiles a little. "He would be here if he could. He really would. He wanted to do this, and was looking forward to it. And if he knew it was happening today, he would have tried to drag himself out of bed and done himself, and every other human in this room no favors. He's dealing with a particularly nasty and contagious stomach virus. Today, I said no. Tomorrow, the answer is still, no. The day after, if he is no longer contagious, it may be yes, but we'll have to re-evaluate. When he's fit to tend to something other than himself, he will, and until then, you get me."

K'Aar smirks at that. "Would I be correct then in saying, that in addition to your balance and love, he is your husband?"

"Yes."

"You and your man seem to be keeping that card close to the table. I don't remember anything about a wedding. Or, for that matter, any official announcements about there being a Lady Ren."

"In our faith we marry first, and have weddings later, and if you think your association with us is of value, I can assure you an invitation to said celebration will come your way when we hold it."

"I'll look forward to it, Lady Ren."

"Lady Rey. My power is my own, not his borrowed or reflected."

K'Aar nods, and looks out over the stars, and the ships, some tiny fighters flitting about on maneuvers, two huge, lumbering destroyers. "You'll forgive me, Lady, but I do not see a fleet with your name on it, unless, of course, you chose to use his. And a fleet is what I'm going to need to provide enough of a threat to enforce whatever succession we may come up with here, today."

Rey can feel Jon mentally screaming at her, _Don't let him see you blink. Vader, the Force, the Death Star, tell him that story!_ "You are, of course, forgiven. And I am here, today, because he trusts me to make decisions for him and his empire. So, if you chose to go along with the solution we offer, that armada you see, and this ship you stand on, will of course be part of the deal. But, because he had the unfortunate luck to get bit by a nasty virus, you get me, in addition to him."

The K'Aar nods, but it's clear that he's not immediately seeing why that's a better deal than Kylo on his own.

"I wonder, sir, are you old enough to remember Darth Vader?"

"I never met him, though everyone my age and older remembers him."

"And, you certainly remember the Death Stars," Rey leads.

"I do."

"It's said, that shortly before the fall of the first Death Star, that Vader was called into a meeting with the men who created it. They cowed about the power of the Death Star, the greatest weapon ever built, and how, with it, the entire galaxy would be brought to heel. And, Vader stood there, and listened, and said to them, 'This technological monstrosity is no match for the power of the Force.' They apparently were unimpressed by that, but less than a week later, they all died, when a man with command of the Force shot a tiny little charge into a just as tiny little flaw in the system."

K'Aar nods. "I have seen those history lessons, yes."

Rey nods, too, and then she, very gently, and carefully levitates K'Aar a few centimeters into the air, before gently putting him back down. Then she smiles, a calm, gentle smile. "Ask me, my Lord, if I need a fleet to enforce my will."

He swallows, hard. "That seems a silly question."

She continues to smile at him. "My husband has his power base, and uses it well. I have mine and do so, too. I am here because he trusts me to act in his stead if need be, and today, needs be. But understand, I do not need the Order to take care of this, The Force is more than enough."

"Yes, Lady Re—ay."

"Thank you. Now, tell me about your grandchildren, and what needs to happen for a 'good outcome' today."

K'Aar looks around, notices that they've taken a walk to within five meters of the 'gracious luncheon' portion of the meeting, and there is a table, set with five chairs, though only four place settings, with a collection of servers scurrying around, fast, because they're seventeen minutes early.

As they get close to the table, Rey tries Kylo's pulling the chair out with the Force trick, and is gratified to see that, like floating rocks, it's really not that difficult.

K'Aar raises an eyebrow, and then, as they get close to the table, he pulls a chair out for her. "This is generally how we do it where I'm from."

She smiles at that and sits down. "Thank you." A server is sprinting toward the table, water pitcher in hand, and as soon as everyone is seated, he's pouring. Rey looks to him, "Thank you…"

He blinks, not sure what to do here. "You're welcome, my lady."

"And are you just in charge of water today?"

"Just water. I think the chef is coming out soon to explain what the options are."

"Wonderful."

Ilnor rolls his eyes a bit. "Pulling out all the stops?"

Jon backhands that away easily. "Yes. You're here because you need us. And we want this to work splendidly, so you'll tell others how well we did, and they'll take us up, too. Assuming this goes well, everyone wins. Now, sirs, we've read the briefings, we know what's in the official reports, we know what's in the _unofficial_ reports, now tell us what _isn't_ so we can get you the happy ending you're looking for."

K'Aar takes a sip of his water. Then he shakes his head a bit. "Here's the blunt version. No one knows which one of them is the oldest of the two, so I can't do a quick birthright settlement. I love them both dearly, because I am their grampa. But as a leader…" He all but growls with frustration. "K'Oanan is bold and flash and strong and so _fucking stupid_ it's embarrassing." He glances to Rey, terrified. "Forgive my language, Lady… I'm used to speaking with men and expressing myself forcefully."

Rey smiles at him. "I've heard the word before. Kylo's been known to, on occasion, utter it. It's possible I may have, under duress and stress, even said it, too."

Jon begins to laugh at that, and a beat later the K'Aar does, too. Threepio and K'Rith don't seem to know what to do with this.

"It's possible my wife has, too. Under duress and stress, of course."

"Of course." Rey smiles. "And your other grandson?"

"K'Ahauna got all the brains, but is so terrified of making a wrong decision, he makes no decisions at all. My son, their father, was a good man, and beyond that, a well-liked one, and my warlords were happy to back him into the next generation, unfortunately, like your man, he caught a nasty virus, but he wasn't smart enough to stay in bed, and died a week later."

Rey lays her hand on his, a comforting touch this time, and gently says, "I'm sorry."

She sees the K'Aar's expression tighten for a moment. He nods, teeth clenched, then clears his throat and continues, "Now I've got seventy-three clans jockeying for power, playing to each boy's strengths and weaknesses, trying to turn one of the two of them into figureheads they can rule. And if I could get most of them behind either one, it would probably… in the long run… be okay. Rocky to start, but…" He looks at Jon and K'Rith … "I know those two know this, but maybe, my lady, you don't. There's nothing so gloriously stupid as a twenty-two-year-old man. They're old enough to think they know all the answers, and they are genuinely old enough to know _some_ of the answers, but young enough to not know the difference between some and all."

Jon and the K'Rith both sort of nod at each other.

"As of this point, my experience with twenty-two-year-old men is somewhat limited. But, I can't imagine that Kylo would challenge your statement. He's got a story or two of his own involving silly twenty-two-year olds."

K'Aar looks amused by that. "The Great Lord Ren was a twenty-two-year-old at one point, then?"

"A decade ago."

K'Aar nods at that. "Thirty-two is a good age. Still young enough to be bold, young enough to be _strong_ , but old enough to understand the mistakes you've made and not make them again." He glances at Rey, and then at her very flat tummy, and back to her face. "It's a good age to start a family. Wise enough to raise children. Young enough to play with them."

Rey's not sure what to do with that, so she smiles at him, and says, "So, Lord K'Aar," she feels Jon flash her the thought _K'Aar is his title. You just called him Lord King._ She mentally winces, but keeps talking, "ideally, how does this situation work out for your grandsons, and any children they may have?"

He sighs, looks at the water glass, it's clear he'd like something stronger, and a moment later, another server is at their side, looking hurried, with a tray of wines and other beverages that sound impressive and likely are, but Rey doesn't know what they are. She stays with tea.

Once he's got his _stronger_ drink, (Llethein Brandy with a citronen twist) he says, "Ideally, one of the two of them gathers enough backers that the other one's backers decide that they can't win, so it's not worth the fight."

"Right now they are almost equally split, which is why we're seeking to bring you in. If we can… overbalance the scales so to say, that should avoid a massive war," K'Rith replies.

"And do you, honestly, not have a preference as to which one… wins… for lack of a better word?" Rey asks.

The K'Aar looks tired. "I wish they'd been born one child. As a man, they'd be ideal, bold and smart. As they are, it's just a questions of whose folly is preferable, and given their backers… It won't matter much. None of my warlords are suicidal, stupid, or twenty-two. Right now, it's worth risking a fight, because they can still _win._ Once it's clear they can't, they should fall in line, and if they do, they'll find a way to work around each boy's shortcomings."

"What will the losing grandson do?" Jon asks.

"K'Ahauna will sulk, but toe the line. He'll become a valuable servant to his brother, if his brother will listen to him, but that's a big if. K'Oanan will run away. Leave the kingdom, see if his backers will go with him, but they won't. I imagine he'll be rather surprised by that. He's genuinely sure they actually think he'll be a good K'Aar. Once that's settled in, he may turn pirate and make things difficult, but he won't be able to rise a full war. And, in time, his brother and his advisers will outfight him," The K'Aar says.

"That sounds like K'Ahauna is the more suitable of your grandsons," Threepio says.

"And with your backing he may be. He's also the one in the weaker position. Not by much, but by enough."

Rey nods.

Ilnor K'Rith continues, "And that position is made worse by the fact that he just refuses to make a decision until he cannot possibly put it off any longer. I've never met a boy so prone to dither. His instincts are generally good, but… He got one wrong, a serious one, when he was younger, and since then he's dithered and dithered and dithered."

"What did he get wrong?" Jon asks.

"A troop placement. It was a sim, but he was sure he was right, but he wasn't, and got his entire army slaughtered. Again, it was a sim, no on actually died. The lesson that sim is meant to teach is that you cannot, always, win. There is _no correct_ troop placement for that sim. You cannot win it. You can minimize your casualties, but you _can't_ win. He spent months running it over and over and over again, and… It seems to have shattered him. He's never been sure of anything ever since."

"With the confidence of a few wins, he might be better?" Rey asks. Though she feels a bit of kindred spirit in a man who, not being able to win, is terrified of playing.

The K'Aar replies, "He might. But he'd have to actually play the game to win. The only reason he hasn't capitulated to his brother is that doing so would require him to make a decision which would disappoint some of his backers. These days the merest hint of someone being irked with him sends him into a sulk."

"How is he handling your feelings on this?" Jon asks.

"Mostly by hiding and writing stories in which he runs away to become an actor."

"Is there any shot of him actually doing it?" Threepio asks.

K'Aar laughs. Then he takes another drink. "He currently doesn't have a way to get off planet, and no theater troop on our world would have him. That said, his backers have pointed out that if he wants to _act_ they're more than willing to write the script for him, all he's got to do is stand up and do it. The role of a life-time, K'Aar of the K'Aran."

"The role he doesn't want?" Rey asks.

Ilnor ways, "Maybe. Sometimes, K'Ahauna seems like he likes it. When there are people around him who want him to be the K'Aar, he likes it. When they aren't, it seems like he's about to crumble under the pressure. At the very least, he's under no illusions as to why his backers want him."

It's Threepio who asks, "Tell us about their lead backers. If it really doesn't matter which boy we choose, then which of their handlers may be preferable?"

"T'Karnan and T'Chondra." Rey's dying here, _all_ of the names sound identical to her, but she can feel Jon and Threepio have them down. "They were my son's two highest ranked warlords. Each of them are family friends. The boys grew up with them as Uncles."

Rey can glom onto that. "So this isn't just a political issue, it's… saving your family, isn't it? If someone else makes the decision…"

K'Aar glances to his diplomat, and then nods. "A leader should always be willing to make the hard decisions. These are my grandsons, being backed by men I helped raise along with my son. I… can make this decision. I do not want to."

"And this way, none of them can cry favoritism," Jon adds.

"Exactly."

"And it increases the odds that whichever one we pick, the other will go along peacefully," Rey says.

The K'Aar nods at that, too. "If I can get both advisers behind one boy, things will, eventually, transition smoothly."

Rey looks at the adviser who is with them. "But they aren't here?"

The K'Aar inclines his head a bit. "I thought it would be valuable to have the boys spend some time with each other, without their 'dearest Uncles.' And, it occurred to me, that… since you offer… a place… for anyone who wants one… Perhaps, if one of them won't be in the business of the K'Aran system, maybe they might fit in here?"

"A refuge for wayward princes?" Jon asks.

"Your Master did well with that, did he not?" Ilnor replies.

"He has," Rey replies. "That said, wayward princes who come here enlist just like everyone else. The day you join the Order is the day your old life becomes nothing beyond memories."

The K'Aar inclines his head. "And that may be exactly what one of my boys needs. Or not. We'll see. It's good to have options, I'd think."

"It is," Jon replies. "It's also good to know what they are. Part of the goal of the Order, and of our space here is to provide a platform for people to work with each other, to achieve their goals. Perhaps, at some point, there could be a K'Aran embassy here. A place for the K'Aran dynasty to make deals, learn about others—"

"Stow an extra prince where he can't make too much trouble," The K'Aar adds.

"That would likely depend on how much of an allowance you put him on and the leeway offered him by his entourage," Jon replies. "Our job would mostly be to keep him comfortable and breathing."

"We are, after all, in the security business," Threepio adds.

"If he were to enlist, but that would have to be voluntary," Rey adds, "he likely couldn't get in much trouble at all."

"Or he could be fatally chopped in half," Ilnor says.

"If he's the kind of man who goes so afoul of the Order's laws that we need to chop him in half, you're better off without him, and without having to deal with him personally," Rey says, staring Ilnor in the eye.

That response seems to please the K'Aar.

And Ilnor is _thinking_ about that. Hard.

He sips his drink as the server comes to them with small plates of little nibbles. More of that appetizer salad that Rey and Kylo had had with Myrton. It's good. Rey makes herself eat slowly. She paces herself to Jon, who is good at taking a bite, talking, and then taking another one.

After tasting, and chatting a bit about the food, Rey asks, "Just to make sure, splitting your holdings and creating a… dual system with an ironclad peace treaty…"

"Would fail within days of my death. Likely within hours of launching my body to the stars."

"Even if we offer to hold the peace? Immediate, overpowering force against any aggressor?" Rey offers.

The K'Aar thinks about it, but doesn't say anything. Rey can feel that he doesn't love or like the idea, but it's tenable.

"Even if it could hold, we don't want it," Ilnor says. "Urathan spent decades building up this system. He and his have worked ceaselessly to turn a loose assortment of tribes and planets into a dynasty. To see it split…"

All of them can feel the pain at that idea. Rey looks at Urathan. He built this for his son, for his family, and the idea that not only is his boy gone, but the system he built for him, too… It's too much to bear.

"We will make sure any solution we produce involves your holdings staying united," Threepio says.

"Thank you." The K'Aar looks at Rey, seriously, "And do you have any thoughts of how this is going to work out?"

"Not many, not as of yet. My friend, Poe, is meeting with your boys. And before I consult with him, I'll meet them, too. From there, we'll have the start of a plan."

"Good."

* * *

Poe's leading K'Ahauna and K'Oanan through the _Supremacy._ They look gobsmacked. K'Ahauna's willing to let it show. He's gaping at the sheer scale and size of the thing. K'Oanan is trying to cover how impressed he is by looking bored.

Poe mentally rolls his eyes. Awe _is_ the appropriate response to a ship the size of the _Supremacy._ The person who isn't awed by the _Supremacy_ the first time he sees it is fearfully stupid or completely lacking in imagination.

"Either of you two fly?" Poe asks them.

"We haven't been trained," K'Ahauna replies as K'Oanan's saying, "It's inappropriate for a prince to fly himself anywhere."

"Come on," Poe says. "We've got sims here."

K'Ahauna looks intrigued at that, a little excited, and K'Oanan's… that's interesting. His sabbac face is good. Poe's better at reading people than he is at hiding his emotions, and he can see K'Oanan's nervous about this. He's afraid that Poe'll see him be bad at it.

Poe had mostly been interested in just letting them do something fun, but… He decides that he really should push them through their paces in this thing. Neither of them have done it before, and it'll be telling to see how they respond to something difficult not going their way.

"In this part of the galaxy, being able to fly yourself is a survival skill. Like… What's the sort of thing that any adult male is supposed to be able to do where you are?"

"Fight," both of the boys say at once.

"This is like fighting. If you can't fly yourself… You've got to be able to fly yourself. You're not a man if you can't fly yourself." Poe knows he's got them. Neither of them want him to see them as boys. "Come on, let's go try the sims, it's fun."

"What do you fly, Master Poe?"

"Right now, I've got Micah. He's not the sexiest thing to ever skitter through the heavens, but he'll get the job done. Before that, I had a T-70 X-Wing."

It's clear the boys don't know what a T-70 is and are vague on the idea of X-Wings, too.

"It's a fighter. A tight, sexy little thing with s-foils for greater range of fire, four KX12 laser cannons, with single, dual, and quad firing modes, dual proton canons, top speed of 1,100 klicks per hour, and hyperdrive."

They're staring at him, eyes glazed.

"It was _really fast_ and I could shoot through ten meter thick durasteel with my lightest gun. The big ones could take out the armor shielding on a Star Destroyer." Not strictly true, but true enough.

That means something to the boys. They look impressed. More impressed by Poe, too.

"Are you a warrior, Commander Poe?" K'Ahauna asks.

"I am in the cockpit of a ship. Outside of the cockpit of a ship, I'm more of a scrapper."

"Scrapper?" K'Oanan asks.

"The kind of guy who fights mean and dirty. I prefer not to fight. I'd rather talk, but if you've pissed me off so bad I've pulled a blaster or blade on you, I'm not messing around. One of is us going to walk away, and the other is going to stop breathing."

"And you are still here with us," K'Ahauna says.

"And I'm still here. And they aren't." His voice is mild as he says that. His eyes aren't. He sort of wishes Jon were here to see this, because he's now got two man puppies following him around like he's God's gift to the _Supremacy._

A few minutes later he says, "Okay here we are. Order flight training." Fortunately, he can see a few empty sims. So, looking like he belongs, and that this is his personal playground, he just strides right over, slides into the nearest one, and begins to flip it on. "K'Ahauna, slide on in, this one is ready to go. Day one, lesson one. Just follow the instructions on the screen."

He hops out and grabs the one next to it, aware of the officer heading toward them, and the wave of _What the fuck is this?_ coming off of him.

"In you go, K'Oanan." He pats the younger man on the shoulder, and before the officer can get within easy speaking voice, Poe hits him with, "At ease, Lieutenant."

Before the lieutenant can even think about it, his body is responding.

Poe smirks a bit. In _well-trained-men_ a good voice, a better stare, and the right word will work wonders. Just by barking that out, the lieutenant has already decided Poe's not just an officer, but one who outranks him. By a _lot._

He's mentally smirking at that, too. _Really, not bad for a flyboy from Yavin IV._

"What's the issue Lieutenant?"

Act like you belong, like _you're_ the one where you need to be, and everyone else is an imposition, and they'll bend for you.

"I'm sorry, sir. Those sims… No one is supposed to be in them, right now, sir." The poor man looks so horribly embarrassed to have to say this.

Poe leans against K'Oanan's sim, and grins. "I'm sure you're right. I'm Commander Dameron, here with the K'Aran delegation, Grand Marshall Frakes and Master Ren have me entertaining our guests, while their grandfather meets with Lady Ren and General Threepio to discuss matters of state. Lieutenant" He reads the nametag, "OP-9987, can you tell our guests about our sim program?"

Lt. OP-9987 snaps into attention. "Yes, sir."

Poe gestures to the boys to get them out of the sims and listening to the lieutenant. They listen, nod, K'Ahauna asks good questions, and K'Oanan continues to try and make it look like he knows everything about everything.

When they're done, Poe smiles at OP-9987 and says, "Thank you, Lieutenant. I'll be sure to mention to the Grand Marshall how helpful you were today." And, the kicker is, he will. Might as well make sure this doesn't bite the man later. "Now, K'Oanan, K'Ahauna, let's turn these babies on and let you feel what it's like to fly."

* * *

A minute into the sim, Poe feels like he knows all he needs to know about each boy.

K'Oanan's whooping with pleasure as he glides his sim, fast and easy, through imaginary space. He's got a natural touch for this, and, apparently no natural fear response. That's a core trait for a really good combat fighter. It's also a core trait for a really _dead_ combat fighter.

Poe mentally sighs. This is how he used to fly before Micah.

K'Ahauna is going slow. He's checking and rechecking and checking again before he makes any move. He, like his brother, does seem to have something of a natural touch for this. The press up to go down and left to go right controls don't appear to be giving him any troubles. The fact that he won't turn until he's checked and checked and checked and…

Unfortunately, that's another way to end up with a very dead pilot.

Put him in a battle and they'd shoot him to pieces before he'd pulled the trigger on anything.

Poe reaches into K'Ahauna's machine. "Here, let's spice it up a bit." Maybe upping the stakes will help. He adds other fliers to the mix, and attacking fighters.

K'Ahauna is dead in twenty-three seconds.

He does the same for K'Oanan, with similar results. K'Oanan at least took some with him. But, he didn't check enough, and got sniped from the left. K'Ahauna checked too many times, and got sniped from behind before he got a shot off.

K'Ahauna looks ashamed. He's worried about not learning it fast enough, and making the wrong decision, and… He's waiting for Poe to tell him he's failed, and that he's a miserable pilot, and he'll never be a _man_ by Poe's standards. Poe mentally winces. He's seen this kicked puppy look before in a bunch of other new recruits. Generally his job is to jolly them out of it. Other trainers, ones with a natural knack for it, can kick asses and grind them down, his job is to make them feel like they can do whatever it is.

He resets the sim. "We all get shot down the first time. It's normal. Go at it again. Keep your eyes moving, and… They're laser weapons, you're not going to run out of charges, so just shoot everything you see."

"I'd hit my own men," K'Ahauna says.

"In a real battle, yes, but right now, you're learning to aim, and aim fast and accurate, so right now, the second you see something, shoot. Once you can hit what you're aiming at, you can afford to get picky."

K'Ahauna nods, and gets back to it.

K'Oanan's angry. He's glaring at the machine. "It doesn't work."

Poe doesn't roll his eyes. He generally didn't have to handle the know-it-alls. And he's been lucky enough with the Lirium kids that they tend not to pull that shit. Possibly because in a place where more than half of the kids around you can read your mind, pretending you know it all just doesn't work.

"It's supposed to put the fighters where I can see them so I can practice aiming."

"Of course, K'Oanan. If you like, I can drop it down to the basic level where it will keep the fighters in the front 45 degrees."

"That wasn't the basic level?"

Of course it was, but he can make it easier. He can put it on just a flight simulator and leave off the firing capacity all together. That said, he's feeling no need to argue with the kid. "No. I thought you'd find the challenge invigorating."

"Oh… yes…" He's looking quite satisfied at that. "Can you make it harder?"

Poe leans in, presses the buttons until he's set it again at where it was before. "Certainly. Just keep your eyes moving, and shoot with abandon. It'll be fun."

"Oh, it is fun! When we get back, I think I'm going to tell them to arrange for pilot training for me."

"That sounds like an excellent idea." At the very least, doing so might take care of the which-one-of-these-two-will-run-things-when-Pops-dies aspect of this. He figures that if K'Oanan gets serious about flight training, his life expectancy is going to drop like a rock in 3G.

* * *

After taking them through the sim a few times, and getting them to the point where they can both survive from beginning to end of the basic combat level, Poe begins to wander the boys toward the F-deck. Feed them up, see how they deal with being in public, around lots of other people, how they treat people who are 'lesser' than they are…

That sounds like a plan.

Then back to Rey.

"This ship is immense," K'Ahauna says, twenty minutes later, when they're _still_ on an elevator going up.

"I'd call it a city. It's a flying city, not a ship."

"That's a problem when you need to get somewhere fast," K'Oanan says.

"You aren't wrong. Though like with most cities, most people live near where they work. How about you two? You live…"

"In a palace outside the capitol city," K'Ahauna says.

"Do you work in the palace?" Poe asks.

"Oh, yes, of course," K'Oanan replies, quickly, too quickly. Poe knows he's lying, but he's not sure if he's lying about location or the idea that he _works._

"Where do you live, Commander Dameron?"

"All over. My home is my ship, and it goes wherever I've got an urge to go."

K'Ahauna looks wistful at that. "That must be… wonderful."

"There's a lot I like about it, but it can also be lonely. BB-8, that's my mech droid, is good company, but he's still a droid."

"Just you in that ship?" K'Oanan asks.

"A lot of the time." The elevators open, and they're on the F-Deck. "That said, I'm not attached to the ship. I do leave it, and," he gestures, "I have found other places with people in them."

* * *

"They don't salute you or come to attention," K'Oanan says, eyes wide, a low, shocked simmer of anger on Poe's part in his tone as they walk through the deck.

"Be calm, kid." That annoys K'Oanan, too. He doesn't like being called 'kid' or 'boy.' It does please his brother. "We're on the F-Deck. Everyone here is off duty, or maybe looking for someone off-duty. This is their home, where they play and relax. Being a good commander lesson the first: Treat thy subordinate's off time as sacred and do not trod upon it unless it cannot be avoided."

"Why? They're there to serve you." K'Oanan says, petulant, not liking this at all.

"No, it's their _job_ to serve you, and when they're off duty, they aren't working, so back off. You don't want your granddad barging in on you at whatever time you like to sleep demanding to attend him at once, so don't do that to the people under you."

"What if they don't have off time?" K'Ahauna asks.

"Then the first thing you do when you get home is hire another one, or take care of it yourself for ten hours or so a day, and at least a few days a cycle, and make sure they've got some off time. No one does a good job if they're on all the time." He looks around. "This didn't pop up in the two years since Kylo took over. Even _Snoke_ understood his men needed off time. What do you two study? You know, your how to be a king stuff?"

"Politics, history, economics—" K'Ahauna begins.

"Fighting, battle tactics, hand to hand weapons, command skills," K'Oanan continues.

Poe nods at that. "Okay, I'm going to suggest something. Ask Grandpa who he thinks really _bad_ commanders are, and then go study them. Learn how _not_ to do it."

"Who do you think were especially bad commanders?" K'Ahauna asks.

"I think Snoke was one."

"Didn't he rule for a thousand years?" K'Oanan adds.

"Yes, but I know the guy who cut him in half pretty well, so I'm going to guess the only reason he stuck around that long is that it took a really long time for him to tangle with another Force user who could stand up to him. Not because he was any good at command."

"And even he knew his men needed off time?" K'Oanan says.

"Even he knew his men needed off time, things to amuse themselves, good food and places to live and… He was a shit boss, and he broke more men and things than anyone has any right to, but even he was aware of the fact that he had _people_ working for them, and people have needs.

"If you ignore your people's needs for too long, they'll make you pay for it."

The boys think about that, as Poe steers them toward a food cart with a long line next to it. "Lesson the second, if fifty people are willing to queue up for something to eat, and there's piles of other places to eat around, whatever's at the end of that line is going to be good."

* * *

It was. Poe's not sure what it is. He just asked for three of them and handed one each to the boys. They're some sort of pasty filled with… veggies and protein and a thick, savory spicy sauce, and… When he comes back, he'll try to find this cart again.

"What's the third lesson?" K'Ahauna asks as they continue to walk through the F-Deck eating their pasties.

It takes Poe a moment to think, and then he says, "Explain you orders. Unless it's a literal, 'we're all gonna die if this doesn't happen now' situation, and those are awfully rare, if someone asks what you're doing, or why, explain. It shouldn't take you more than a few minutes, it'll make you look reasonable, and even if it's not satisfying to the person asking, it likely will be to the people around him."

"And if they still don't like it?" K'Ahauna asks.

"Listen. Find out why. You don't have to agree. You don't have to accede to their plans. But if you explain and you listen, you'll have an easier time getting people to go along with you, and likely a better plan when you're done." Poe looks around the F-Deck. "There's got to be what… Twenty-thousand people roaming around here. And, sure, one of them has to be the smartest of the bunch. But I know it's not me, and it isn't either of you, and, honestly, it won't be the same person on every topic. So, the more you talk, the more you listen, the more you can take advantage of the brains around you, and trust me, you'll need them."

K'Ahauna is listening. K'Oanan isn't. He's… Poe follows his gaze, ogling a very pretty Captain, not even remotely subtly, he's almost drooling. Judging by the letters instead of a name on her uniform, she came up through the Hux method, and could likely castrate him in less than thirty seconds if she weren't feeling properly respected.

Poe's _almost_ tempted to give him a little nudge and tell him to say hello, but… He's supposed to be showing them a good time, not tormenting any poor soul that K'Oanan's going to try to chat up. And one glance at the Captain, who appears to be having a good time with her buddies, and is not, on any level Poe can see, interested in having a horny puppy come up and drool on her, tells Poe that while letting K'Oanan free on her might be a good time for him and K'Ahauna, it won't be fun for her.

So, instead, he gently taps the bottom of K'Oanan's chin, and says, "Mouth closed unless you're about to put some food in it. Women generally don't appreciate being drooled over, and that one's really not going to appreciate your attention."

K'Oanan blinks, shudders, and scowls. "She's too thin, anyway." He looks around. "What's wrong with the women here? They're… all men!"

Poe laughs at that. "I think they'd disagree." He certainly does.

K'Oanan's shaking his head. "They're… strong and lean and thin and… Not a single one of them is pregnant, and…"

He's wrong about that. In easy eyesight, Poe can see a few who aren't built like Rey. And he's fairly sure that two of them are pregnant, but they're likely the wives or daughters of officers. He doesn't think you can be pregnant and on-duty with the Order, but he doesn't know that for sure.

"Given how you were staring, it looks like you like men, then. Wipe the drool off your chin and eat your pasty."

K'Oanan leaps up, apparently that's an insult where he comes from, and Poe just rolls his eyes. K'Ahauna's laughing his ass off next to them, enjoying this way too much.

"Say that to my face."

Poe, sitting down, legs wide, puts his pasty down, and laconically glances up at K'Oanan. "Kid, if you start a fight with me, your brother's going to end up ruling your kingdom."

"Because you'll decide against me?" He sounds ready to chance it.

"Because they'll have to mop up your remains with a squeegee and bury you in a jam jar. Tell me you aren't genuinely so fucking stupid as to get into a fight with a Commander on his own ship in the middle of thousands of armed officers. Holy Force man, yank your shaft out of your head, tuck it back in your pants where it belongs, and start thinking with your brain."

K'Oanan goes pale, glances around at, as Poe said, literally _thousands_ of armed officers, swallows, and sits down.

"Good choice," Poe says.

K'Oanan finishes his pasty in silence.

* * *

The serving staff cleans up the remains of the 'gracious luncheon' part of the meeting, and Rey's feeling like she's got a pretty good read on the K'Aar.

And, more than that, she likes him, too.

Maybe he likes her, also.

Granted, he seems to like her in the way he'd like any sort of marvel. She's so far outside of his normal understanding of how the universe is supposed to work, that he doesn't know what to do with her, so, apparently, he decided to just enjoy her.

She's fine with that.

She looks to Jon, "I understand that Poe will return with the boys soon?"

Jon nods. "Then he'll present them to you, and you can talk to them a bit. Then we'll reconnoiter, have a chat, and then bring you in to talk more. In the meantime, K'Aar, you are welcome to the run of the _Supremacy._ Threepio will gladly take you wherever you might want to go."

"I do recommend the F-Deck, or, perhaps, if we may be planting a seed of a possible embassy here, you might like to see where we'd think to put it," Threepio says.

"I might, perhaps, be interested in that."

They hear the elevator door open, and right on time, Poe and the boys, and… Rey's not sure where they were lurking, but a collection of Threepio's diplomats appear to phase into existence around them.

Rey's about to start off to meet them midway, but she feels a gentle touch on her wrist. Jon's. She can read what he's telling her. She's the _queen._ They come to _her._

So, she lets them.

Poe's grinning at her. "Have a good time, Commander?" she asks when he's in voice range.

"I think we did," he replies.

This isn't her first view of the boys, but this is the first time she's 'interacting' with them. She's not sure _why_ they did it that way, but assumes it's some flourish of K'Aran culture she's not aware of.

Once the boys are a bit closer, Poe turns to the first of them. He has longer hair, and his outfit is blue. "Mistress, this is K'Ahauna, Prince of the K'Aran dynasty."

Rey nods to him, and then she's pulled up short. K'Ahauna offers her his hand. That's… not part of the script, not as she remembers it, but she's not feeling any sense of alarm or 'tread carefully' from Jon or Poe, so she takes his hand.

He smiles at her, gently lifts her hand to his lips, and kisses the back of it. Then he lets go, looks her in the eyes, and says, "My pleasure, Mistress."

She can feel from the K'Aar that this is… mildly salacious. K'Ahauna has walked just up to the edge of proper behavior, but hasn't stepped over the line.

Rey nods at him again, and then turns her attention to his brother. He's wearing his blonde hair short, and his outfit which is tighter and more… modern… Rey guesses, is green.

"And this is K'Oanan," Poe adds.

K'Oanan takes her hand, like his brother, but unlike his brother he flips it over, brings it to his lips, and then gently _licks_ her wrist.

Rey's eyes close for a second, and she's not sure how to respond to that. She's fairly sure that _that_ is not a standard K'Aran greeting.

He looks up at her, wide green eyes, screaming with mischief. "Oh, my lady. I would know you, and offer you my unflagging, indefatigable service." And then he kisses her palm.

Or, at least he starts to, but his grandfather, breaking out of his shock, and the all encompassing wave of mortification, moving faster than any man his age looks like he could, grabs him by the back of the neck, and bodily tosses him a few meters away, hissing, "This is a married woman and you are a guest in her husband's home. Would you shame all of us?" He turns his attention to Rey. "Lady Rey… I am… _so sorry._ "

Everyone else in the room is staring between K'Oanan and her, and then just her, waiting to see what Rey will do with this. She can feel everyone on the K'Aran side of things, besides K'Oanan, who's for the most part, enjoying the spectacle, is _horrified._

Rey inclines her head. She wants to make sure she understands _exactly_ how far over the line K'Oanan went. "Threepio, I've apparently lost the idiom between our native languages, what was Lord K'Oanan offering me?"

She can feel Threepio blush, metal face be damned.

"Mistress… He was… Looking to know you carnally, and the services he was offering were sexual."

Rey nods, and steps over to K'Oanan, who is lying on the floor. She looks down at him, coolly, feeling what he was attempting and why he did it. Partially, it's blind stupid lust. She's a young female, and apparently he's still in what Kylo refers to as the 'shaft on legs' part of life. Partially, it's putting her in her place, showing her that he's a man and she's a woman, and women are for bedding, not ruling. Partially, it's showing the people around, the ones he assumes will judge his worthiness to be the next K'Aar, that he's bold and willing to take risks.

He's grinning up at her, not chastised at all by his grandfather's scolding.

"You are young and stupid and horny. You wish to show me you are bold, willing to take risks to get what you want, and what you think your people need. Boldness is _a_ virtue. Sometimes. Used wisely. The willingness to take risks to get what you need is also a virtue, again, used _wisely_."

"A strong woman needs a bold man," he says, looking up at her, a grin on his lips and a smirk in his eyes.

"And I have one. One who risked considerably more for me than a bloodied lip and an irked grandfather." K'Oanan licks his lips. They aren't bloodied. Yet. In one move, Rey yanks him up with her Force, holds him steady, slaps him open handed across the face, making sure her marriage band catches his lip, and then drops him. His lip is bleeding, now. "One wise enough to know when to take that risk. One who _earned_ my company, instead of asking for it with an impertinent quip.

"If you live long enough, your virtues may come in handy, but _only_ if you live long enough." And right now, it's abundantly clear that she's more than capable of ending him if she desires. "Keep letting your shaft make the decisions, and you _won't_ live long enough for your boldness to be a virtue. Are we clear?"

Rey can feel this isn't working the way she hoped. He's gazing up at her, moon in his eyes, lust spiking his blood. "Yes, Mistress."

* * *

Rey sits with Jon and Poe, in Kylo's office.

Poe gives his report on the boys, and wraps up with, "And… yeah. Well, we all saw that. He's… easily distracted… I guess is the polite way to put it."

"'So fucking stupid,' is how his grandfather put it," Rey adds.

Poe snerks a quick laugh at that. "Yeah, well… He's not _stupid_ in the sense of can't learn. I put them on the flight sims, and he picked it up quick enough. There's likely the making of a decent pilot in K'Oanan."

"If he doesn't get killed when someone comes up on his blind spot," Jon adds. Poe'd already told them about the results of the sim test.

Poe inclines his head.

"In K'Oanan's… extremely limited… defense," Colonel Jefferies says, "We did not introduce you as Lady Ren, and in his culture, unattached women are considered fair game."

"Prey to be hunted?" Rey asks.

"Basically," Threepio replies. "But, as you also saw, his brother and grandfather had the sense to not immediately proposition you, so… fair game you might have been, but they were cautious enough to understand we wouldn't have brought you up just to entice them."

The other advisers nods at that. Jon glances between them, and then says, "Well… Supposedly we're in the sorting this out business. Thoughts?"

And then the talking begins.

Rey listens, and listens, and doesn't say much. They bang ideas around, play with them, ask Poe more questions about the boys. Flight sims are recorded for training purposes, so they pull them up to see how the boys did with them. They talk more, and after an hour are starting to get the shape of a plan into place.

They are, given the political climate of K'Aar, likely offering a very good plan. They'll back K'Oanan. None of them really like that, because, well, he's a twit. But a twit who's willing to make decisions is preferable to the timid one. (Or, as Poe put it when he was showing off the flight sims, 'The guy who makes the hasty, gut decision _might_ get himself and the people around him killed. The man who makes no decision _will._ ) So, to counter that, they'll set his grandfather as a Lord Regent for five years, meaning that until he's twenty-seven, he'll be able to make decisions, and his grandfather will have absolute veto power over them.

Probably not ideal, but as good as it's going to get, and with any luck, by the time K'Oanan is twenty-seven, he'll have learned a bit of humility and some manners, and won't be a walking shaft.

Hopefully.

It's just… That doesn't feel _right_ to Rey. There's… something here, something she can't quite touch, not yet, but…

She lets the talking heads talk around her, figuring out how best to support K'Oanan, and how to arrange their men to make sure his transition is smoothly handled, also where on K'Aar to plop a recruiting station or six.

Jon's talking about how, if they can get K'Ahauna on the _Supremacy_ and in charge of the Embassy here, that he'll be in a place where he can do minimum damage, and maybe, over time start to get more comfortable in his own skin, and who knows, eventually he might be able to do some decent ruling on his own, and they can put him into play, then.

Rey breathes deep and easy, letting herself calm, and just _feel_ it.

After a moment, she says, "Has the K'Aran society ever had a co-regent?"

The talking heads are all too polite to talk over Lady Ren, but it's clear they're quite surprised that she's offering up an idea. They were under the impression they'd make the decision and she'd just… look good and provide it.

It's also clear they're under the impression that co-regent, beyond the current level of K'Aar having veto power over K'Oanan is something that just… isn't fitting.

But she can feel Jon warming to where she's going to take this.

And Threepio looks intrigued.

"What are you thinking, Mistress?" Poe says.

"K'Oanan is too bloody stupid to rule anything successfully, and he's not going to magically grow a brain in the next five years."

It's clear her advisers may not disagree with that, though they are shocked at her putting it that bluntly. She's not being _diplomatic._

Jefferies says. "You're likely right, Mistress, but in five years the situation will have calmed down enough that the warlords will be stable, and they'll guide him how they like."

"Yes… I was listening as you've said that before. But… What about K'Ahauna? He should be part of this."

"He'll likely turn adviser to his brother, and his brother will ignore him, and K'Oanan will be a weak king, ruled by his yet unknown queen who will be put in place by the warlords around him."

Rey purses her lips. "I don't like that. K'Aar won't like that. What if we had both boys rule?"

Her "advisers" just look at her. It's clear that none of them want to say what they're all thinking, namely they've spent every hour since this deal has been in the offing coming up with a good solution given the constraints of the culture they're working with, and she's been on the job for three hours as best they know, and she's shoving her ass into places it doesn't belong.

Jon looks perversely satisfied.

She can feel Threepio looking at her, but thinking of Han Solo.

Jon says, "Obviously, that's a possible response. But… how would you sell it to them? The current K'Aar is someone they're used to having rule. Extending his power and gently tapering it off will be easily swallowed. Two… kings… even for the boys themselves… They're unlikely to see it as acceptable."

Rey thinks about it. Poe's cheering her, mentally, on. He's got the sense she's moving in the right direction here, too.

"We'll fight. One on one. Me versus each of the boys."

Her advisers look ready to pass out at that idea. Poe's _grinning_ like this is the best thing he's ever heard. Jon's approving.

"I'll beat each of them. Easily." And it's possible that a certain level of ass-kicking for K'Oanan would improve the outlook of the day for her.

"And this is going to make them want to rule together, how?" Jefferies asks.

"Then I'll let them fight me two on one, and let them win. We all think K'Ahauna, if he could get some confidence, would be a better leader than K'Oanan." She gets a quick flash of a future… She doesn't know if it's real, or her imagination. It feels real, but her image of her and Kylo building in the sunshine felt real, too, and it hasn't happened. This flash is K'Oanan, a bloody mess, dead. He's not going to learn to be a decent ruler because in the next five years he's going to get himself killed, likely by an extremely irate husband. "I've got to topple him one on one so we can get to a place of both of them working together." Maybe, if they work together, they might rub off on each other some, and… maybe they won't end up with a future where K'Oanan is dead, and K'Ahauna is out of the picture, and the warlords are fighting among themselves. "But if they can 'beat me' as a team, maybe they'll see the other one as valuable, and we can show them working together as a better alternative than the two of them separately."

"We'll keep the part of the current K'Aar as the regent, but," Jon's grinning, "I like this. They want us to show off strength and power. The idea that, and you'll hopefully forgive this Rey, that even our women can beat the shit out of their best warriors, will go a long way to cementing the idea of power here, and then when they work together… You won't let them win easy, right?"

"Of course not. I'll… just barely, slip on something or whatever, and let one of them pin me, but it won't be easy, and I'll keep them bouncing off each other enough that they'll feel like they were working together, not one was just carrying the other one."

"And how will you get K'Ahauna to do anything other than pout in the corner?" Colonel Jefferies asks.

Rey smiles. "I have my ways. It'll work."

It's abundantly clear that, as professionals in their own service, not a single one of them would be willing to give Rey the benefit of the doubt on this. It's also clear, that as members of the Order, they're all aware of the fact that Rey knows all of their names and faces, and they are, to say the least, _nervous_ about what Kylo will do to them when he gets up if they do not, at least give lip service, to his lady's idea.

It does help that Jon likes this, because, well… If it goes completely pear shaped, and beating the shit out of the K'Aran boys is, in fact, not the right plan, they can blame it on him.

After all, if the Grand Marshal, and the Master's Lady are on board for this plan, who are they to say no?

* * *

The first step in the plan is getting the K'Aar to back it. Nothing they've got on offer is going anywhere without his permission.

He listens, he nods, he listens more, and then he turns to Rey and says, "You know, if you just want to hit him a few times as a response to his comment, you're more than welcome to. This… Isn't necessary if it's just about maintaining honor."

That wasn't the response they were hoping for.

Rey rubs her lips together. Then she says, hoping the diplomats won't pass out when she says this, "It's not that smacking him upside the head with a staff a few times won't improve my day. It certainly will."

The K'Aar smirks at that. Ilnor seems to approve, too. Seems to approve of her, personally, for the first time today.

"It's that… You want your kingdom to continue onto the next generation. And you said it yourself, you'd hoped they been one child. Well, they aren't. And it appears the most likely result of this, is that K'Oanan ends up in charge, with us backing the settlement, and you steering for the first several years, and all of us hoping that he can grow up enough to not ruin your kingdom."

She takes a breath, and then makes herself say it, "And I think we know how that works out in the long run. He does something stupid. _Painfully_ stupid. The kind of stupid you don't come back from."

"Like attempting to poach a stronger man's wife out of his own home," Ilnor says.

"Sure. The sort of thing, where honor demands that whomever he insults kills him, and we," she gestures, meaning the Order, "won't be within our rights to respond."

"Unless, of course, that's part of a contract you want," Jon adds. "Right now, we're assuming that, should either boy go afoul of civic or cultural mores, and someone seeks to do something about it, making sure they don't isn't part of our job."

The K'Aar nods. "It's about preventing a civil war. Not keeping one of my warlords from cutting the head off the man who cuckolds him." He's rubbing his forehead, looking like he's having way too easy a time believing that would be a problem. Especially if K'Oanan were to add K'Aar to his title.

"Meanwhile, K'Ahauna is lost. Perhaps he joins us. We might, even, given the time, turn him into a decent leader. Tentative, but nothing a few good generals couldn't smooth out. But he'll need time. But, he won't have it. By the time K'Oanan outlives his usefulness, he'll have a son, and that son will end up with a 'regent', and… We're back to whichever of the Uncles ruling things, along with an as of yet unknown queen," Jon says. "That won't be the end of your world, but it's likely not the _best_ alternative we can give you."

"We're hoping, that if we can get them to see the value of each other, and that if we set them as co-regents, with you steering for the time being, they might begin to work together, and… with any luck, they'll rub off on each other. K'Ahauna grows more bold. K'Oanan less so," Rey replies.

"And at the very least, anyone who seeks to topple the one or the other will have the Order to deal with should they try. It will give both of your boys the chance to learn to rule, and grow up some, with a bit of breathing room," Threepio finishes.

The K'Aar takes a deep breath, and thinks, and then nods. Then he says, "And you think it's important that they face _you,_ my lady?"

"I think it is. K'Oanan has it coming. It's time he learn some humility. And it wouldn't hurt K'Ahauna to learn a little confidence. Make some right decisions. And, honestly, when they fight together, it's likely going to take a bit of help for them to do a good job of it, and…" She glances around. "There are myriad brilliant fighters on this ship, but none who I trust to structure a fight so they'll be able to work with each other."

K'Aar nods again. "All right then. And, may I sit in on the fight?"

"Certainly," Rey says.

Ilnor says, "And, can we get a recording of it. Co-regents is not part of our traditions, so… something to help prove the idea that this is wise would help."

"I'm certain we can arrange that, too," Jon replies.

* * *

It's a warm rush of liquid pleasure. K'Oanan is _overjoyed_ at this plan. He's sure he'll beat their champion in a few hits, and then gain his crown, and crow his way back to the adoring throngs of the K'Aran dynasty.

When he realizes that champion is going to be Rey, he's _beyond_ overjoyed. He's not just fantasizing about his future as the K'Aar, he's also inundated by a _lot_ of deeply (at least to him) erotic images of the two of them fighting, and…

Rey sighs loudly as he's blasting everyone nearby (or just her. She's the only Force sensitive around, though she's genuinely concerned if this is 'loud' enough for Kylo to pick it up. She lets her mind wander to his, but apparently he's sleeping, and… That's probably a good thing right now. She wants to tame this kid, not get him murdered.) with the image of the two of them, him 'victorious' on top of her, pumping away.

K'Ahauna is nervous. That's pouring off of him. He's afraid he's going to mess this up. Afraid he'll hit Rey too hard, and damage her. Afraid that by pulling his punches, he'll fail at this. He's afraid the Master, wherever the hell it is he might be, may see this, and then show up and personally rip his head right off of his neck for doing this.

"We'll meet in the Master's training gym in an hour then?" Rey says.

K'Oanan is grinning. "We could just go straight to your chambers, my lady."

His grandfather hits him upside the back of the head, hard.

He barely notices.

K'Ahauna swallows hard, and then nods.

* * *

K'Oanan is grinning at her. He _loves_ this idea. He's going first. Several reasons for that, not the least of which is that Rey's fairly sure she _can't_ get K'Ahauna to take a swing at her if he genuinely thinks he might hurt her.

Beating some manners into his brother first should help dissuade him of that idea.

"They tell me you've got a husband, love." He's looking her over, and even if their culture isn't a huge proponent of thin, muscular women, he seems to be enjoying the view. "He's obviously not up to the job of taking care of you properly." He looks her up and down. She's standing a few meters off, getting a feel for the training staves. Yes, using her own would be… satisfying, but permanently maiming the boy isn't her plan. "If he were meeting your needs properly, even the idea of this would never occur to you."

She can feel it. His fantasy has morphed. Not only is he going to win his kingship, but he's going to steal her right off this ship. Cuckold the great Master Ren. She's not sure, exactly, what laying horns on a man means, symbolically, she can feel _exactly_ what it means in physical terms, but… Apparently, in their culture it's a massive dishonor to the man cuckolded, and a _huge_ victory for the man who manages to do it.

He doesn't pick out a staff. "Come Lady, no need for that. We can dance skin to skin."

She throws a staff at him, and he catches it before it smacks him in the head. He twirls it around a few times, and then peels off his shirt, showing off. He knows he's pretty, and he wants her to look.

Rey supposes he might be pretty. But he's not hers.

"Well, I suppose I can humor this. Wouldn't want our play to end too quickly." He makes a little kissing gesture at her, and touches the tip of his tongue to his lip.

As she's rolling her eyes at that, he charges.

Two moves, one half step, the dull thwap of staff hitting skin, and he's on the floor on his back. Rey whacks him in the ribs again just to do that.

"If that's your idea of not finishing too quickly, I'd hate to see what you think fast is."

K'Oanan leaps back up. "Lady, if needs be, I'll go all night to satisfy you."

He's so blisteringly stupid it's difficult to fight him.

It's not the Rey's done a lot of fighting. Whacking idiots with her staff on Jakku. And, once she was fully grown, she had enough strength to put some real power into her staff, and… It's not difficult to make a drunk stay down, especially if you don't court trouble by going where there are groups of them.

Then she fought Kylo, and that was an extremely different experience.

Kylo who has not only an immense natural talent at this, but twenty years of training, was a _fight._ A took-everything-she-had, and would have taken more, if the planet hadn't split, _fight._

And then just to up that a bit, she went against the Praetorian Guard with him at her back. None of them, one on one were as good as Kylo, but they also didn't have to be. When you're outnumbered four to one, any given one of the four does not have to be better than you.

If she hadn't been high from not being dead, exalted from Kylo picking her, sure they could do no wrong in that moment, four on one would have likely brought back some bad memories, but… She was so far from Jakku in that moment, it could have happened to someone else.

But here, now, she's got an over eager boy, rushing straight at her, desperate to knock her down and rub all over her.

He's sure he can do it, too. He's half a head taller than she is, probably has twelve kilos on her. He's young and strong, showing off tight muscles, wearing just his trousers. He'd likely take them off if he had anything on under them.

He's focused on the curves he can now see, better, because she's in light trousers and a tank top, hair pulled back, staff in hands.

On this charge, she again, using the exact same technique she did before, trips him and takes him down, and just to do it, she whacks him in the ribs again, and debates getting him in the stones next time, because maybe if they were out of the equation his brain might do some thinking.

He hops back up again, and again tries the exact same attack.

Rey rolls her eyes at that, and stands ready, letting him come to her again. And again, half a step, a minor twist, three whacks, all of them a tad harder than strictly necessary, and on the floor K'Oanan is.

He's looking up at her, lust and adoration in his eyes. She hits him in the thigh just to do it. He moans at the contact and Rey winces, realizing he's _liking_ this, too.

He's back up again, and again she's not, intentionally, looking, but… Now, it's difficult to miss. There is a definite tent in his trousers, and he's subtly squirming, pressing the shaft of the staff against himself. "Please, Lady, another?"

The fact that his grandfather is about to disembowel himself in shame at this is not helping her composure, and apparently Jon's under the impression that Kylo is going to personally kill him for allowing this is also not improving things. Poe and K'Ahuana are having a good time, so that helps, some.

Focus.

She wiggles a finger at K'Oanan, letting him know to advance, and this time he's a hair more wary, not just charging in. Apparently, he is, with enough time, teachable. This time, he wiggles his fingers back at her, waiting for her to come to him. Well… She can't imagine he's any better on defense than he was on offense, so…

This time she's on him, fast and elegant, it takes a few more hits, a jerking pull of her staff behind his knees, the butt of her staff to his sternum, and one final whack to his shoulder, and then he's _down._

He'd gasp, but the air is knocked out of him. He'd move, but he's too stunned for that, right now. He lays there, on his back, bruises all over his torso and face rapidly purpling.

Rey stares down at him and raises one eyebrow.

He gasps, hard, finally getting air back into his lungs.

Rey nods. "K'Oanan, you may be excused. I think I've learned all I need to from you."

"Are you sure? We could do another round?" His voice is rough, breathy, and painfully aroused.

Rey smacks him with her staff one more time, hard, in the ribs.

"Yes, Mistress." He scrambles to his feet and slinks off. A med droid immediately hovers over to him, and begins slathering him in bacta patches. She nods to his grandfather, who herds them to the far side of the gym, letting her have a moment with her men.

A moment later Jon and Poe are right next to her.

Jon's blushing, hard. "Gods, Rey, I'm so sorry. When I said this sounded like a good idea… I didn't think he'd… do _that._ "

Poe's about to sprain his lungs he's laughing so hard at the whole thing. When he can breathe again, he says, "He's gonna be spanking it to the image of you standing over him like that for the next year."

Rye slumps and rolls her eyes. "Tell me that's not a _common_ response to a fight?"

Jon and Poe meet each other's eyes. Jon rubs his lips together, and Poe smirks. Finally, Jon says, "Back when I went through training about one in ten of them couldn't keep it down during martial combat exercises."

Poe's chuckling. "A bit less in the Army of the Republic, but… Yeah… Especially the week when we switched trainers. We'd been working with Master Dun, and he was about fifty, knew every mean trick in the book, weighed as much as a junker, and looked just as pretty. Then we got into Mistress Jayne's class, and she was… Shit… I mean… I didn't pop a stand trying to grapple her, but I was probably the only one in the class who didn't. But after the first week, most of the recruits got used to her, but a few of them just _couldn't,_ and she was _brutal_ on them, which just seemed to spur them on even harder, and… Class got a lot easier when we moved onto Master Wheln."

"Wonderful." She's not sure if she'd have suggested this if she had realized that fighting K'Oanan would get him hard. "And how do you think his brother is going to do?"

"He's either going to lay down and beg you to hit him, or maybe, if we're lucky, he'll be decent on defense and fairly tame on offense, and you'll knock his ass down, and he'll just lie there," Poe says.

"Do you want to keep doing this, Rey?" Jon asks.

"Yeah, let's get this done. I'll fight K'Ahauna, then fight them together, and see if I can convince them that they're much better as co-regents with Grandpa advising for them. Hopefully we set that peace in motion, and it'll hold for at least five years."

"Hopefully."

* * *

K'Ahauna surprises her. Apparently, with his brother having set the bar so low, he began to relax.

Tame on offense is an understatement. He _will not_ attack her. At all. They just stood there for a solid three minutes, while Rey waited just to see what he'd do, and the correct answer was stand there and gaze at her, loosely holding his staff.

But, once she made her move, he did a good job.

Once she made her move, it took her a solid minute to get him down. Part of that was re-setting her own expectations. K'Oanan had no defense, so she only had to go for his knees, and down he went. Meanwhile, K'Ahauna is comfortable on defense, and with a staff, so he's almost happily playing along.

He's not saying anything. He feels no need to taunt her, and if he's enjoying this on a sexual level, his body isn't showing it off.

(And since he's not projecting how he's feeling about this, Rey decides to just let him have his privacy. She doesn't need to be deep in his mind to fight him.)

On the second round, he actually is enjoying this. He's not a warrior by any stretch of the imagination, but getting to spar with what he's starting to think of as 'a pretty girl' _and_ show his brother up, is improving his day immensely.

On the third round, he does, tentatively, begin an attack. He's circling her, staying out of her range. He's got at least ten centimeters of reach on her, so as long as he doesn't get too close, he can hit her, and she can't hit him.

Rey's twirling her staff, a long slow spin. Keeping it moving so she can get it into any position she needs quickly, but waiting to see what he's going to do.

She feels it the second he decides to try it, knows it's coming, and prepares to block it.

He tosses his staff at her head, and if it had gone according to his plan, she would have gotten her staff up to block, while moving her head back to protect it, and then he would have swept low, grabbing her foot, and yanking her off balance.

Instead she held her staff in front of her, and jumped up, crashing her staff into his, and he, sweeping low for her foot, fell on his face because the foot he was going to grab was almost a meter higher than he'd planned for.

He hits the ground, rolls, and Rey lands lightly beside him. She looks down at him, and nods. "That was a good one."

He smiles up at her. "One more?"

"Nah. I think I know what I need to."

She can feel he's pleased with that.

* * *

After watching that, K'Oanan is in a _bad_ mood. Not only did he not get his rocks off. Not only did he not manage to get Rey on the floor, but apparently his timid little brother got her to smile at him.

That image of getting her on the floor is intensifying, and it's not getting any prettier. It's not a victory fuck now. Now, it's revenge. Now, in his mental image, she's crying under him.

Rey rolls her lips, and is wondering if her plan of the two of them together can work.

Or if it should.

"Gentlemen, do you mind if I take a moment with my advisers?" She means Poe and Jon, both of whom have been watching this.

The K'Aar nods. She's got the sense that he also has an idea of what's going through K'Oanan's mind.

"Need to rest up for our big finale? Never much liked an audience, love, but for a chance at you, I'll do it in front of the whole galaxy."

Rey pulls Jon and Poe aside. She's generally entirely willing to trust her own danger sense, but… She also knows that this is a threat she's more sensitive to than normal, and she wants other opinions. She keeps her voice low. "He's setting off my danger sense."

Poe's nodding. "Yeah, I wouldn't turn my back on him. I don't think he can get one over on you, but… There's some nasty in there, hiding under the stupid."

Jon's senses aren't nearly as keen, but he knows a snake when he sees one. "We can call the K'Aar over and scrap this plan right now. I think we've proven that with time and some breathing space K'Ahauna will manage."

Rey bites her lip. "I think he needs a win, at least one. His confidence is growing, but it's fragile."

"Look, fight him, don't fight him, I'm thinking we likely shouldn't suggest the two of them rule together," Jon's saying watching both of them. "Can you set this up to show that fighting together K'Ahauna's the more valuable of the two?"

Rey thinks about that. She nods slowly. "Yeah, probably. Two more fights. I won't put them together. That's... not going to work. Set both of them on defense. After all, the job of the K'Aar is to protect his people, yes?"

"Something like that."

* * *

Rey heads back to the middle of the room. She turns to K'Oanan. "Five minutes. Your job is to make sure I don't hit your brother. If, at the end of five minutes, he doesn't have any new bruises, you've succeeded."

"Can I get a kiss if I succeed?"

Rey's never been so tempted to Force choke someone in her life. She smiles at him, cold and dark. "Sure. All the kisses you want. Wherever you'd like them."

His blood pressure spikes, his lust flares, and anything even remotely approaching his common sense or tactical skills just rolls over and dies.

She feels more than hears K'Ahauna say to his grandfather. "I'm going to need a lot of bacta when this is done."

Rey shoots him a quick glance, not exactly commiserating, but he seems to understand. She's setting this to play to his strengths, and he appreciates it.

And that's probably worth a black eye or two.

* * *

She will give K'Oanan this, he's fast.

And he's also not impossibly stupid. Having explicitly spelled it out that it's his job to defend, he's not, immediately, charging at her.

But the only defense he knows is good offense, so as soon as Rey starts to close on his brother, he's leaping between them and trying to run her over with his larger size and what he presumes is greater strength.

He's not as strong, or as fast, as he thinks he is, though. And his theory that he can just physically take whatever hit she lays down, because he's assuming that if it's his body that gets hit, and not his brother's he'll win…

Yeah… Well… That's not exactly working out for him.

He's taken three hits, hard ones, when Rey moves back a bit to go for another attack. She says to him, "Is this how you'd defend your home, your people? Just get in the way and take the beating?"

He dodges to the side, and takes a hit to the shoulder. "If I need to."

Rey backs up further. She holds her staff to the side, looking like she's pausing the fight, but the chrono is still running, and she knows how he's going to respond to that opening.

He plays right into it, charging her, fast and hard, barreling towards her, jumping, staff raised, ready to bring it down on her skull, not caring about possibly hurting her, now.

She dodges back, low, turns with his swing, whipping around the path of his weapon, shifting her staff just to her left hand, turning further, twisting, catching his right wrist with the full force of her swing, and _everyone_ hears the crack of his wrist as she shatters it between her staff and his.

He drops like a sack of wet cement, clutching at the now useless limb, to shocked, too hurt, to make a sound, yet. She kneels next to him. "And what do you do when you can't take another hit?"

Rey, calmly, walks over to K'Ahauna and gently bops him on the top of the head with her staff. "Once the med droid is done with him, same challenge, defend your brother for five minutes."

He's looking fast between his brother crying on the floor, and Rey standing calmly in front of him.

She nods to his brother, and then quietly says to him, "Do better."

* * *

Apparently, Jon wasn't kidding about morph making you just not care.

K'Oanan went from a screaming, vibrating ball of pain and hate to a fairly mellow human humming contentedly on the floor, wrist in a very complicated mesh of plexi-plast in a bacta tube, looking forward to seeing his brother get spattered even faster than he did.

Between hums, he's babbling about all the different ways he's going to fuck Rey, for about a minute, then the K'Aar asks to speak to the med droid, and a moment later, he's unconscious on the floor, which everyone else appreciates.

A moment later, the K'Aar says to Rey, "Lady… I think the correct answer is abundantly clear at this point, we don't have to—"

She offers him a bit of a smile, and nods to K'Ahauna's who's going through the staves, seeing which one of them feels best in his hand. "Let's let him win one. At the very least we can send him out of here feeling like he deserves this."

"You have more wisdom than your years would suggest."

"Thank you?"

"I meant it as a compliment."

"Good." She looks at the now "sleeping" grandson. "Do you think this will be good for him?"

"I hope it helps him to learn some humility." He looks at her, eyes soft. "I know he's… getting off to a bad start with you, and you are seeing his worst, but… Being an idiot or…" and she knows he's thinking of some of the things he's heard about Kylo Ren over the years, "Evil even, at twenty-two isn't a reliable indicator of who you'll be at thirty."

Rey glances to him. She, obviously, didn't know Kylo at twenty-two, but she's fairly sure he wouldn't have felt like… this. "We can hope. In the meantime…"

"In the meantime, I assume that The Order will suggest K'Ahuana for K'Aar."

"And we'll enforce it. We'll have the details and suggestions worked out before supper, and you can read and change them at your leisure."

"Excellent." He looks to his grandson. "And he appears to have picked his staff."

"Good."

* * *

This is fun.

She guesses that if she couldn't feel what K'Ahuana was going to do before he did it, they'd be fairly evenly matched. He is bigger, and were it just muscle for muscle he'd be stronger and faster, but he's not, so…

It's _fun._

He's feeling a bit loose and comfortable, like the pressure is off. He's sure he _can't_ fuck it up worse than his brother did, so he's playing, a little. He won't let his guard down, too much. She's pressing him, a little. Going just a touch faster than he'd be comfortable with, making him sweat, but not letting him fail or embarrass himself too badly.

The crack of her staff on his is thrilling and satisfying, and the freedom to really _move,_ to push herself… She hasn't done this sort of fight in a while, and… When Kylo's up and feeling better again, they need to start sparring.

She's looking forward to that, a lot.

The image of him in just a pair of trousers with a staff… Hair back, those eyes on hers… Twirling a staff the way he did with his lightsaber in the forest… That gets her heart pumping faster. And distracts her enough that K'Ahuana manages to land a hit on her. His staff cracks across her face.

He immediately drops his staff and begins to apologize profusely, but Rey waves it off. "We're fighting, you're allowed to hit me if you can."

"But… Lady… Your cheek."

She can feel it swelling. "I don't bruise easily. A little bacta and it'll be fine."

"Are you sure?"

She nods. Between some bacta and her Force, her face should be healed by supper. "I'm sure." She glances at the chrono. "Congratulations, you've defended your brother for five minutes.

"I think we know all we need to know. My advisers and I will chat a bit more, and then we'll send a copy of our plan to your grandfather."

K'Ahuana looks almost like he might be nervous about that, and then he relaxes.

"I'll look forward to it."

"I think you will. I understand we'll be having supper together, after."

"I understand that, too, and will anticipate it, eagerly." He again, gently, cautiously, takes her hand, and kisses the back of it. "Until then."

Rey nods at him.

* * *

Dinner goes well.

K'Oanan does not attend.

Rey's not sure if he's sulking in his room about the outcome of the day, or if the K'Aar decided that he'd embarrassed them enough for one night, and putting him into a situation where he might mix pain killers with alcohol and Rey was asking for a disaster.

However it worked out, he's not sitting at the table with them.

Rey does not mind that in the least.

She doesn't mind dinner, either. Not really. This is… she supposes well-trod territory might be the best way to describe it. Here, now, she's a pretty lady holding court on her own in a social setting.

The K'Arans know how to handle that, and without feeling like the floor under their feet is unsteady, they're being smooth, charming, and filling the night with good stories.

Poe and Jon are good at that, too. Adding their own… charming tales… that's probably the best term for them. Light, entertaining stories with good punchlines that everyone at the table can, on some level, commiserate with.

Rey enjoys the stories. She doesn't feel like she has any of her own. After all, who wants to hear about scavenging junk for a few mouthfuls of water? Or scrubbing grit off of gears in an effort to make something worth a few more calories.

She's probably looking wistful, glancing toward where Kylo is, wanting to be with him, as they're wrapping up dessert. Jon gives her hand a bit of a squeeze. "Tired, Lady Ren?"

She nods a bit. "It's been a long few days. When I'm not doing this, I'm the primary healer for the Maji, and in addition to Kylo, almost everyone is sick."

The K'Aar leaps up. "Come. We will not linger." Apparently, healing and taking care of other members of the clan are appropriate feminine things to do among the K'Aran, and she can feel he's determined to keep her away from that not a second longer than necessary.

"Thank you." She also stands, and gently grasps hands with each of them.

This time, the K'Aar does kiss her hand, and he says, "When that man of yours is feeling up to it, bring him to us. We'll make sure to show you a good time."

"I'm certain we will take you up on that. I know he had been looking forward to meeting you."

Jon's radiating a satisfied pleasure. "Perhaps, when we open the first of our recruiting stations, the Rens may show up to provide the proper fanfare, and celebrate the union of our empire and yours?"

"I think that would be a profitable endeavor for all of us," Ilnor says.

"Excellent," Rey says, glancing at the door again.

"Come," The K'Aar is beginning to pull his people away, when K'Ahauna says to Rey, "Mistress, may I have a moment with you?"

Rey glances to the rest of the party, making sure that saying yes isn't some sort of massive breach of etiquette. Jon gives her a little nod.

"Certainly."

He waits for the rest of them to get to the far end of the throne room, at the elevator door, before going back to his chair, and pulling the small box he'd placed under it out.

She watches as he removes… something. Rey's never seen anything like it. Her Force sense lets her know it's alive, otherwise she'd have assumed it was some sort of… spun glass artwork. It's a soft, almost shimmering coral and gold, translucent, and she has to assume it's some sort of flower, but she's never seen anything like it before.

He's cradling it, gently, like it's more delicate than the spun glass she knows it cannot be, and then turns to her, stepping close, to Rey.

K'Ahauna is holding it out to her. He's not looking her in the face, but she can feel he wants to.

She can feel he's afraid, but… willing to bet on… luck and maybe feeling a bit foolhardy, and a bit reckless because today has gone, so far, better than he could have expected.

She sighs. _This_ is not what she wanted him to use his newfound confidence on.

She prays that he'll have the good sense to _not_ say what he's about to say.

"I'm… sorry my brother was such a jackass." He does look up at her, his own wide green eyes eager, hopeful. Because he doesn't have his brother's attitude, Rey can see that he is attractive, and young, close to her own age. It's the first time that she's thought of the fact that twenty-two, and the twenty-fivish she thinks herself to be, are not that far apart.

She smiles a bit at him before she can stop it.

He's… pleasant. And, maybe somewhere, somewhen, in a different life, she could have taken what she knows he's about to do next, seriously.

But she doesn't live that life and neither does he.

"But he's not wrong about you." He holds eye contact, not ogling her, not allowing his thoughts to stray into "disrespectful" (other than, of course the astoundingly massive breach of etiquette he's about to commit by attempting to poach a married woman out of her husband's home.) territory.

He hands her the flowers, not touching her skin, but his fingers linger near hers. She can feel the heat of them, and the tremble at the idea that maybe, if he's lucky, she would consent to touch him, or… maybe… He knows it won't happen, but he's got to try… Maybe, she'll leave with him.

"It's a Rhindra Orchid. I… asked mother to send me some as soon as I saw you. They're… rare. They only grown on one island on Arenthal. They absorb nutrients from the air, so they can go anywhere, and look to live on nothing, though, it's said, in a home where the hearts are happy they thrive." He swallows, looking her in the eyes, pleading. "They are a gift, given from a man to a woman, to show his intentions are serious, and honorable." His index finger lightly, so lightly, shaking from nerves and sexual excitement, brushes the back of her hand. "My brother would take you to bed for a night, think only of himself, and forget you as soon as he was done boasting of it. I would adore you with my body and mind and make you a queen."

He means it. Rey can feel that all through herself, and he's so… earnest.

She closes her eyes, tilting her head down. She hands him the orchids back, and gently squeezes his hands.

It's out of her mouth before she's even thought of it. "I already am one." She looks up at him. "And I am adored, and beloved, and…" He's looking at her, skeptically. His queen, his vision of her, is plump and soft and pregnant and 'well-tended.' "My needs are being met. You are being very sweet, and I… appreciate… the sentiment, but I am not for you."

He looks so sad. "You could be. Wise and powerful… but there's gentleness there, too. I can feel it. Everything you are or could want to be, I can cherish. You…" He rolls his lips. "It's clear you don't enjoy this. Parties and dithering with strangers. I could see the way your mind wandered, the longing to be elsewhere. You do it, but you don't love it. If… I'd never make you… You could be a homebody if you wanted. You wouldn't have to be a warrior. I wouldn't… make you stand before predators like my brother and fight them off. You and I…"

Rey's shaking her head. "No. I am where I want to be. Doing what I need to do."

K'Ahauna steps back from her. He looks at the flower, and then nods, and then offers them back to her. "You love your man very much."

"Yes, I do."

"Then take it, and let it thrive in your home."

Rey takes the shimmering coral/gold flower, and says, "Thank you."

K'Ahauna nods, and then turns, and leaves.

Rey stands there, watching him walking out, watching the elevator doors close behind him.

Then she sighs, lets her shoulders slump, and stands there, eyes closed, for a moment.

Soft clicking of metal feet on a metal floor. "Mistress Ren?"

"C8?"

"I'm shutting the elevator down, and setting up a no disruptions command that will not lift until you request it."

"Thanks, C8." She tugs at her hair, pulling pins out of it, letting it start to fall around her shoulders. "I think… I'm going to sleep in, and…" Probably not. She's still got to get home and see what's going on on Lirium.

"Just let me know when you want some breakfast, and I'll have it ready."

"Second shift. Uh…" She tries to think what she's going to want. "Just, a cup of coffee, lots of milk. At least half milk. Two chicken eggs, and the chopped up and fried potatoes with bits of ham and onion in them."

"I'll arrange it, Mistress. Do you think Master Ren will want food?"

"I doubt it. Maybe he'll be able to take some tea by mouth." She looks at the flowers in her hand. "What do I do with this?"

"It's customary to find an attractive container for it to live in."

"Oh. Uh…"

"I'll get you one."

"Not black."

"I will get you a not-black vase."

"Thanks." She's tired and just staring around. Then she shakes her hair out, and begins walking toward Kylo's office. "You think he'll mind?" she asks as she looks into the not at all black room.

"I can't imagine he will." C8 follows her into the office. Rey lays her hand on the door to Kylo's room. She sighs a bit, thinking of Jon arguing about going in there. She doesn't actually know how to open the the lock, either. She doesn't need to. "Mistress?"

"C8?"

"I'm certain that when he hears about this, he will be proud of how you've done."

She nods.

"Do you know that my primary programing, my original function, is tactical planning in regards to personnel?"

"No. Uh…"

"I'm designed to be a personal assistant to a battle commander. I have the full rota of everyone on staff at the Order, their strengths and weaknesses, and part of what I'm supposed to do is help to advise Master Ren on who to put where, when, and why."

"Oh."

"From everything I've seen, you made the correct decision about which of the boys to back."

"Not difficult once I got a good feel for him."

"It never is, but getting a good feel, and getting people to show who they truly are, is."

She nods. "Thanks C8."

"You're welcome, have pleasant rest."

"I hope to." And with that Rey ports herself back to the other side of the door.

* * *

Kylo's actually awake when she gets in there. His eyebrows rise for a moment, and then lower. "Am I dreaming?"

She sits on the bed next to him. "Not this time." Her hands caress his face, and even without the touch, she can still see the fever flush and his glassy eyes. "Feeling a little better?"

He curls around her. "Now." He nuzzles his cheek against her knee. "Pretty dress." He kisses it. "Prettier woman under it. Something interesting happen?"

"Yeah." She strokes his hair. Normally she'd run her fingers through it, but right now it's vastly too dirty and tangled for that.

"Good interesting?" He's holding onto her, and she feels his shivers start to rise.

"I'll tell you about it when you're feeling better. Right now, I'm going to undress, and then snuggle up with you."

He curls a little tighter in on himself as she gets up. "I'd like that." He's watching her undress, and she can feel how content he is right this second. He's fever blasted, tired, cold, and sore, but she's here, and just that's enough.

She pulls off the over dress.

"You were gone a long time?"

It's clear he's still not tracking time well. "Longer than I wanted to be."

"Everything's all right?"

"Yeah. Everything is all right. All you've got to do is lay around and heal right now, baby." She lifts the sheet and slips under the blankets, curling around him.

A contented purr rumbles through Kylo. "I missed this."

She kisses the back of his neck. "Me, too."


	19. The Grand Marshall and Commander (Redux)

2/6/2

They're waiting, quietly, at the elevator. K'Ahuana has 'gone back to get something he forgot.'

The other men are… tolerating this.

Threepio, on the other hand... He knows what's about to happen. He's human enough for that. And he knows how this is going to end. Just because he, personally, doesn't see what Rey likes about Kylo, doesn't mean he's unaware of the fact that they're the most married people he's ever met. He doesn't see why the other men don't do something about this. "Shouldn't we… stop him?"

The K'Aar shakes his head, and Poe's agreeing with him. Poe puts a hand on Threepio's shoulder. "He needs to get shot down on his own on this one. We stop him he'll always wonder about maybe or what if, and…"

The K'Aar continues, "And in six months, he'll be back, with his own backers, and be stupid enough to make a formal challenge for her, and Ren will kill him, and… That's not going to do anyone any good."

"I doubt Kylo would kill a puppy for—" Jon starts.

"A formal challenge means he shows up with all of his backers and attempts a raid on your home to get her out of it," Ilnor supplies.

"Oh." Jon winces. Yeah. Kylo likely wouldn't take well to thousands of armed men showing up to attempt to remove Rey by force.

"Families arrange marriages on our world. Formally, the ladies don't have a choice about it, though in most cases their fathers will take their preferences into account. That doesn't mean they're entirely powerless. They can signal that they aren't happy with the deal if someone they like more shows up. And it's considered the height of rude to attempt to take a woman from her husband. He's got every right to kill you and everyone you bring with you if you fail. And she's got to say, yes. You can't just carry her off. But… If you can do it, if you survive it, that gets you a lot of status, and if he managed to take Ren's woman from Ren's home-" Ilnor continues.

The K'Aar breaks in. "Boldness in the face of true love. They write songs and stories about that. That's how I got their grandmother, and," he taps the scar snaking up the back of his hand. "He's… being twenty-two. But if she gives him a hint she might go for it, he'll be back."

They watch. "Is her taking the flower a bad thing?" Poe asks.

"Not from K'Ahuana's point of view," The K'Aar replies.

They watch Rey give it back. And even from the far side of the room, even without Force sensitivity, they can all feel Rey tell him in no uncertain terms, no.

He gives her the flower again.

Jon raises an eyebrow… "Uh…"

The K'Aar shakes his head. "Look at the way he's moping. That was… salvaging some pride I think. He's not going to try again."

"Good," Threepio says. "I'd prefer our deal continue on, not end in blaster bolts and lightsaber burns."

The K'Aar sighs, and as his grandson joins them, he wraps an arm around his shoulders. "Come on, lad, let's go."

K'Ahauna looks wrecked. "I'd…"

"I know. We've all been there, one way or another. At least she was kind about it." He nods to Threepio. "Are you showing us back to our rooms?"

"Yes, K'Aar. And by the time we get there, I have a feeling Colonel Jefferies will have the formal contract written up. If you like, we can go over it together."

"I would like that."

"Excellent." Threepio hits the enter button on the elevator, and it swishes open. The K'Arans head in, and Poe notices that Jon doesn't, so he hangs back, too. "Grand Marshal? Commander?"

"We'll wait," Jon replies. "Unlike you, we're not going to the I-Deck."

Threepio nods, and hits the close button.

* * *

And a moment later, Jon and Poe are alone, in the throne room, waiting.

As soon as he knows the elevator is out of earshot, Jon runs his hands through his hair, slouches, moans quietly, and then looks up at Poe. "Finally."

Poe grins at him. "You mean, that's not how you thought that'd go?"

Jon rubs his forehead. "I'd have appreciated things going closer to script, but… We didn't fail."

Poe inclines his head. "And even if we had, it wouldn't have been the end of the world."

"I guess not." Jon pops the collar on his vest, and begins taking off his rank hexes. He smiles a little, then he looks to Poe. "Relaxing time?"

"Gods, YES!" He glances at the elevator. "Where the hell are we? Closer to my ship or your room?"

"Your ship, I'd assume. We're on the AAA-Deck, so…" They hear the sound of the elevator returning. They step in.

"That was really fast," Poe says.

"That's because they only went one level up. It'll be easier for them to go up, and then cut across. We're going to go straight up to the deck your ship is on, and then cut across."

"Good." Poe touches his suit. "Look, this is, without a doubt the best suit I've ever worn, but…"

"But it's not a 'you-relaxing-having-a-good-time' look. I get that. Hell, I designed this," he gestures to his Grand Marshall uniform, "And it's not my idea of relaxing either. So, we'll hit your ship, you get comfy, and then back to my place so I can get out of my monkey suit. You dance?"

Poe grins at that, widely. "I've been known to, on occasion."

"Is that part of your idea of relaxing?"

"Sometimes. Is it yours?"

"Depends on how fast the stims wear off. I'm probably good for another three hours, which might mean just get blasted and crash, but I if I've got a bit more… There are a few decent clubs on the F-Deck."

"Excellent," Poe says as the elevator speeds them upwards.

* * *

"So, this is home for you?" This time Jon's really looking at Poe's ship. It's a freighter, a high quality, but fairly small one. Compared to the fighters Poe normally flies, it's huge, but compared to the mega freighters that carry millions of kilotons, this is tiny.

"My one true love." Poe says as he pats Micah's hull and keys in the code that opens his hatch. Though the real Micah would have been horrified to see _this_ is the ship Poe named after him. The real Micah likely wouldn't have deigned to even fly this thing. Too big, too slow, too ugly.

Fortunately, Jon doesn't know enough about ship names to ask why his freighter is named Micah. He does know enough to look around at the living space and say, "This is nice."

"Thanks."

"Spacious for a ship, right?"

Poe doesn't point out that they're on a ship in a ship right now, and that, _no_ this is not spacious for a ship. "Most people with one of these would have at least a crew of four, so… It's spacious for BB and I." At the sound of his name, BB rolls over, and sort of looks up at Jon as Poe finishes up with, "Little tighter for a traditional compliment. Anything interesting happen while I was gone?"

BB beeps at him for a while, and Poe nods, and nods some more, and then smirks. "Well, I'm glad I missed that."

Jon asks, "Missed what?"

"Got a call in from Chewie, asking if I'm up for some babysitting, because he's going stir crazy stuck in the _Falcon_ with Paige."

"Paige is the baby, right?"

"Yeah. And I'll go rescue him tomorrow."

"You do kids?"

"For a while. I'm a fairly good Uncle/older-brother-type, but I've never wanted to be Dad. Teaching and hanging out with them is enough. After a few days of all kids all the time, I get kind of itchy and need to head off for a bit."

Jon nods at that. "I'm the youngest of five. I've got nieces and nephews all over the place. And for a day or two, it's fun…"

"Yeah, for a day or two, and I like coming back to them just fine. It's really nice that every time I land on Lirium there's this collection of people who are really excited to see me and want to know what I've been up to, but I need grown-up time, too."

"Exactly."

Poe gestures to his galley. "Have a seat, relax," gestures to the drink cabinet. "Grab a drink if you want one. I'll be out in a bit."

Then he vanishes into his cabin.

The first thing Poe did with this ship, after landing it on Lirium, was refurb the living space. Since he's mostly moving around people and things for the settlement, he didn't need quite as much storage space as the average freighter. He added three small cabins and an extra refresher, so he could move kids around easier. Then he and Rey spent a few days ripping out the Captain's and Crew's cabins. Finn, Rose, and Chewie showed up just as they were wrapping that up. Then all five of them worked on getting a new bigger, more comfortable cabin, set up for him.

So, he's got some very non-standard adaptations for his cabin, like a bed big enough for him to stretch out on. An actual bed. Not a bunk tucked into a shelf on the wall. A massage chair for all of those hard to reach places he just can't get to himself. A small workout corner so he doesn't end up like most captains, getting rounder and rounder with each trip.

He strips out of the suit Jon put him in, and lays it neatly on his bed, before going to his closet (also bigger and better appointed than standard for a ship) and getting out hangers for it, and some of his normal clothing.

He glances at _normal._

Might be going dancing. Might be _relaxing._ Might be…

He sighs. He thinks he's reading Jon right, and he's fairly sure _relaxing_ involves sweet, supple friction, moaning, lots of slick, and squishing sounds, all of which Poe would rather enjoy doing with Jon. Except… He can remember last night's reservations about that.

He's staring at the sort of thing he'll often wear to go clubbing. His fuck-me-hard-and-deep outfit. He's reaching for it.

Jon's wedding band is in his mind's eye.

 _Fuck._

He rubs his forehead. _Take it easy._

Besides, if Jon's right about how long he's got until the stim wears off, he really doesn't have the time to get into this. Not… not the way he wants to.

He pulls out his usual out and about clothing. Button down, trousers, jacket. He puts the jacket back, it's warm enough he doesn't need it.

Slow and easy. Have a few drinks, maybe if Jon's feeling up to it, a little dancing, and then tuck him into bed with a kiss on the cheek.

Poe's shaft is _yelling_ at him, cursing him because it's fairly sure this is the worst plan he's ever had. There is a perfectly fine man out there who would likely jump on him if given the chance, and… _Stop it. You'll get yours soon enough._

* * *

"Okay. I know we're on the F-Deck. I see restaurants, food carts… uh," Jon follows Poe's gaze, seeing what he's curious about. It's twenty minutes later, and most of that's been spent in an elevator going up, but now they're out in the thick of it, and Poe's looking around.

"Squammath courts. It's a game, sort of like… You ever play hoop ball?"

"Yeah."

"Okay, hoop ball with goals instead of nets. You kick or throw the ball around, instead of bouncing it."

"Okay… I see shops and that's a cinema, but… I'm not seeing any clubs or bars or places I'd go dancing."

Jon doesn't exactly roll his eyes, and he doesn't exactly grin, but it wouldn't be a leap to suggest either of those things had happened. "We're in a more 'family friendly' section of the F-Deck. The place where Colonel So-and-so can take his wife and kiddos and not have to explain what that nice gentleman wearing the bright orange shorts, and nothing but bright orange shorts, is selling."

"So, there's an _adult_ section," Poe says with a grin.

"Yeah. Once I get changed, we can head there." Jon steers them through the market toward one of the hallways branching off. "Hold up," he yells to the tram that's just about to pull away, and, fortunately, the driver does. "We're a bit past the central hub, but my rooms are on the far leeward side, so I was figuring you didn't want to walk all twenty klicks."

"You're right about that."

* * *

They're quiet on the ride. Poe doesn't know how much of that is the fact that this is a First Order… or was a First Order ship, and you're better off not talking about your business where anyone can hear you, or if Jon's just tired.

Judging by the way he's resting back against the seat, probably tired.

Well, that's okay. Poe doesn't mind some time in his own head, watching the F-Deck pass them by. They're in a residential hallway, passing by flat after flat after flat. It reminds him a lot of the years he was on Coruscant with Leia. Buildings that spanned kilometers, on and on and on. No natural light, no sign of the sky.

You could live your whole life on Coruscant without ever seeing the sky. Without ever feeling fresh air on your face.

He always found that a bit claustrophobic.

BB finds that amusing. The cockpit of his fighter was usually three meters square, if that. Obviously, being in a small enclosure isn't the issue. No visible sky is.

There's no sky here, and the hallways go on and on and on.

"Do you miss the sky?" he asks Jon.

Jon blinks, and shakes his head a bit, like he's waking up. "Uh… No. I… Well, you saw. My room is far enough aft that I have a window."

"Right."

"Do you… I mean…" He looks at the hallway. "Is that why you live in your ship? Always a view of the sky?"

"No, but it doesn't hurt. I'm on the move a lot. I could have a place on Lirium, but it's easier to just keep everything all together with _Micah_."

Jon thinks about that. "I can see that. If I never knew where the next day would take me, it'd likely be nice to have all my stuff go with me."

"Yeah, it is."

They're both quiet for a while, and then Jon says, "So… How do you decide where to go next?"

Poe cocks his head a bit. "Well, for a long time, someone gave me mission objectives, and then I planned everything out to make sure those objectives were met. I'm good enough at that, and then taking care of everything, that I got a lot of on-my-own style missions."

"And let me guess, then there were so few of you that they couldn't afford to give you a partner or team?"

Poe nods. "Yeah. So, I'd have something like, 'Well, it's your bloody fault we're down to seven ships. Go get us a functional Navy. With pilots.'"

"And you just… get them? I mean, you're pretty, but… no one's that sweet of a sweet talker."

Poe barks a short laugh. "Trust me, I _know._ I'm good at cards, too. So play a lot of sabbac or poker. Win money, win ships. Meet people. Find people who didn't love the First Order, sweet talk them into offering to help. Turning help into ships. It's slow. But we were building up when Ren took over and stopped doing the shit that makes recruiting easy."

It's clear Jon's not sure what he means.

"Alderaan was the best thing that ever happened to the Rebellion in terms of recruiting. And, if we'd had… anything to work off of, the Hosnian System would have flipped all the support our way, except—"

"Except unlike the Rebellion there weren't enough of you left ten days later to take advantage."

"Exactly. And then Snoke's gone. Hux is dead. Ren's freeing slaves, and… And Hux took out something like 80% of the Army of the New Republic, so it's not like I can really go through their guys, find people who want to join up. The ones who were left generally stayed local, keeping watch on their own homes so…"

"You become rebels without a cause."

"Pretty much. That's when Leia gave up."

"And without her, you weren't going to keep going?"

He shrugs a bit. "I'd already talked to Rey. I was looking for kids then. Seems I've got a talent for finding Force sensitives who need a good home. But… Captain goes down with the ship, so I was going to see it to the end. I was there the day the Resistance began, I couldn't let it go while it was still breathing." He looks away from the passing flats to Jon, "You ever think about leaving?"

Jon laughs at that. "Every fucking day while I was in training. Every minute those first few months. But… Nothing at home. Mom made that clear. I didn't take her 'soft option,' gone off and gotten myself married to some well-born lady. And I've got skills, but they're fairly particular. I've got connections, but again, in a very narrow field that I'm the wrong sex for, and the queen of said field had pretty much put a Do-Not-Touch sign on me. And, of course, once you're done training, it's not like you can just leave the First Order. They didn't take kindly to attempting to do that."

"I certainly recall a lot of objecting when Finn and I tried it."

"Yeah. It's a little different for people in the kind of training track I was in… Hux grads are good for a lot of things, but creative work doesn't seem to be one of those things, so people like me didn't train with them. And, during training, they'd let us go if we didn't want to stick it out. We're… dead weight if you break one of us, and... a lot of us were well enough connected that you'd make life... difficult if you broke one of us, so better to let us go than make us stay. But once you take your first stripe, you're _in._ So I'm twenty-four. I can still bug out because I'm not done training yet, but… Broke and on my own was terrifying, and an Ensign's commission in the design corps wasn't. So, here I am."

"And here you stayed."

"Kylo… I guess he'd been in charge about a year… Ten months? Something like that. And I get a call to go see him." Jon sighs. "You ever been so scared you wet yourself?"

Poe just looks at him. "I'm a _combat_ pilot."

"Yeah, that's why I'm asking. I know you've been in the kind of situation where you could get that scared, I just don't know if you've done it."

Poe sighs. Jon apparently is not close to any other fliers. "Flight suits have… personal hygiene and waste disposal units."

"Diapers?"

"Basically. Because, yes, it's common to get that scared, and also because it's not like a fighter, which you might be in for _hours,_ sometimes _days,_ has a refresher."

"Ah."

"Yeah. Anyway…"

"Okay. Kylo's been in charge for a few months, and… He's cleaning house. I mean… The man is killing officers right and left, and it's not exactly like he had a reputation for being cool or calm under the best of circumstances. And I get the call to see him."

"And you shit yourself, because why the fuck does he want to see you?"

"Yeah, basically. Did someone implicate me in one of the plans to take him down? Did he think I was one of Hux's pets? I mean… Fuck… I just… took over Tactical Design. I wasn't ordered to do it. But…" He gives Poe a look that says a whole lot, most of which he doesn't want to put into words. "So, at the very least, maybe I was about to get killed for overstepping my bounds by a light year, and who knows, maybe one of the latest round of the purge had named me?"

"Were you... one of Hux's plants?" Because it's occurring to Poe that maybe, in the beginning, not everyone was in love with Ren taking over. And if he was afraid of being named...

"Oh, fuck no. I never met him, but... Just the holovids gave me the willies. There was just something... terrifying about that man."

Poe makes a mental note to tell him the talking-to-Hux story, but later, "So, you go up to see him…"

"Down, but yes. Heart in my throat, guts churning, in a cold sweat, and he's distracted and pleasant, and wants to know if I can see about expanding our uniform line to fit non-humans."

"Which you can do?"

"Which I can do in my fucking sleep. I mean, okay, it's a pain in the ass, but the droids do the work. We make them standard sizes because it saves on costs, but taking measurements when you enlist, and then making a fucking uniform for anyone who's not within the standard ranges isn't a problem. Hell, I can't put Kylo into one of our standard uniform sizes, not and have it look good, so it's not like we don't have a protocol in place for non-standard sized people. Had to do a bit of work for non-humanoids, but so far we've only had a few of them, and the challenge of something that looks good for something that say, doesn't have legs, or has too many of them, is fun."

Poe nods at that. "So… he gave you a job you found interesting, and that kept you going?"

"I think so. I'm not sure if I'd have left, but… I was on my way to burn out. Just… uh… 'Give it time, and it'll get better,' but… It wasn't getting better. I was going through the motions. Kept my people going, but everything was hollow. Having something to really _do._ That kept me here, and going."

"Yeah. Know all about that." He says it while watching the latest stretch of market go by.

Jon looks at him, closely, really feeling that. "Do you?"

Poe half smiles, a little. "Yeah. I'll tell you about it, one day."

* * *

"Home sweet home," Poe says as he and Jon step into Jon's place.

"Yep." He heads over to his fishbowl and feeds the fish. "Bonnie, Clive, Tom, Harry. Have a good day while I was out?"

They bop up to the top of the water and gobble the flakes.

"You talk to fish."

"You talk to BB."

"BB responds."

Jon shrugs at that. "I'm going to get changed. Feel like being useful and pouring us something to drink while I do?"

"Sure. What do you want?"

"I've got vodka in the cooler and would _love_ some right about now."

"I can do that."

Jon smiles at him, and then heads into his room, and… doesn't close the door.

Poe's shaft _immediately_ notices that. His head notices, too, just at about the same time. And, sure, okay, maybe the idea is the door is open so he can get his lips wrapped around a shot glass that much faster, but…

Poe's pretty sure a shot glass isn't the only thing Jon's looking to get his lips wrapped around.

He hears the sound of a zipper being undone. Then he closes his eyes, and swallows. Maybe he's misread Jon. Maybe he's a lot more… ready… than he looks. Got stuck, moving on, reason to keep going… That's hopeful and good, right?

Yeah. Right.

Poe goes to the cooler, and there is a bottle of vodka in there. He finds the glasses and pours them two of them. He turns a bit, and… There's another picture, Jon, and the husband, on the beach, having what looks like is a great time.

"You like beaches?" he calls out to Jon.

"More Lane's thing. I'd never seen one before the day that picture was taken."

"Oh. There are some nice ones on Lirium. If winter ever eases off…" He glances at the photo of the two of them again. "You look like you and he were having a lot of fun."

Jon comes to the door of his bedroom. He's in his shorts, and nothing else, and Poe forgets to breathe for a heartbeat, because… _Shit…_ He drags his eyes up from Jon under those shorts, which aren't exactly hiding much, to his face, and… _Shit._ Jon's got a sort of soft aching look on his face. "Look, if you want to know more about Lane, that's fine, and I'll be happy to talk about him, but not tonight. Tonight, I want to get blasted, relax, and have a good time, not cry."

And that more or less derails any thoughts Poe's having about kissing his way down that delicious looking trail of hair below Jon's navel and peeling him out of those shorts. This is not a man who's ready to move on, yet. "Okay." He hands Jon the shot glass. "Cheers."

"Back at you." He shoots it down, and stares at Poe, who is not moving away from the counter, at all, and then turns and heads back to his room. He still doesn't close the door.

Poe pours his shot back into the bottle. Then he gets a wine glass, and the bottle of wine from the cooler, and pours himself one of them.

He's having a hard enough time making good decisions around Jon because of how fucking pretty he is, and he knows that if he gets more than mildly toasted, his shaft is going to end up in charge of decision making, and it's not going to make the sort of decisions sober Poe approves of.

He takes the vodka bottle, and his glass of wine, and goes to sit on the sofa, (not looking into Jon's open door, for a good two seconds, and then he peeks, and… holy shit that man's got an ass for days, and then he slams his eyes forward) and sits down.

"So, which one is which?"

"Which one what?"

"The fish."

"Harry's the little gold one, Bonnie's the pink one, Clive is black, and Tom's green."

Poe nods, and stares at the fish. "Hey guys, I'm Poe."

Jon comes out. "Now who's talking to fish?"

"Well, I figure—" He looks over at Jon, standing there, begging to be admired, and his words die. He licks his lips. He nods. It's not like Jon's got a direct view of the inside of his brains and can see what he thinks sexy it, but… Damn, if he can't.

He's in a tight shirt with no sleeves, and snug trousers. It's not… club wear, or aggressively sexy, but… Shit, it cups his ass in all the right ways, and there's hints of something else very good inside those pants, and his fucking _arms!_ Jon's not huge. He's more on the long and lean side of things, but he's got amazing arms, and right now Poe really wants to watch those biceps flex as Jon holds himself up, over him, thrusting sure and deep and… _FUCK!_

All of that takes a combined fifteen seconds. Then Poe makes himself grin, look Jon up and down, and say, "Well, aren't you a pretty little thing."

Jon strides right up to him, standing in front of him, between his legs, looking down at him. "Do you think I've got a full ten centimeters on you?"

Poe scoffs at that. "Six. Maybe." But he's sure Jon's right. The man put him in a perfectly fitted suit by eyeing him. Then he stands up, and his eyes are right on lip level with Jon. He looks up just a bit. "But if you put an outfit like that on, 'pretty little thing' and 'gorgeous' is what you're looking to hear, right?"

Jon runs his fingers through his hair. "Absolutely. After all, we're _relaxing._ "

Poe keeps looking. He bites his lip, hard. "You walk into a room, and every man in it's going to drool."

"Person. Every person. After all, I'm not picky."

Poe grins at him, feeling the heat of his body, and how easy it would be to close the five or six centimeters between them. "So, how do you like to relax?"

"Well, baby, let's find out." He reaches back, pours himself another shot, and downs it.

"Baby? I know I've got five years on you."

"Four. I'm older than Kylo."

"Barely."

"By almost a year. If he was born on Concordance Day… That's two weeks before my birthday."

"Oooo…" Poe sits back down, and takes a sip of his wine. "Dancing, clubbing, shooting the shit and getting drunk?"

Jon sits next to him, already starting to look a little loose and a bit flushed from the alcohol.

Poe makes himself look, but not move. The man is fucking sex on legs, and he's going to do his best to be a good little boy and _not_ do anything about it.

Jon settles back, relaxed, stretches one leg out, foot bare… Shit, Poe doesn't even like feet, but… Jon's is long and narrow with really nicely shaped toes, and it's on his thigh and… He wants to lick it, suck a few of those toes, see how Jon'd respond that that. Party Boy's going to kill him. "Nearest club's at least forty-five minutes from here, and I can feel it, I've got maybe two hours before I crash. So… shoot the shit, and then bedtime."

"I can deal with that."

They're quiet. Jon's eyes are closed, and he's soft and loose on the sofa. Then he pulls his head up and says, glances at Poe's barely tasted glass of wine. "Is this what relaxing looks like for you?"

"Not generally. I'm trying something new."

"Turning over a new leaf, Master Dameron? Feeling… responsible or something?"

"Or something."

"I thought that was the point of relaxing. Let the responsibilities go."

"One day, Jon, one day. Right now… I can wait."

That gets an intrigued look out of Jon. "What are we waiting for?"

"You, nothing. Get blasted, I'll watch your back."

"Is that all you'll watch?"

"Tonight, yeah."

Jon looks puzzled by that, but he does pour himself another shot and take it, shivering at the feel of it burning down his throat. "Okay. That's enough." He stands up, still in good control of his legs, and picks up the bottle. "The crash is going to hit me hard, and if I have any more, I'll be a wreck tomorrow." He crosses the room, puts the bottle back into the cooler, rinses his glass, and then returns to the sofa.

"What's on for your tomorrow?" Poe asks, as Jon sits close to him.

"R4-6837, my secretary, knows. Hopefully setting up more of these. And you're babysitting."

"Yeah. Chewie's off at Maz's. I'll head there, make sure he gets some baby-free time. Pick up some more supplies for Lirium, kill some more time, and then go home. Got… Probably five more days until I can go back."

"I thought it lasted ten days."

"It does, but it takes twelve to thirty-six hours to get going, and they all got sick at slightly different times, so I don't go back until I get the okay from MX-6."

"Not going to cut it short and get bit by the last virus of the lot?"

"Exactly. I've seen _nothing_ to make me think this is something I want to experience."

"I don't blame you for that. One thing I know we've got to get is some sort of plan in play for what happens if Kylo gets sick again. The First Order didn't have any formal succession in play, because that would have been seen as encouraging whoever was next in line to go after Snoke, but I think we should have something like that here."

"Not a bad plan."

"Let me guess, that's the sort of thing you guys had pages of manuals for in the New Republic?"

"Of course. And part of working security was making sure the guys who preferred the number two didn't go out of their way to turn him into number one."

Jon's looking at Poe, eyes soft and warm, alcohol flush on his cheeks, lips wet, and Poe's a centimeter away from leaning into him and kissing him when he says, "Okay. You're a combat fighter pilot. How did you end up on security? That makes almost as much sense as hiring a dressmaker to design armor."

Poe closes his eyes, takes a sip of his wine, and tries not to look like Jon just poured a bucket of cold water on him, because that pulls him right away from how pretty Jon is, and dumps him back into why he's trying to be a good boy.

"How about this? One day, you'll tell me all about Lane, and I'll tell you about why I stopped flying, except for shuttling people around, for five years."

"You saying it'll make you cry?"

"Not anymore, but it doesn't make me smile."

Jon nods. "Okay. Tragic backstories are tabled for a later date."

"Sure." Poe glances to the pictures. "Okay, I've been wondering about this, and… If I'm out of line, just smack me-"

"Oh baby, you've got to be really _good_ or very _bad_ to get me to smack you."

Poe closes his eyes, squeezes his legs together, and does _not_ respond to that. Then gets himself back under control before saying, "Anyway, I've heard you talk about a girl friend, and obviously, Lane, so… You 'verse?"

"Wide as the galaxy, love. Boys, girls, inbetween, none of the above, I like 'em all."

"You'll just wrap those pretty lips of yours around anything, won't you?" gets out of Poe's mouth before he can stop it.

"And have an _absolutely fabulous_ time doing it." Jon's eyes are warm and full of satisfied mischief. "You like it, too. Don't tell me you don't. You'll break my heart."

"I certainly wouldn't want to do that." Not at all. "And yeah, I like it, too." He thinks about it. It's been… weeks since he got on his knees for someone. Too long. "Nothing like making someone sing. Hitched breath, flushed skin, that… throb… Yeah, I like that, too."

"Good." Jon's smiling at him. "Not the worst plan I've heard." He licks his lips. He blinks. His eyelashes are so long, and his eyes so blue, and he's just _gazing_ at Poe and…

He's thirty-eight, it's been a while since he's gotten hard without a hand on him, but if Jon keeps that look up…

Jon licks his lips again, leans toward him, and then says, "We going to do something about this?"

Poe knows, he just _knows,_ that he can close the gap, pull Jon close, kiss him into next month, and… Again, he'd be _so good._ It's all over his face and eyes and the way he's looking at him, and that mouth… Shit _that mouth._ He'd wrap those pretty little lips around his shaft and take him through heaven and out the other side and…

He's still wearing his ring, and Lane's picture is on the wall, and he lives in the home they share, and if this is going to ever be more than fucking… It can't start now.

Poe smirks. It physically hurts to say it, but he does. "About what?"

Jon looks like he just had the rug pulled out from under him. He jerks back, a little uncoordinated from the alcohol, stunned.

Poe gives him a wink, stands up, and fires off a salute. "Think I'm going to call it a night. Pleasure working with you, Grand Marshall."

Jon swallows, hard. He nods. "And with you."

* * *

 _What are you doing back here?_ BB asks Poe when he returns to his ship.

"Kicking myself in my own ass so hard I've got toes sticking out of my mouth."

 _That's anatomically impossible for humans._

Poe waves that off.

 _Where's pretty boy?_

"Hopefully in bed, sleeping, not hating me. I think he had enough that tonight should be fuzzy."

 _What do you mean hopefully? You didn't leave him there?_

Poe grits his teeth. "No, I'm being mature, and responsible. Older and wiser. So I didn't fucking leave him in bed. And I'm not in there with him. And… _Fuck!"_

BB rolls over to him. _Are you okay?_

"No. I'm fucking not." Now he pours himself the vodka. A _large_ shot of it. "He practically gift-wrapped himself for me, and I said no, because…" he shakes his head… "Because I want to be more than just a fuck buddy, and I don't think he can take more than that right now."

 _Doesn't he get to decide that?_

"I…" he opens and closes his mouth, and then drinks half of his glass. "I think if I said to him, 'Hey, you're fucked in the head right now because you're still deep in mourning, and I've been there and done that, and it fucking sucks, but you've got to get out of that before there's a shot for us, that'd… probably just insult him or something. He's got to… I don't know… get closer to out of it before I can even lay it on the table and not have it sound like I'm being… I don't know."

 _You wanna go back?_

"Of course, I want to go back! I want him…" There are a lot of ways he wants Jon, but he's fairly sure BB'll just tell him they're anatomically impossible, too.

 _Humans are weird._

"Yeah. I'm going to…" He gets up and wanders idly toward his room. _Wank and go to sleep, probably._

But before that. He grabs his datapad, and sets it for a note.

* * *

Ten hours later, Jon wakes feeling wrecked. He's exhausted and fuzzy, his mouth tastes like death, and his eyes feel gummy.

He knows he and Poe did… something. Talking. There was talking the night before. He remembers… okay, he's pretty sure he remembers everything. The details are muzzy but there are no blank spots. He'd just about thrown himself into Poe's lap, and… Shit, he sprinted out of there.

"Fuck." Jon rubs his head. No hangover. That's something. He's just tired. Yeah, stims are safe, but you feel pretty rough after taking a few of them.

Stims… tired… Poe… Talking with Poe. Talking sexy with Poe… Poe reacting to being talked to like that… He's sure that Poe likes men. That feels _right,_ but… With the way he ran out… "Shit."

He didn't take Poe for cloaked, Likes men, afraid to admit it. Flirts but runs away if it gets real, but… That's exactly what he did, so…

"Fuck."

He sits up, and swings his legs to the side of his bed, he sees his main datapad. It's blinking at him. Personal letter.

Since he gets one of those every other decade, he pulls the pad close and turns it on.

 _Jon,_

 _Hey, I'm off babysitting now. Wanted to let you know I enjoyed spending time with you. I hope to do it again, soon. If you ever need Commander Dameron, for any reason, just give me a call._

 _Wasn't sure how hungover you might be. You were looking pretty loose when I left, so one of those little food delivery droids should be lurking around with my magic hangover potion. Give it a try, and then go drink some water. I'm not going to say it'll make everything better, but it'll help._

 _Til next time,_

 _Poe_

Jon just stares at it, utterly clueless as to what to do with that.


	20. Sick

Kylo's so cold.

He remembers reading about cultures that, when their sick and elderly got too weak to live, they'd put them out on the ice, so they'd just drift off to sleep in the cold, and end it nice and easy.

Kylo's not sure if he's so damn sick Rey stuck him on an ice floe or not. That would require opening his eyes, and he doesn't want to do that.

He is sure he's _cold._

* * *

Except for the part that's not cold. His insides are on fire. From the back of his molars to his rectum is a tube of living flame.

He's hit the part where he wouldn't mind that so much, if it would bloody well warm him up.

But it's not.

* * *

The third time he cycles through it, he's identified the pattern. He's _cold._ Bone shaking, muscle shivering, goosebumps on the skin, no amount of heat in the world helps, _cold._

And then he's not.

And for a _minute_ that feels really good. He can stretch out a little, and feel how sore he is, and how everything aches, but at least he's not _cold._

For a minute.

And then everything in his body, and by the third time, the correct answer is, not all the much, is stampeding out of him.

By the third time he knows he's got to get moving as soon as he begins to feel warm, or else there's going to be a lot of cleaning, and… Well, he'd almost rather feel like this for a full month than have Rey have to clean up after him when he messes himself.

Some things are an insult to even his dignity.

* * *

Dry.

So fucking dry.

His mouth has never been this dry.

He got stuck for three days on a Force-damned desert, without his mask, and with one day's worth of water, and he at least still had a damp tongue when he finally got off.

When he was with Luke, he got a cold so bad he couldn't breathe through his nose, at all, which meant he had to breathe through his mouth, his lips cracked and bled, his tongue was dry, he felt like he was going to choke every time he closed his mouth, but at least if he closed it, everything got wet again.

His mouth is closed. His body is cold, so, so fucking cold, and that distracts him for… A time… Eventually his mind wanders back to his mouth. That is closed. Because he can breathe through his nose. But his mouth is dry.

He gently touches his tongue with his fingers.

It's dry.

He tries to pull up enough spit to wet his mouth.

Nothing happens.

That's probably not good.

And then he's not cold anymore, but at this point he doesn't bother to move. All he's going to do is spasm and thrash.

Nothing is going to come out.

* * *

Warmth and light, and Rey… Rey's here.

He unclenches for a moment, feeling… still horrible, but he's not quite so cold or hurting quite so bad.

He'd be alarmed by that, but… He's warm because she's touching him, not because his body is going to do it's best to excrete his digestive system from both sides simultaneously.

Concern. Rey's worried about him. That's not good, either.

He valiantly attempts to say something like, "I'm fine," but nothing happens. His body won't do it.

He's moving. The blankets are slipping off and the air is assaulting him with razors of ice. She's… lifting him… propping him up… something. His head flops forward in a way he'd find disturbing if he weren't so fucking cold.

"I'm taking you to the _Supremacy._ "

He flails a little at that. The last thing he wants to do is _move._ Why the hell would she move him? Everything is as bad as it's going to get here, and moving him will just make everything cold and hurt and…

And he's in his bed in his room on the _Supremacy,_ and the sheets are way too fucking cold. They're like being smothered in full body ice, and he hates this, and then for a second he's warm, but… It doesn't matter. He half tries to lurch toward the refresher and just manages to fall out of the bed and that hurts even more, and…

Rey's got him up, in the middle of the bed, petting his hair, making some sort of soft sound. He hears her talking, but can't really track the words.

* * *

He's so damn cold, and now some sadist is attempting to pry him out from under the blankets, and is grabbing his arm, and…

Rey's next to him, she's petting his hair and face and making shushing sounds, but he's just so _cold._

And then… "Fuck…" grinds out of him. First fully intelligible thing he's said in a while. Something's got his arm, and he's trying to fight it off, but it won't let go, and it _hurts_ , and Rey's still petting him, kissing his forehead, and saying… something, but he can't really follow it.

Whatever it was lets go of his arm, and it's sore, and… tethered… Something stuck a tube in his hand, and… IV… Rey's saying something about he needs fluids, and she's grabbing his hand to keep him from trying to yank it out, because it's so fucking cold and it hurts and he hurts and…

Everything is heavy and tired and cold and…

And…

* * *

Humming.

He's tired and sick and hurts and… small…

Jostling.

His face is against a warm shoulder, and his body held…

"Mama…"

"Shhh…" Rocking… soft, gentle rocking… "Just sleep, Ben, you'll feel better soon."

He's so tired. He drifts against his mother's shoulder, feeling her gently rocking him, humming a tune that he knows but can't place. He'd recognize it if he ever heard it again, but… He doesn't know its name.

A hand, warm, solid, on his back. Lips against the top of his head. Low voice. _Dad._ "How's he doing?"

The feel of his mother's voice against his forehead. "Pretty sad right now. Double ear infection."

"He'll be okay?" Fear in his father's voice. This _thing_ is in his son, and he can't help or take care of it, or… It's in his throat and making his nerves jangle.

"Doc says little kids get them all the time. Give the antis a day or so, and he'll be up and crawling around again." His mother kissing his head. "Tomorrow, sweetie. You'll be feeling better tomorrow."

"Here," Dad's voice. The sensation of motion. A new shoulder and chest, jostling again, settling back. "I've got him. We can spend some quality time together, and you can get a meal without a baby on your chest."

The feel of his mother smiling. She's close. Another kiss on the back of his head. The sense of a kiss for his father.

Han's hand is on his back, stroking gently up and down. "They've got the pro-am pod races going now. Wanna watch them with me?"

He doesn't respond. He does snuggle in closer. There's a sound in the background. Voices, dull, words he doesn't know.

"I used to do that, you know? When I was young. Not young like you are, but… too young. That's why they agreed to let me learn to fly. I had the reflexes for pod racing. What do you think, give it ten or so years, and we'll get a pod, and I'll teach you to race."

He's got the sense of his Dad smirking. Sharing a secret with him.

"Your Mom'll hate it. We won't tell her. Not until you're good at it. That won't take long. She'll fret and worry."

He kisses the top of Ben's head.

 _I will, too._ He doesn't say it, but Kylo feels it.

* * *

Cold, sore… The fire inside him seems to be out.

He's a little clearer, maybe.

He's… alone, he thinks. Something is in the room with him, but it's not a person.

He's pretty sure it's not a threat, but if it is… Well, he's in no bloody shape to do anything about it. He's fairly sure he can't even teleport right now if he wanted to.

Beeping. The thing is beeping.

Kylo finally peels an eyelid open, and for a moment everything is a dark blur, but finally his room comes into focus, and… The beeping thing is a med droid, and… It's… changing out his IV.

"Dehydrated?" his voice rasps out of him.

The little droid can't talk, but it does nod.

A moment after that, C8 is standing next to the bed, hovering over him. "Are you awake, sir?"

"Maybe?"

"Then I'll be brief. Mistress Rey brought you here when it became clear you needed more medical attention than she could get you wherever it is you go when you aren't here. You have anti-viral resistant Hiffa virus. The droid is providing you with IV hydration, a mild analgesic, and an anti-emetic."

Kylo doesn't know that word, but he knows what he was doing before, and isn't feeling a need to do now, so he fills in the blank.

He nods, very slowly.

"Mistress Rey tells me this is the third day you've been sick, and apparently Hiffa tends to last for ten days. She comes to see you for an hour or so ever six hours, and should be here in another hour or so."

Kylo nods at that, too. If she's not here, she's probably dealing with all the other sick Maji.

He wants her here.

Wants to be held and comforted.

Everyone else who's sick likely does, too.

He doesn't verbalize that, or try to send it through the Force.

His eyes slip shut, and he slides back to sleep.

* * *

He's so cold. Ice on his back, fire on his face… His vision is double and… Cold, so fucking cold. If he lets himself, he can just slip into the cold and never come back… He lies still, waiting.

Be done with his hate and anger and shame and…

It's so fucking cold.

And he hurts so much.

And he can feel her, standing there, saber… the saber that should be his… is in her hand, poised. _End it._ He's thinking it, but not hard. End the cold and the pain and the shame of it.

End the image burned into the backs of his eyes of Han Solo's last breath.

 _End it._ "Please." He doesn't give it voice, but it slips from between his lips nonetheless.

She's not moving. She should be moving. He's down, on his back, defenseless and…

He opens his eyes; she's just standing there watching him.

She won't strike him unarmed, and down. He's struggling, trying to find a way to get up. His right arm is… wrong. It feels, numb and weak. His face is on fire and numb at the same time, and he doesn't know how that can happen, but at least he can see out of both eyes now. Right leg… if he can get that under him… He shifts a bit and feels his entire left side _rip_. Chewie's bowcaster. His insides are inside right now only by his will and the Force. Left arm… Right leg, left arm, just sort of… _Fuck!_ She got his left shoulder, he remembers that now, and trying to put any weight on it…

Cold, so fucking cold, he could just lie back and let the cold take him, but… He'll have to face Snoke if he does that, and…

He gets his right leg under him, makes his abs pull him up, ignores the squishing sensation that he's sure is half of his internal organs falling out and collapses back when the ground shakes, roaring, pulling her away from him.

Nothing to be had for it now.

Kylo collapses into the snow, and hopes his eyes don't open again.

* * *

Warmth. He's not so cold. Hands… warm hands. Stroking his face. His face that burns numb, except it's not, not now.

She's come back?

Rey didn't come back. Hux and a collection of Stormtroopers found him, and then got him into a medbay where they put him back together.

Soft hands against his hair, petting rhythmically. He's in his bed, not the forest on Starkiller. The cold is in his body, fever burning bright. Not a planet ripping apart.

And Rey came back. It took a while, but…

Stroking his hair, and forehead. It's nice, soothing, and he'd purr a little, but that takes energy, and just lying around, limp, getting petted feels good.

It's… he has no idea… It's a time, he's waking up, again. He's got to be waking up, because Starkiller had to be a dream, but… He blinks a few times.

She's next to him, resting, cuddling him, and he feels the thrum of her Force, just a soft easy glow.

"Hey," her voice is quiet.

"Hi."

"You actually awake?"

"For a minute." Though going back to sleep sounds really good. Peeing and brushing the taste of whatever died in his mouth away does, too. Granted, the energy necessary to get up, walk all five meters to his refresher, take care of himself, and then walk five meters back seems enormous, though.

More cold. Rey's moved. He feels something brush his lip. It's a tube. He sucks gently, realizing that she, or the med droid, has apparently decided he can start taking liquids by mouth again.

It's not water. Or tea. If it's soup, it's awfully bland.

Probably just a sodium-vitamin-calorie-hydration mix.

It's glorious.

She pulls it away after a few sips, and he pouts at that.

"I'll give you more, later, if this stays down."

He makes a small, 'mmm' sort of noise, and then begins the mental gymnastics necessary to get himself into a somewhat seated position.

"Are you getting up?"

"I'm going to attempt it. The IV put liquids back into me, and I really need to get rid of some of them."

She sniggers a bit at that, though he feels a wave of relief through her, and he feels her shifting, hears her feet on the floor, realizes that his plan to get to the refresher might work a little more smoothly if he were to open his eyes.

He does, and by then she's giving him a hand up, careful with his left arm, which still has the IV in it. She doesn't unhook it, and… oh, it floats along. It'll likely just come with them. Right… refresher… and walking. He's looking at his feet, which are not moving forward. Probably because his body weight about twenty million kilos right now, and they aren't designed to move that sort of weight around. Rey gives him a little nudge, and he takes a step, wobbles, and she steadies him.

She does get him to the refresher, and he's feeling awfully embarrassed now. It's not like he's never peed in front of her, but there's his back to her, taking care of things, and there's needing her arm to keep him upright, and…

Apparently he's thinking loudly, because she leans him against the wall, raising the lid of the toilet, pats the seat, and says to him, with a wry cast to her eyes, "You know, I can say, from decades of personal experience, that it works just fine sitting down, too."

He blinks, realizing that's true, and decides that likely would take care of the issue.

And, okay, this time her back's to him. She's apparently decided that he could use some help getting tooth powder on his brush, and a bit of water in the cup so he can rinse his mouth out, but he doesn't mind that at all.

And a few minutes later, back in bed, teeth clean (ish, he's not sure if he scrubbed his teeth so much as just prodded them gently with his brush), mouth tasting like cinnamenthe, bladder empty, he's feeling… well, not good. Not even remotely good, he's shivering like a newborn colt, and everything aches, and the cold is coming back with a vengeance, but content and well-cared for.

He drifts off to sleep easy. And doesn't dream.

* * *

Nervous. Rey is nervous about something. A lot. A distressed, sick-making sort of nervous. Which, in any other situation, would cause him to bolt upright and out of bed and demand that whatever is bothering her stop bothering her or he's going to have stern talking to it, likely with a lit light saber.

But she doesn't want him to notice. She's terrified of waking him up. Enough so that she's not aware of the fact that he is awake… Granted, he's not entirely sure if he's awake, too. He almost twitches a bit when he attempts to intentionally move, and comes to the conclusion that his brain may be up, but his body hasn't followed suit, yet.

That's distracting for a while, then he gets hit with another wave of distressed Rey emotions, and his focus snaps (as much as it can) back onto her.

It's… something to do with him, and… shit… He's not getting worse. He's pretty sure of that. He'd been awake and staring at nothing for… a while. And he's only thrown up twice (today?), and the other end of him is behaving, which he's appreciating, so…

She's behind him, snuggling close, trying not to project, and… Failing.

She's _really_ distressed, and getting up and leaving… He hears his refresher door open and shut.

Kylo doesn't want her to leave, because… she's his and she's hurting, and even if he can't do shit about why she's hurting, she should at least be near him when she's distressed, but… He pushes himself up, making his body obey his mind, and is working on making himself get out of bed when he hears the clicking of metal feet on the floor.

"I would advise against that, sir."

"C8?" His eyes peel open slowly, and he focuses on the droid, "What… You'd tell me if it was important, wouldn't you?"

"I absolutely would. There's nothing you can do about this other than heal up. If Lady Ren wanted you to know, you would."

"That's not comforting."

"I'm sure that's true. It's also not important. She is handling it, and all you can do right now is make it worse. So, go back to sleep. She'll tell you about it when you need to know."

"That _really_ doesn't help." He turns to face the bathroom door, and has just about gotten one foot on the floor when he feels… Luke. "Fuck."

She's talking to Luke. In the shower. _Great._ He sighs at that, angry, and tired, and… Well, if she's talking to Luke it's probably some shit Luke's good at, like, healing or something, and… Well, there's bloody well _nothing_ he can do to make this better for any of the other Maji…

He groans and flops back onto the bed. Who the fuck is he kidding? He can barely get to the refresher on his own without the adrenaline jolt that goes with being a minute away from puking. "I hate this."

"I know, sir. It's been five days, sir. Hiffa is usually eight to ten days of active illness, followed by several more days of weakness, low energy, and healing up. You should be feeling noticeably better soon."

"Great." Tired. He's so fucking tired. That… conversation… was everything he had.

He's glaring at the universe in general when he falls asleep that time.

* * *

Kylo knows he's not tracking time well. He wakes up periodically. For a lot of those wake ups, he ends up sprinting to the refresher, and then crawling back to bed. For some of them, he's just lying there, staring at the stars. Once or twice, he's had a cup of tea, or a bit of hydration solution. Apparently, as long as it's been a few hours since he's thrown up last, they let him have some liquids by mouth. He thinks. He's not sure how the droid decides if he can sip something or not. Honestly, he doesn't much care.

Occasionally, he thinks he's been staring at the stars for a long time, only to realize the stars are in a completely different configuration all of a sudden. He's fairly sure that means he fell asleep while staring, but didn't notice.

So, at first when it feels like it's been a while since he's seen Rey last, he figures that's just his fried time sense.

And goes back to sleep.

But there's this nagging sensation it's been a while. So he rolls over, which makes the med droid fret at him, because he didn't get his arm out from the blanket enough, and he feels the IV tugging, but… eventually, he gets himself on his right side, and locates the chronometer.

04:00. Great. He doesn't know what day it is, or when he last saw Rey, but it's 04:00.

He lays there for a while, not really wanting to expand the energy to roll back over again, and it feels kind of nice to be on his other side.

It's 08:23.

Apparently he fell asleep and woke up again.

14:32.

Sounds… C8, moving through the room. "C8?"

"Yes, sir?"

"Has Rey been by?"

"Of course, sir."

"Damn it." He must have been too deep asleep to notice. But… He's pretty sure he notices when she's here. Even asleep, he feels her nearby. He tries to get a sense of her, but he's too fried for it. "Fuck."

C8 continues to stand there, waiting for whatever it is he needs.

He blinks. "Can I have some tea or something?"

He hears C8 moving around, and opens his eyes again. C8 has a mug of tea for him. "The med droid says it's been more than a full day since you've thrown up. If you want to attempt some mild solid food, we can do that."

Kylo makes himself sit up. That's a significantly longer and more involved process than he'd like, and worse, the blankets slip off his shoulders and chest as he does that.

C8 tucks them back around him, but leaves his left arm free for the tea. Which is annoying because he's a righty and… The IV is in the left hand. Right, that makes some sense. He reaches for the mug, and watches it shake in his grasp. He's mentally cursing everything in the galaxy at the thought that he can't hold a fucking mug of tea without slopping it all over the place.

C8 takes it back, puts the straw in it, and holds it so he can sip it without spilling it. He's also standing there, waiting for Kylo to respond to something.

 _Food._ Right. C8's offered an option beyond the sweet tea he's gingerly sipping. He's… not sure about that. Everything inside him feels tender and fragile, and he's not sure if he wants to attempt to put anything more complicated than sweetened tea in himself. "Maybe later."

"Certainly, sir." C8 puts the mug of tea on the bedside table he didn't have before he got sick, but is now sitting there with his tea… and a few things he can't identify by sight but he assumes have to be for him. Kylo lays back down, and…

* * *

19:05. Still no Rey. He's sure of it. By this point, he'd have woken up if she'd been by.

He's in his room, alone. Well, the med droid is just hovering around nearby. "You don't talk, do you?"

It shakes in a way reminiscent of shaking a head no.

"I'm here, sir." C8's voice becomes clear, as his eyes power on the blue glow makes him distinct from the black around him.

"She hasn't been here all day, has she?"

"No, sir."

"Is she sick?"

"No. The Grand Marshall needed her help for a day, and she's providing it."

Kylo blinks at that. He can't, for the life of him, figure out what Kinear would need Rey for, let alone for a full day, but… "What is going on? Where is she?"

"It was decided that your… settlement… is woefully understaffed in regards to medical facilities. She and the Grand Marshall are overseeing rectifying that."

Kylo blinks. "Oh." Well, that's something he'd be completely useless at setting up, especially right now, and… He's not feeling like bringing Kinear to Lirium is the best idea ever, but… Wait… Jon. "Is the Grand Marshall, Jon?"

"Yes, sir."

"Oh. Okay." He feels like there's something important about what's been said to him, but he can't find it amid the scattered brain of his illness. "She's getting help to deal with everyone else?"

"Exactly, sir."

"That's good." He's almost idly wondering if that means everyone else is getting worse, or if Jon just slapped her upside the back of the head and told her to stop doing everything herself. He rather hopes it's the latter of those options, but… "Do you think she'll be back soon?"

"I imagine you'll see her in a few hours, at the most."

"Good… That's good…" He's tired again. So tired…

* * *

Stars. Slowly moving from one side of his view port to the other. Whatever else is happening today The _Supremacy_ appears to be on a standard course.

Rey's in front of him. He blinks at that, not sure if he'd fallen into another dream. She's all dressed up and look really pretty, so if this is a dream, he's rather liking it, but… This one feels real in a way his usual dreams don't.

"Am I dreaming?"

She sits on the bed next to him. "Not this time." Her hands caress his face, and he looks up at her. Then his eyes close, and he relaxes into the touch. Her Force is gently lapping against his, easing all the aches. "Feeling a little better?"

He curls around her. "Now." He nuzzles his cheek against her knee. This fabric feels new. It's soft and smooth, and… some of it's kind of scratchy. He pulls himself up a little to really look at it. There's a lot of embroidery around the edges. "Pretty dress." He kisses it. "Prettier woman under it." He's coming to the conclusion that apparently C8 will lie to him. Or word his answers so carefully as to be right next to lies. He'd likely be more alarmed by this if Rey wasn't petting him. "Something interesting happen?"

"Yeah." She strokes his hair.

He relaxes a bit more, and like every other time he's done that, as soon as he eases off his warding-off-the-cold full body clench, he starts to shiver. "Good interesting?" comes out amid the clacking of his teeth chattering.

"I'll tell you about it when you're feeling better. Right now, I'm going to undress, and then snuggle up with you."

He curls a little tighter in on himself as she gets up. "I'd like that." He knows her skin is going to feel like ice against his fever flushed skin, but it's her ice, and it makes everything else feel better. He's watching her undress. She's so fucking beautiful. The dress is brushing against her skin, and her hair's half down, and… He's just so _happy_ she's back.

"You were gone a long time?"

She gives him a little half smile as she finishes taking down her hair. "Longer than I wanted to be."

"Everything's all right?" He doesn't feel anything _wrong_ per se. He does feel how relieved she is, so… Something she wasn't enjoying just ended, he thinks.

"Yeah. Everything is all right. All you've got to do is lay around and heal right now, baby." She lifts the sheet and slips under the blankets, curling around him.

A contented purr rumbles through Kylo. She's cold, just like he knew she'd be. He snugs himself in close to her. This cold he doesn't hate. "I missed this."

She kisses the back of his neck. "Me, too."


	21. Healing

2/7/2

Rey wakes up, just wakes up, because she's not tired any more, for the first time in… Too damn long. It's been too damn long.

She wakes up with Kylo curled into her arms, which is not exactly their normal routine, neither is him clammy with sweat and fever hot, but… He's here, she's here, and the Lady Ren thing is done, so…

It's a good morning.

Well, a better one.

And that's good for a solid five minutes, just laying there, holding him, floating around on her Force and his. She's not trying to mess with his system too much, just ease him into a somewhat more comfortable, deeper sleep when it hits her that—

She's sitting up fast, wincing, grabbing her robe, and getting into the office, fast.

"There was a goodbye meeting for the K'Aran delegation, wasn't there?" she says all in one rushed breath to C8.

"Lady Ren. Yes. There was. But after the appalling behavior K'Oanan showed, and his unlikeliness to behave well in your presence after you broke his wrist, it was decided that being sent off by General Threepio and Colonel Jefferies would suffice."

Rey's shoulders slump. "Oh."

"That's why I didn't remind you of it last night. Would you like breakfast?"

"Uh…" She blinks.

"I ordered it for second shift, and it's still a few moments out. If you'd like to wait, it will be here, soon."

"Oh… Uh… Right." She's feeling out of sorts. This isn't, normally, how breakfast works. "Uh…" She looks to Kylo's desk, where she knows a billion datapads are stuffed. "Do I… need to do anything else?"

"Not if you don't want to. Everything else either can and will hold for Master Ren to get better, or I've shunted over to the Grand Admiral or Grand Marshall, and they are delegating it to whomever can best handle it."

"Oh. Good." She's quiet for a moment, looking around at the office. "So… I can just, eat and head home?"

"If you so desire. Or you may stay here. I certainly doubt Master Ren would mind if you were to go through his datapads, or just keep him company. He did ask for you frequently yesterday."

Rey winces. She intentionally shut down her sense of Kylo as much as she could yesterday, so she wouldn't get distracted, but she hates the idea of him alone… well, with C8, in that room, looking for her, and she wasn't there.

They hear the main door to the office open, and a small food droid wheels its way in. It scoots over to C8, who lifts the lid, removes the tray, hands it to Rey, and says, "KI-6O4 will stay here until you are done with your plates, then it'll return them to the kitchens. Take as long as you like to eat."

Rey nods, and then ports back to their room, to have a little breakfast.

* * *

She's being quiet, but it doesn't matter. The smell of coffee and real food: hash, eggs, toast has him coming, slowly, awake. That's not the only thing on the tray. There's a small bowl of some sort of broth, which she assumes has to be for Kylo, along with a few crackers.

They don't normally eat in bed, neither being a fan of crumbs among the sheets, but she's fairly sure that right now, he won't really notice, and trying to get him over to the table, assuming he's going to attempt to eat anything, is likely too much to ask right now.

"Good morning."

His eyes don't quite manage to open, though she sees his nostrils flare. "It's morning?"

"It's morning, and I've got some food with your name on it if you want to try some."

He takes a deep breath, makes a small, _mmmm_ sound, and one eye slowly cracks open to see her, sitting on the bed next to him plate of food in front of her, and cup of coffee in hand.

That eye cracks open a lot faster when the food next to him registers. "I don't think—"

"This is my breakfast. I've got some broth and crackers for you. If you want them."

She feels him tense, and just about get ready to sprint for the refresher, but the rumbly sensation in his guts is just his stomach growling at the idea of him maybe putting some real food into it.

Rey smiles at Kylo. "I think your body wants to try some food."

"Yeah." He slowly starts to lever himself into a sitting position. It takes a few seconds, but he gets himself up, and then reaches for the bowl and spoon. As soon as he sees how shaky his hands are, the idea of attempting to get any sort of liquid into his body without the help of a straw goes running away.

Fortunately, he doesn't need to say that to Rey. She's holding the bowl, and a moment later, the straw from his hydration solution glass hovers over. "That'll do it," she say to him.

He takes a sip and _moans_ at it.

Rey's grinning. "Good, I take it?"

Kylo shrugs. "Probably not, but it's got actual flavor, and right now, that's amazing."

Rey takes a sip. It's mostly hot and salty, a little cooked onion flavor. If it's some sort of animal broth, she can't identify which animal it came from.

She holds out a cracker for him to nibble from her fingers. "If flavor's amazing, let's see how texture works."

He moans again. "You take food that needs to be chewed for granted, until you don't get to do it for… What day is it?"

Rey laughs. "You know, I don't know." She has a bite of her breakfast, and Kylo reaches for another cracker, enjoying crushing it between his teeth.

"Did C8 tell me you and Jon set up a healing center on Lirium?"

"Sort of. Poe delivered it, and Artoo oversaw setting it up."

Kylo can feel there's a piece missing between what C8 said, and what she just said. He just can't figure out what it is.

And really, he's here, and awake, and Rey's with him, and there's soup and crackers, and… Nothing else matters right now.

* * *

Rey heads home not all that much later. Kylo spent a good ten minutes enthusiastically munching on crackers and sipping broth, and then hit a wall of exhaustion, and fell back to sleep.

She understands that's pretty normal. His body's working hard, killing off the virus, and it's not getting much (any) energy in the form of food, so it needs a lot of sleep.

Still, it's disconcerting to see him drop off to sleep mid-sentence.

She spends a moment holding onto him, threading her Force through his. He's… fine… normal… given what's happening. He needs this sort of rest and time to heal. He's getting better. She tries to make herself not worry.

And… it… sort of… works.

Maybe.

* * *

Home. First thing first, she opens all of the doors and windows to their home. It's not like she's got to live there between now and when Kylo's up to moving around again, so she might as well make sure that every speck of Hiffa is dead.

Plus, it really needs an airing out.

That said, it's possible that in the middle of a blizzard isn't the _ideal_ time to do this, but she's also sure that if she waits for a nice clear day for it, it might be spring before they get the place aired out.

After all, it's not like closing everything back up and turning the heat on won't take care of any snow that blows in.

Not like anything in there can't take getting a little wet and a lot cold. (Though she does quickly port her copy of Orlac's library back to their room on the _Supremacy._ That's likely better off not getting frozen and then wet.)

* * *

Medbay.

Once again, everything is quiet. No one is throwing up. The smell is… bad but tolerable. And the general vibe of the place is a lot of sick people mostly sleeping or staring out at the ceiling wishing they weren't sick.

Rey assumes this has to be what a medbay generally feels like.

Though she really wouldn't mind _not_ having to know that.

She sees Xanth sitting on the side of Rose's bed, with Critt standing next to him, and can feel that she's _not_ a natural born healer. Xanth is, though. He's _gleaming_ with opportunity right now.

Critt notices her watching them. "Hey. Perfect timing."

Xanth and Rose look over to her as she crosses the ward to them.

"You've signed up to try this?" she asks Rose.

Rose looks just as tired and out of it as Kylo did, but she nods. "I just want to be _done_ with this."

"I understand that."

"Miss Paige, too."

She nods at that, too. Then she glances around. "Finn?"

"Said that if Rose was coming home today, he needed to do a _lot_ of cleaning up first," Xanth says.

"Ahhh… How's…"

"Still tired, and not up to 100 percent, but _much_ better," Critt says.

"So, a lot like you right now?"

"Yeah. What you did, it worked." He's up, standing, eyes tracking, fever gone, _better._ Maybe not _healed._ Not all the way. But he's functional, and that's worth a lot. "Not saying I'd ever do that again, but…"

Rey nods. "Yeah, the idea is to figure out a way to fix the problem without making the cure worse than the disease."

Xanth is grinning at all three of them. "Which we're going to try now. You ready, Rose?"

She nods, looking pale and tired.

"Critt?"

He nods, too. He's holding one of Rose's hands, and Xanth has the other, and Rey settles back at the foot of Rose's bed, and just feels what they're doing.

It's… supple with a sharp jagged edge. That's the best way she can describe it. Xanth's Force is slipping through Rose's system like velvet. A nudge here, a nudge there, a tweak to this system, and another there. It's subtle and elegant, buffing something to a shine with silk velvet.

Critt's Force is electric. It's zipping through, stampeding in chain lightning through the virus, zapping from one cell to the next. Fast, deadly. Killing off the virus was too much for Rey. She could do it, but it was exhausting. For Critt, this is the sort of thing he was born for. He's crippling the virus, killing some of it, sterilizing more. This is glowing off of Critt, glowing black triumph… She's seen that on Kylo, too.

Dark used well. Destruction in the service of _good._

And right here, right now, she can feel the two of them balancing together, using each other's strength to create something neither of them could do for themselves.

And it's _good._

* * *

It takes a while. And by the time they're done, Rose, Critt, and Xanth all need a nap.

But it's a good, clean tired. The kind of tired that goes with hard work that made something important.

She's pretty sure that the next time they do it, for Kylo, that it'll go faster and easier.

And she's also pretty sure that before they work on Kylo, she's going to bring them to the F-Deck and see what sort of little treat they'd like, because this sort of work seems like the kind of thing one should get a treat for.

But until then…

She ports over to the front door of Finn's house. If he was still sick, she'd have just ported straight into his place, but with him up and active, that feels rude.

So she knocks, and a moment later, Finn's at the door. And, for a heartbeat, he looks really scared, and she understands he's afraid that while he was getting everything cleaned up and ready for Rose to come home, something went wrong.

So, Rey grins at him. And he relaxes.

"It worked?"

"Yeah. She's getting a nap right now. If you want, I'll port you over, and then wrap up the cleaning here."

He's grinning. "Get to snuggle my sweetie, and you clean? Of course I WANT!"

Rey chuckles at that, and then ports Finn back to Rose.

In the medbay, she glances around again. Xanth, and Critt are napping. Finn's snuggling up to Rose. Where's her third experiment in healing?

 _Jacen?_

 _Yeah._ His Force feels fine.

 _Where are you?_

 _You wanna guess what we forgot to do while all of us were sick?_

Rey feels him amid the Faviers. _Oh._

 _Yeah, they got fed and watered every day, but no one mucked them, or the other critters, out._

Rey winces. Seven Faviers, twelve rabbits, sixteen chickens. _You're literally up to your knees in dung, aren't you?_

 _Just about. Cassie's helping, too._

 _Once I get finished with the Ticcos' place, I'll join you._

 _Thanks._

* * *

By late-morning, Rey is very much coming to the conclusion that, in addition to not being a natural born healer, she is not a natural born farmer, either. She might be _good_ at plants and people and critters, but she doesn't _enjoy_ it.

Granted, she generally doesn't take care of the critters. The Canto Bight kids do that, and she would have very happily remained ignorant of what's involved in taking care of critters.

But she's not. And remembering the critters also reminded her of the plants, and… _SO MANY WEEDS._

How they could possibly have that many weeds in a sealed microfarm she doesn't know. Weeds don't spontaneously generate, but…

Oh, right. They use that dung as fertilizer and the critters eat straw and grain…

Weeds.

She's glaring at the potato troughs, pulling out weeds, thinking that she _really_ doesn't ever want to be a full time farmer.

* * *

By late morning, she's hot, sweaty, tired, messy, but feeling like she's actually accomplished something tangible and solid.

Looking at a pile of muck isn't exactly appealing, but she's also got no ambiguity about it. It's a job. It's done. It's done _well._ She doesn't have to worry about any long-term ramifications of the muck pile. There are no trade-offs for the muck pile. It's either cleaned up or it isn't, and there's no reason for her to worry about it coming back to bite her when she's done with it. (Assuming she's done a half way competent job with it.)

It's satisfying. Look at issue. Identify what needs to happen to fix it. Fix it. Go home and have lunch.

But… and she wasn't expecting this, it's also… boring. This is messy and sweaty and kind of gross, but it's also just done. She could certainly use her ability with technical things to make cleaning it up easier (which she did) but it's kind of flat.

It's not scary. It certainly wasn't difficult. (Beyond the physical level of moving shit around.)

Jacen's watching her ponder the pile of weeds on top of the pile of muck, (which, if it were a tad less cold, would be a compost pile, but right now it's just frozen trash) as the winds howl around them. "Rey?"

"Yeah."

"You're thinking really loudly."

She nods.

"You want to talk about it?"

"Not sure. I feel like I'm looking at a picture that won't come into focus."

Jacen cocks his head. "Probably because you're not sure if you want to see what the picture is."

Rey exhales long and deep. "Yeah. Probably. Let's go get cleaned up. Then I'm taking everyone who's up to walking on their own two feet for lunch on the _Supremacy._ "

Jacen's brows shoot up. "Really?"

"I'm not moving anyone who's sick a centimeter more than absolutely necessary. Which means Kylo's staying in bed, and he's on the _Supremacy._ I'm bringing Critt and Xanth to him, and the rest of you who've been up and keeping everyone going could use a treat, so…"

"The F-Deck," he sounds like he's talking about a mythical place.

And then Rey gets it, and nods. "Right. You and Cassie and Xanth had all heard about it, right?"

"I was stationed there."

"You're an officer?"

"I would have been. Ensign McGy. Don't get me wrong, Ensigns have to salute pretty much everything, including the mech droids, but I did well enough in basic flight training that they'd put me in the officer track."

"Oh."

"Ren found me on my second day on the _Supremacy_ so I pretty much only got to see my dorm and the sim deck we were going to be training on."

"I thought officers got flats."

"Real ones do. Like I said, Ensigns are the bottom of the heap. Ensigns-in-training are the floor below the heap. I might have technically outranked Finn, but if the two of us gave conflicting orders, no one would have listened to mine." Jacen smirks. "Okay, they would have listened to _mine,_ but if it had been any other Ensign..."

Rey rolls her eyes a bit.

"Our dorms are three to a room, instead of the six the enlisted get, and that first pip means we got access to the F-Deck, which I had been intending to get to know a lot better, but then Ren gave me a better deal, so I took it."

"Come on. It's cold. Let's get cleaned up and eat."

Jacen looks pretty enthusiastic about that.

* * *

On the F-Deck, with the kids staring around, mostly in wonder (Jacen's looking pleased, but also unimpressed, unlike the rest of them, he genuinely had been in a city larger than this, well, at least the part they can see from where they're standing) it occurs to Rey, that of her lightlings, two of the three of them came to them from the _Supremacy._

Xanth and Cassie have never been up here (down here? Rey's not sure where they started off, other than not here) before, but like Jacen, they both got out of a situation that wasn't working for them, on the hope of something better with the Order.

Critt's staring around in amazement. For so long, this was the heart of every bad thing to ever be a bad thing, synonymous with evil and… It's just… a really busy market. He and his parents would sell produce and advertise their microfarms, at places like this.

Savarah's staring around, eyes wide. "My whole town would fit in here."

Jacen grins at her. "It's sixty klicks across. Twenty wide. Most cities would fit in here, and this is one of fifty-five decks."

"How many people are on here?" Cassie asks.

Rey shrugs. That's the kind of thing the Mistress of the Order should know, but she doesn't. "It was more than six million two months ago. Not sure, now."

Jacen grabs Critt's wrist, flourishing a small gray cylinder. "Come on, I want to see if this works."

Rey raises an eyebrow.

"Like I said, technically, I'm an officer. According to Kylo, my time with you counts for my time here, which means my," he holds up his ID chit, "should still access my account, and if it does, that means I've got almost half a year of wages that I've done _nothing_ with."

Cassie's eyes go wide. "He said that to me, too." She's gazing up at Rey. "Please, can we go back for a second, my chit's…"

"Not going to work up here. You and Xanth are enlisted. This is no-man's land for you two."

Rey raises an eyebrow.

Jacen shrugs. "Something about maintaining an appropriate image, and no fraternizing between the ranks, and… I didn't much listen. Rules… don't generally apply to me, unless I want them to, you know?"

Rey shoots him a bit of stink eye on that. "Yeah, I know. Anyway, I've got a chit. Jacen's got one. Let's split up, buy some lunch and treats, uh…" She's never really had to budget for this sort of thing, and isn't sure how much is good.

Jacen thinks to her _Twenty credits. That's a nice treat, but not exorbitant._

"Keep it under twenty credits, and we'll meet back here in two hours, okay?"

Savarah takes Critt's other hand, narrows her eyes at Jacen, who lets Critt go, and then says, "Sounds great. See you in a bit."

And then she and Critt and Jacen head off to enjoy the F-Deck.

* * *

"So, you two were…" Rey leads.

"D-Deck," Cassie says. "I wasn't there for long, but I did get my stuff unpacked and a bunk set up. This was my first station."

Xanth looks around. "My first, too. I'd been on E-Deck for a week when he found me."

"What were you training for?" Cassie asks.

"I was still testing. I was hoping they'd put me in engineering, but…" They all get hit with a clear memory of him staring at the testing screen, utterly clueless at the more complicated mechanical questions. "You?"

Cassie shrugs. "Anywhere was better than where I came from. It didn't matter what I tested into."

Kylo told Rey a bit about where Cassie came from. Mostly about that flash of fear he got off of her when she first came to see him. Beyond that, Cassie hasn't said, and Rey, other than her blanket, 'If you want to talk to me, I'll always listen,' hasn't asked.

And it's clear from the way Cassie said that, she's got no interest in saying anything else.

"Why did you enlist?" Rey asks Xanth as they wander through the crowd, looking at food carts and resturants.

His eyes narrow a bit. It's also clear he doesn't love talking about this, but he's not as guarded as Cassie is about it. "Mum died when I was little. On Ordano, the orphanages will take care of you for ten years. If you don't get adopted by then, the guilds and slavers can buy you. Make up for the costs of raising you. I was nine and a half, and… Maybe I would have gone to a guild, spent ten years learning a trade, and left a free man. But maybe not, once you're a slave, they brand you. Like Jacen's tattoo. And if you've got one of those marks, anyone and everyone can ask for your papers, stop you from going somewhere. I figured that if I hadn't gotten adopted in five years, that it wasn't going to happen in the next six months, and decided I didn't want to risk not getting bought by one of the guilds, so I joined up."

"Did you know anything about the Order when you did it?" Rey asks.

"Just that they took anyone, and they pissed a lot of people off. Not the lady who ran our orphanage, though. She got a 'finder's fee' for each one of us who went to a guild or slaver, and with more and more adult slaves running away, that fee was getting bigger and bigger for each kid who she could place with them."

"Did they talk about that?" Cassie asks.

"Nah. Thought about it, hard. The slavers and guild merchants would show up every month for new kids, so… Not like I didn't see them watching all of us. For the little kids, it wasn't much of a thing, but the closer to ten you got… She was thinking about losing some adoption applications. Hadn't decided on it by the time I'd run off, but she was thinking about it."

"The Bishops hated the Order. Preached against them in their sermons. Said they existed to spread division and tempt the holy from their true path," Cassie's looking at the floor as she says that, but she looks up, eyes blazing as she says, "I decided anything the Bishops hated was going to be good for me."

"Who were the Bishops?" Rey asks, gently.

"Holy Concordia of the Stars, Pure Light of the Soul, Magisters of the Blessed, they ran the orphanages. The Bishops were… the holy men. The… They'd give speeches, and claimed the spirit would fill them, tell them how we were supposed to live." She blinks. "They were lying about that. It was always just them."

"Oh." Rey says.

Cassie looks away from them. Then she points to one of the carts. "What's a donut?"

Rey knows that's Cassie saying, _no more of this_ and decides not to push it. "You know, I don't know. Let's find out."

* * *

In the months since the _Supremacy_ learned of Master Ren's "beloved companion," there has been a _lot_ of rumors about who she is, and what exactly, they are to each other.

Rey strolling around the F-Deck with two children, a girl with black hair and almost black eyes, and a boy with brown hair and hazel eyes makes those rumors go wild.

The girl looks to be a young adolescent, and the boy is an older child. And Mistress Ren… she doesn't look old enough to be their mother. But maybe she looks young for her age. Maybe she and Master Ren have been together for a long time. A decade at least. The younger of the children is maybe eight or nine, maybe a little older, but not more than that.

Maybe Master Ren got a child on… a… child? Could Mistress Ren have been twelve when she had their first child?

Is the girl Ren's but not hers? The girl's skin is darker than Rey's, much darker than Kylo's. The boy's coloring more closely matches Rey's…

Does the Master have not just one child, but two of them?

Or is this the Maji they've heard about, but don't know much about?

In a week, when the first of the rumors gets to Kylo, he'll be amused by them for a moment or two, until he does the math between his age, Rey's age, and Cassie's, and realizes that his people are now speculating if he got a twelve-year-old pregnant back when he was nineteen.

Jon, meanwhile, will be quite amused when he glares at the universe at large and mutters that the only thing he was in any danger of impregnating at the age of nineteen was his right hand.

* * *

Voices. Kylo's seriously debating cracking an eye open, but that feels like work.

Still… voices… plural…

One is Rey. That's good. She's here and he feels her warmth and his body relaxes as she sits on the bed next to him. Whoever else is here is apparently the kind of person she's not afraid to snuggle him in front of.

Person… The other voices… There are two of them. People. Definitely people. People who aren't afraid of catching Hiffa.

After another minute, and the touch of two other hands… Critt. Critt is touching his foot. That seems really bizarre to him, until he remembers Rey saying something about Dark Healing.

And… Critt and Xanth? Right… Xanth is the healer.

And they're here, so…

"Figured it out?" croaks out of him.

"I told you he was alive," Xanth's (?) voice.

The next voice is definitely Critt. "I'm just saying, you smell that bad, you should be dead." A pause. "No offense, Rey."

"You didn't smell too sweet when you were sick, either."

"I'm sure."

Kylo's got the sense of them paying attention to him again.

Rey's hand on his brow. "They figured it out. You just rest easy, okay. Tomorrow or the next day, you'll be feeling better."

He smiles a little, rather liking that idea. Then… Hands… Force that isn't his and isn't Rey's, and… doesn't hurt. Normally, Force signatures that he's not used to aren't about to do him any good, but this… Like Rey, Xanth has a nice, soothing warmth, and Critt… there's a sort of jagged electric feel to him, but Kylo's somewhat used to that.

Or at least aware of it. When they've worked together he's noticed Critt's edges. He'll likely be good at Force lightning if he puts his mind to it. Kylo's not sure if that's a good thing or not.

It probably doesn't matter.

It definitely doesn't matter now.

He's tired.

And asleep.

* * *

"That'll do it," Critt says to Rey as he and Xanth finish with Kylo.

Rey's nodding, holding Kylo close, lips to his forehead. "Yeah. I can feel that."

"Tomorrow or the next day, he'll be up and about again," Xanth adds.

"And you two both look like you could use a nap again."

Critt shakes his head. "Tired. Not sleepy."

"There's a difference," Xanth asks.

"Can't you feel it?" Critt shoots back.

"I want a huge meal and sleep."

"Food," Critt's looking at Rey. "I could definitely use some food." _Can we go back to the F-Deck_ is unspoken but clear.

"I'll order food, but right now, both of you smell like Hiffa, so, no F-Deck time."

That gets a bit of moping, but they're both tired, so not having to go anywhere does have some appeal. Food they don't have to cook for themselves has more.

* * *

2/8/2

Kylo wakes again, later… He's still got no idea of when it is. The down side of being on a ship is that the light never changes, so… Day, night, first shift, third, sleep for an hour, sleep for a day… There's just no way to tell.

Almost.

Rey's in bed, behind him, cuddled against his back, breathing deep and easy.

That's new.

It's not the first ever time she's spooned him, but it's not common, either. They usually fall asleep with him spooning her, and sometime during their rest (often when Kylo wakes for the first time) roll into sleeping on their backs next to each other, and as they start to wake, he rolls into spooning her.

But now she's against his back, her lips on his shoulder, her arm around his waist, her Force thrumming along warm and bright.

So, if she's against his back, breathing soft and slow… Night time. Everyone else must be sleeping now.

He doesn't want to move. This feels good, here, now with her, under the blankets. But he also has to pee and really wants a drink.

That's when it hits. This feels _good._ He's… tired, Force, so damn tired. Sore. Yeah, everything feels like he spent the last month training hard. Hungry… That's new. Thirsty… Not new, but welcome. His guts feel empty and achy, but not on fire any more. He's not shivering.

He's not cold, but there's no sense of urgency, or impending urgency.

So… fever broke.

He slowly starts to roll away from Rey, disentangle himself, gets himself to the glass with the hydration solution, and the refresher eventually.

Weak. He adds that to the list of how he's feeling when he notices that his arm is shaking with the strain of reaching for the cup. The cup he hasn't managed to pick up, yet.

He does, and it's good that it's not full, or near full, because his arm is shaking hard now. He puts the cup on his lap, and bends his head to the straw. Not terribly comfortable, but better then slopping liquid all over the place.

He does manage to successfully walk all the way to the refresher, though, again he doesn't stand for a second longer than necessary, and, okay, he'd likely deny it if asked, but he crawls back to bed, pulling himself into the curl of her body, and lets himself drift on the brush of her breath against his shoulder and her arms around his waist.

* * *

"How's he doing?" Rey's voice talking to… Kylo doesn't have a sense of anyone else in the room with them, so she must be talking to the med droid.

He hears a… he's not sure. It's a mechanical sound. He opens his eyes. Rey's reaching over him… taking report from the med droid. She reads it for a moment, and then kneels down on the bed next to him, and kisses his temple. "Congratulations, you're no longer contagious."

"Yay?" he asks, not exactly feeling like hopping up to celebrate.

"Yay!"

"I'm going to celebrate by going back to sleep."

She strokes his face. "Good plan."

* * *

Rey looks at the report in her hand. No viral load. Hiffa levels are undetectable. That's the second straight test in a row that's showing that, so, officially Kylo is "better."

Better in the sense of still sleeping twenty-two hours a day and having the strength and energy of a newborn maomao. But regular food will help with that.

Rose is also "better."

And each time Critt and Xanth try their trick, it's easier to do. Which means today they'll likely get five or six of the rest of the Maji done.

Granted, tomorrow or the next day everyone else should be pretty much to the end of this naturally, but Xanth thinks working on this is worth it, and Critt's over the moon at the idea that he can use his dark for something 'good.'

He's not saying it, but Rey can feel how much he wants to tell his parents, show them that he's not a waste of Force.

She thinks he's written them. Though he hasn't specifically said, and she's not sure if she should ask. She's not sure how to balance her own history of being a light child, waiting, patiently for her parents to come back. Lying to herself, over and over, about how they didn't really want to leave, or couldn't avoid it, with his lived experience of being a dark child, abandoned for his dark, and the way that spirals into deep cuts of unworthiness and loathing. She's always been more honest with herself of her own worth. And he's more honest with himself about his parents.

She hopes they've had enough time to see the child they've got, and decide that they want him, as he is.

She hopes that they've also had the time to think about the idea of balance, and that dark doesn't mean evil.

She hopes that all of this is, as she said to Critt, a moment in time where things are difficult and those difficulties will pass.

But she wonders if all of that hope is just her own light, doing it's best to put the best possible spin on the subject.

And, in the back of her mind, she halfway wonders if spending this much time pondering Critt's home life is a way to not ponder those little niggly thoughts that are a bit too present as she moves back into regular life on Lirium, the ones that she's keeping in the back of her head, because they're just a bit, too…

Everything.

* * *

2/9/2

Every time Kylo wakes up, he feels like another one of his systems have come back online.

He stayed awake for more than twenty minutes at a go... yesterday? That was nice.

He noticed they've got a flower in his room. A flower in a vase. The flower is… coral and gold, and he's not sure if it's real or glass. The vase is white. The flower is pretty. He likes it. He doesn't like the vase. He's not sure why they've got it though. He was alert enough to wonder about it before he fell back to sleep.

Then he woke up later, and was awake enough to get bored, which wasn't nice, but he takes to mean his brain is starting to function again. After all, there's only so long you can lie on your side and watch stars zip past. That likely means he's actually staying awake as he stares at them.

He had some solid food the next time he woke up. That was better. Toast with a little butter and some jam. He really enjoyed it, but could only eat half a piece before he needed another nap.

He asked C8 to bring him some datapads, which very much hinted his brain might indeed be coming back online, but then he just looked at them and went to sleep again.

This time he wakes up, and… okay, he knows this sensation, though he hasn't felt it in a while. Back before Rey, when he'd go as long as he could without any sort of sex, he'd… get this uncomfortable, swollen sensation, inside. That… thing… Rey touches when she slips her fingers in him. After a week or so of no sex, it'd get swollen and sensitive and…

He shifts a bit, rubs his legs together, and his shaft, which was already doing its usual morning (Rey's not with his so he's not sure about morning.) stand, pulses.

Which means… Well… If it works the way it used to… that means it's got to be… six or seven days since he spurted last. He shifts again, lightly squeezes his legs together, and feels the drip of pre-spurt… Make that eight or nine. He's been sick and very dehydrated… Maybe more.

In the past, it'd get so bad that just sitting down would make him hard.

He could feel people stare at him in amazement when he'd kneel or crouch, but… The last thing he wanted was his shaft poking out of inopportune times, and keeping pressure off… he really should just get an anatomy book and figure out what it's called, made it easier to stay on task.

Part of him, a very specific part… actually a few very specific parts, beg him to call for Rey, and see if she'll… give him a hand, or mouth, or hop on him (all the images of which just make him _harder_ ) but…

Realistically, he's going to be done before she's even all the way on him.

And he feels a little bad at the idea of calling her away from… He does get a sense of what she's up to right now… working with the Maji… which is when he realizes he _can_ get a sense for what she's up to, so there's another system starting to get back online… Though… distracted.

He rolls to his side, feels his body quiver at that, remembers why he was looking for her in the first place, and comes to the conclusion that calling her over for seven seconds of what's bound to be extremely lackluster sex for her, because, honestly, he really doesn't have the energy for much beyond lay there and let her touch him, isn't exactly doing his favorite person any favors.

That said, if he doesn't do anything about this, the next time he falls asleep, he's going to wake up with sticky sheets, and… Speaking of parts of him coming back online, the part that notices how he smells is now working, too, and _Holy Mother of the 'Verse_ , he's disgusting right now. Critt wasn't wrong, he does smell like something that died. And not recently. Wrecking his bedding with even _more_ fluids is just going to make things worse. He almost runs a hand through his hair, but his fingertips just touch it, matted, greasy, and somehow crusty with dried sweat, and he decides that _not_ doing that is a really good plan.

"C8?"

Clicking sounds of feet on metal floor. A moment later. "I'm here, sir."

"I'm going to attempt to get a shower. Clean bedding by the time I'm done would be deeply appreciated."

"I can take care of that, sir."

"Thank you."

C8 waits next to the bed. And Kylo waits in the bed. He doesn't exactly feel comfortable strolling across his room, naked, hard, with C8 next to him, but… They both wait, and wait.

"I have orders from Lady Ren to make sure that if you attempt to walk anywhere, that I keep an eye on you."

That makes a lot of sense. For a moment, he attempt to will his shaft to go down, but between the state of his bladder, and the state of the rest of him, that's just not going to happen.

Fortunately, it's not like he can embarrass the droid, and… It's not like Rey gave him an unreasonable order. He wasn't anything approaching stable on his feet the last time he got up.

So he very slowly gets up, (notices that at some point they untethered him. His IV is gone, and apparently Rey took care of the wound because he can't even tell where it was) and shuffles his way toward the shower, wobbling a bit, but he doesn't need to grab C8 to stay up, and once he's in there, C8 allows him to shut the door without following him. (Though Kylo's sure he's waiting outside the door to make sure he doesn't fall or hurt himself in there.)

* * *

As previously mentioned there are only two situations in which Kylo prefers the sonic to a real hot water shower.

This is the other one.

When he's genuinely, awfully, smells-so-bad-he-can-stun-a-taunton-at-fifty-meters, _dirty._

The sonic is beyond good for that.

He grits his teeth through the high pitched whine, stands arms and legs akimbo, (Droopy akimbo, he's not really feeling up to keeping his arm out for several minutes at a go.) and lets the vibrations and tiny puffs of air pull the at least a week since he showered last crud off of him.

The little puffs of air are torture right now. They're _almost_ enough to get him to spurt. He's so close he can just about feel it, and if he could will himself to spurt… Well, he literally can, right now just by thinking about something sexy or giving himself a Force hand, but…

But, in a minute this will be done, and then he's going to turn on the hot water and…

And he realizes he's never touched himself to _feel good._ In the past, it's always been about taking care of some perverse weakness, something he did fast and shameful, a part of him he tried to burn to ash.

And he certainly doesn't mind the fact that he hasn't been handling his own shaft for almost three years now.

Really hasn't minded the bit more than a year and a half it's been exclusively Rey's domain.

Still…

The high-pitched whine ends, and Kylo turns the water on, letting it stream down him.

He moans at that. Loud. Speaking of things that feel good. Warm water streaming over his still sore and _very_ tired body feels like heaven. He sinks down against the side of the shower, sitting on the base, letting the water just stream over him.

This is _good._ He's warm, and resting comfortably, and water streaming over him is soothing and…

His hand settles onto his shaft, and he shivers just at the feel of that.

For a moment, he's not entirely sure what to do next. Normally, he'd just yank at it until he spurted. Do it hard and fast and… Okay, the peaches… He genuinely enjoyed that. At least as a set of physical sensations. He was also steaming in guilt when he did it. Not so good of a headspace.

He's not sure he ever actually enjoyed it. He certainly relieved a need, but he's fairly sure he never just… made himself feel good.

He gently trails his fingers up and down the length, thinking of how Rey'd handle him.

 _Enjoy it, Kylo._ Their first time. She'd thought that at him and… He spurted so hard he felt like his whole soul was going to pulse out of his body.

 _Enjoy it._ He keeps his hand loose, gentle, and just lightly strokes. His head falls back and his teeth grit. _Fuck…_ That's… good.

Slow, up and down, and just a bit tighter, move the skin over the shaft as well as his hand.

He inhales, long and slow, trying to keep himself here, just… enjoying it… But… He's so hard, and it's been so long, and he can just _feel_ the tension, and urge, and _need_ … it's inside him, deep and throbbing, and under his fingers, begging for a bit more, a little harder, and…

He reaches between his legs, and palms his stones. For a moment, he's just holding them, rubbing lightly with his hand, _feeling it._ What had he told Rey? Because touching them feels good? Shit, it does. Then further back, under them, where that deep ache is, and presses into it, gently… He's not rushing, not hurting himself or hating himself, just… enjoying it.

Pressure, "Oh… _fuck…_ " deep and round, needy, and it's right there… Just… he speeds the hand on his shaft just a hair, tightens just a bit, and…

"FUCK!" his head hits the back of the shower and it's on him, deep, pulsing, in his hand and through his body, and everything is spasming, muscles tightening and releasing, and the tingle/pleasure wave is going on and on and, and he looks down, watching, spurt after spurt after spurt… It's always like that when he goes this long, over and over and…

Eventually his body stops. Soft and glowy and warm. He's wet and quiet and… tired. So fucking tired.

He'd fall asleep here in the shower but… that's probably a bad idea.

Slowly, Kylo pulls himself up, and turns off the water, and wraps a towel around his waist. He eyes the toothbrush, but right now that seems like too much effort. Anything beyond going back to bed is too much effort.

He opens the door to his bedroom, and…

Well, he did request new bedding, but…

The laundry service droids aren't just changing out his sheets, they're putting new pillows on his bed, and he's got the sense that there's a new mattress on there, and… Honestly, given how bad he smelled, he's not minding that at all.

He inhales, deeply, coughs a little, and comes to the conclusion that they spaced the atmo in here, too.

Likely all for the better.

He watches droids smoothing new sheets on his bed. They're doing a very neat, very tidy job, and all he wants to do is flop into the bed and collapse.

But, it doesn't take them _that_ long.

And eventually, he's back in bed, on a very comfortable mattress, on sheets that smell like… nothing much really, and he stretches out a bit, feeling good, and…

Kylo sleeps again.


	22. Out Of It For A Little While

2/10/2

There's this moment where everything shifts. Kylo feels the difference when he wakes up this time.

He's not sick any longer.

He's not tired, either. Weak. Everything feels shaky, but he's not immediately wanting to roll right back over and fall back to sleep.

His head feels clear, he's fairly sure he can track time again, and yes, he's sore, but this is the other side of it. He's done with being in it, and is recovering now.

Which means… It's time he finds out what the hell has happened lately. And, who knows, if he's feeling really frisky maybe he'll put some damn trousers on and go walk around a little, just to do it.

For the first time in much too long, Kylo gets up without having to plan out every move of it ahead of time, and will himself to do it. _Stupid little things you take for granted, like your feet going where you put them without having to tell each muscle what to do to get them there._

He's shaky on his feet, but he's standing up, and moving across the room to his wardrobe and, okay, arm's trembling when he reaches out to grab his shorts, but he gets them. He wobbles dangerously on one foot, and decides that maybe today's a good day to put his shorts on sitting down.

It's once he's got the shorts on, and stands up to get his trousers, that he notices that his shorts are… not staying up.

They're his new ones, the white ones that feel really good. A reminder of a very good time on Gidi Prime. He stands and they go galloping toward the floor. He's _decent,_ barely… Okay, probably not. He's never really debated if there's such a thing as _too_ low-waisted shorts, but if there were, this would be it. The only reason his shorts aren't on the floor is that the waistband caught on the base of his shaft.

This would be the point where Kylo really looks at himself. He turns to face the mirror on his wardrobe. And sees the hollows in his face (hiding under what's getting pretty close, at least for him, to a beard), and along his collar bones, and the jut of his hipbones, and-

 _Oh._

 _Shit._

Well… He was aware of the fact that he'd gained four or five or so kilos over the last two years. Eating real food, sleeping, doing sit-down work, working out for only an hour or three every other day, letting himself rest between workouts, he'd put on some fat and more muscle, and he was bigger than he'd been during the Snoke days.

 _Healthy._ Rey's never said it, but he's felt her be aware of it. He looks… looked… healthy. He knows he feels that way about the few kilos she's put on, too. It makes him uncomfortable to think of the marks of starvation on her body, and… He wasn't starving, not for food, but he knows she feels the same way about the marks working for Snoke left on him.

Judging by where his shorts are hanging, he's lost that weight, now. Probably a bit more on top of that. He pulls them off.

He shuffles through his drawers and finds an old pair of pajama pants. From the Snoke days. From when he used to sleep in pajamas. Well, sit or lay in pajamas and 'meditate' and occasionally drop into a blasted, withered vaguely sleep-like trance for a few hours.

They're loose, too, but not as badly. And they have a drawstring. He gives it a yank and ties it.

Apparently, an all liquid, mostly hydration solution diet was not particularly good for him. Nothing to be done for it but keep eating real food. Which he intends to do some more of, soon. He grabs one of his sweaters, and it's looser than he remembers, too, but that's not nearly as much of an issue.

 _Hey,_ he thinks to Rey.

 _You're up!_

 _On my own feet, for the moment._

He can feel her smiling at him.

 _Busy?_

 _Yes, actually. Chewie and Paige just got back. He's also got some extra gear, and there are only a few of us in any shape to unpack who aren't glued to their daughter, so..._

 _There's not going to be another cooking party, is there?_

 _Not tonight, love. I'll be free in an hour or so, see you then?_

This time, she feels his smile back at her.

* * *

C8's not in his room. He's not sure how it is that whenever he feels like he might need C8 in his room, C8 just sort of appears, but right now he's not in there.

But, right now, he wants to talk to C8, and see something other than this room.

So…

Up, on his feet, the metal floor is unpleasantly cool under them, so he grabs his socks, and at least they have the good manners to stay up on his calves.

And then for the first time in… He reaches over, checks his chrono, which will, if he pushes the right button, display the date instead of the time. He stares at it for a moment in shock, and then _winces._

Eleven days. He's been on his ass for _eleven_ days.

He supposes he should be relieved to see that he could get sick for eleven days and not have the entire Order implode on him, but…

 _Eleven days._ He's _never_ not worked for eleven days. Even as a child, he didn't get that long without some sort of lessons.

On top of that, it's not like he's feeling hale and hearty and ready to go take on all comers, yet. He's feeling mostly like walking into his office, and likely staring at the data pads for a few moments, and then seeing if Jon will come tell him what happened.

It's not like he wants to actually _do some work._ He just doesn't want to sit in bed any longer.

* * *

There are things Kylo was expecting when he stepped out of his room and into his office. C8, his body weight in data pads, likely times three, littering his desk, more reports around his desk, maybe some more work on the conference table. The conference table.

The walls.

To be black.

Because the last time he was in his office, there were datapads all over the place and his walls were black and C8 was in there and right now…

Kylo just looks around and _blinks._ For a heartbeat there's a really disconcerting sense that he's walked into the wrong room, but that's physically impossible. There are only two doors attached to his room, and the other one leads to the refresher, so…

He, apparently, loudly, thinks _WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED?_

Because his office is not black, and there are no datapads on his desk, and, okay, C8 is there, but he's turning around, slowly…

A somewhat timid thought hits the back of his mind. _I take it you're in your office, then?_

He really doesn't like how uncertain Rey's feeling right now. _Yes. Did you… paint my office? And… why are my datapads missing?_

 _I understand they're in the drawers in your desk, and… uh… the space under your desk. And… uh… yes, I did. I mean, not personally, but… Is it okay?_

He really hates how nervous she is about this. _It's okay, but… I didn't know… Why?_ He's looking around more, noticing that this is not making her feel better. _It looks nice._ That eases up the knot in her feelings. _I like it._ That helps more. _I kept saying I was going to do something like this, but…_

 _I know. I wouldn't have done it otherwise._

He's nodding slowly. _So… Uh…_

 _Baby, I love you, but… I really need to get this done before I can talk. Can you wait a bit?_

 _Right, you're unpacking. Uh… Yeah. I can wait. Maybe talk to Jon._

 _I bet he'd like that. And, talk to C8 about Jon, too. I'll be there soon._

 _Okay._ He turns to C8. "So… Gray?"

"Lady Ren requested it."

Kylo goes over to his desk, sits down, notices the spot under his desk where his knees usually go is filled with pads. He pulls open a drawer, and sees it's _stuffed_ with datapads. He starts to pull them out, but gets tired long before he's done with the second drawer, so he settles for glaring at them.

C8 comes over and starts to put them _on_ rather than under and in his desk. "We thought, given how many people were going to be meeting in here, that having your datapads tucked away would be a good plan."

"Oh." He's glaring at the stacks getting higher and higher when _Lady Ren_ goes wiggling through his mind. Is that how C8 refers to Rey? Does C8 refer to Rey? He tries to remember if the two of them have ever spoken about her before he got sick. C8 was calling her Lady Ren, then, but… Kylo figures he must have spoken to C8 about her before then, but… He wouldn't call her Lady Ren to C8.

Then _given how many people…_ Rey's brushing him off. Yes, it's clear she genuinely does have something else she's supposed to be doing, but… Something happened, and she's not exactly comfortable talking about it.

He looks over to C8. "So… I got sick, and…" he gestures to the walls, "Rey decided a little decorating was in order?"

"Not exactly."

His eyes narrow. "Ah. She tells me I should talk to you about Jon, too."

"I believe she has already given me all the orders I need in regards to the Grand Marshall."

He blinks at that. _The Grand Marshall…_ Because, last he checked, Jon was not, officially, the Grand Marshall, yet, because, officially, he was still taking advantage of not being that easy to noticed. "You called him that when… the day Rey didn't visit."

"Yes."

He blinks again. _Lady Ren gave C8 orders, concerning the Grand Marshall._ Something _massively_ shifted while he was out of it. For a heartbeat, he's feeling Han telling the story of how he vanished from time for three years, and the feeling of the entire universe being upside down when he came back.

His eyes are so narrow he can see his eyelashes right now. He makes himself stop that. "C8, if you were human I'd say you're lying to me, or at least being so circumspect in your 'truthful' answers as to be basically the same thing. Why?"

"Absolutely no one, myself included, thought it was a good idea to give you information that might make you want to get out of bed a minute sooner than you did. The med droid was clear in saying that the only thing you needed to be doing was resting, so I carefully chose my responses to encourage that, because physically restraining you would have been uncomfortable, for you."

He glares at C8. First and foremost because, unfortunately, C8 likely _could_ have restrained him while he was sick. Secondly, because the nerf is right. He would have tried to get up if he knew… Knew what? He's still not sure what happened this last week. He knows there were things on his calendar, but… But, that bastard is _still doing it._

"All right. So, why are you _still_ doing it? I'm up. If the med droid is still in my room, it's hiding. I'm theoretically Hiffa free, but I'm fairly sure you're still skirting the questions I'm asking. So, what happened? Start at me telling you I wanted a pile of blankets and food," which, unfortunately, is his last really clear memory that doesn't involve wishing he could abandon his body for a while, "and finish with me looking around this room and scowling at the datapads."

So C8 does.

* * *

C8's just getting to the part where Schiff's having engineering quarantining different sections of the air cycling system in an effort to get the cyanide tanks out without killing the ship as a whole when Rey appears in his office.

He glances away from C8, who stops talking when Rey appears, and says, dryly, "I take it, it wasn't an uneventful week."

Rey sighs a bit. "No. Most of it was nursing and cleaning, at least on my part, but a few days there were pretty intense."

Kylo raises an eyebrow. "C8 hasn't told me, yet, about the parts with you." Then he looks around. "Other than the most obvious bit."

"Oh." Now she's looking at C8. "Wait, what else was going on?"

"Nothing that Grand Marshall Kinear and Grand Admiral Schiff couldn't handle."

Rey opens and closes her mouth, and then says, "Is that why we had nothing besides the K'Aran Delegation to deal with."

Kylo full body winces besides her. "The K'Arans. That was… Shit!"

"Jon, Poe, and Threepio, and I took care of it," she says, stroking his hand.

"Exactly, Lady Ren. As soon as I knew Master Ren wasn't in any position to deal with the Order, I shifted command to the Grand Marshall, and he and Grand Admiral Schiff handled the rest, except for the K'Aran delegation, because as Grand Marshall Kinear said, 'A long time ago, I learned that if Ellie was handling it, all I was going to do was muck it up if I stuck my nose in it.' So he left it to your group."

"Was Ellie handling it?" Kylo asks.

"I think it was mostly Jon, but she was there," Rey says. Though now she's wondering how much was going on outside of her own view.

Kylo nods again, still feeling awhirl in lost details.

Rey looks at him and pets his face. "Come on, let's go home, and we'll talk," then she takes his hand and ports him back to Lirium.

He groans with relief.

 _Home._

And then starts to fucking shiver, because home is bloody _cold_ and he's in a pair of light PJ pants, socks, and a sweater.

Rey wraps around him, and says, "Or maybe not." And in an instant they're back in his room.

"I missed home."

"I know. But I've spent days watching you shivering miserably, bundled up in every blanket we own, so… Not now. Not when I've got somewhere warm to be with you."

He nods. "Yeah… Okay… Just…" He's looking around. Especially compared to his office… "It's really black, you know?"

Rey laughs at that. "Maybe tomorrow you'll ask for some paint, plant yourself in your office, and let them paint or something in here."

"Is that all it took?"

"Yeah… Jon was redoing the thro—courtyard."

He sighs. "K'Aran delegation, start at the beginning, okay?"

"Okay." She gestures to their bed, and he gets in, sitting up against the headboard, and she snuggles in against him, head on his chest. For a moment, she's quiet, just listening to the thud of his heart and the whoosh of his breath. She kisses his chest. "I… knew you were going to get better. I wasn't scared about that, but…" she holds him tightly, and then sighs, deeply.

He kisses the crown of her head.

Then she sits up. "Food. We're going to want to eat."

"It's that long of a story?"

"And then some." She taps her comm.

"You've got a comm."

"I've got a comm."

And then she orders supper from the kitchens. Kylo watches her do it, and then realizes that if she's got a comm linked into the system, and can order from it… "You've got a formal ID on this ship now, too?"

"Yeah. C8 tells me I've got access to everything on the ship you do."

"This is a _really_ long story, isn't it?"

She nods. Then she starts to tell the story. She's gotten to the point where Jon is explaining to her that he needs Lady Ren, and will trade her Lady Ren for every piece of medical equipment she could have ever wanted when Kylo breaks in with, "You took my meetings for me?" he's so excited and pleased by that it's practically quivering off of him.

Rey nods, then rolls her eyes some. "Got fancied up, put on my best Lady Rey costume, tried my best at problem solving, maybe made the situation better, probably didn't make it worse, beat some idiots within a centimeter of sense, but…"

"Wait," she'd been leaning against him, head on his chest, but he wants eye contact for this, so he shifts them around a bit, "were you beating on them in the pretty dress?" He _loves_ the idea of that. Though he's rather confused why she was getting into fights.

"No. Just a shirt and trousers for the fight. The K'Arans. They wanted _strength_ and _power_ which to them means _muscle,_ and the two idiot grandsons needed some way to prove to themselves and their grandfather who was better, and…" She sighs again. "K'Ahuana is timid but smart. He takes the time to think, but doubts his instincts, so he dithers until the moment past when he needs to make the decision. K'Oanan is a walking shaft. Not a gram of brain anywhere in his head. But, he's willing to make decisions. Poe and the rest of them basically take the point of view that better the occasional wrong decision than no decision at all."

Kylo nods at that. "Maybe?"

"Yeah, maybe. But they're also pretty sure that K'Ahuana will stick around and help out if K'Oanan gets the win, but K'Oanan will bugger off if K'Ahunah gets it."

"And that's a bad thing?"

Rey shrugs. "At this point I'm fairly sure that the universe in general will be better off if K'Oanan buggers off into oblivion, but—"

Kylo's eyes are narrow, and she can feel anger pouring off of him. Rey generally likes people. Or at least tolerates them. If she's this angry at the man… " _What did he try to do to you?"_

"I told you, walking shaft. _Fucking cajoolie._ " She can feel he's just too damn tired and weak to get as angry about this as he'd like to, but he's not, by any stretch calm.

He catches the feelings behind those words, and, "Did he touch you?" slithers out. His voice is quiet, likely because he's conserving energy for when he gives the order to find K'Oanan so he can personally rip his cajoolies off with his bare hands and present them to Rey as some sort of gift for doing his job for him.

"You know that little hand squeeze thing people do?"

He nods.

"K'Ahuana greeted me first, and he kissed the back of my hand. Apparently that's… polite but maybe a little cheeky. I'm an apparently single woman, and they're men, and in their culture that means I'm free prey or something."

Kylo's having a fairly intense fantasy of blowing their planet up right now.

She strokes his face. Her voice is gentle, but there's some real fear behind it. "Hey, none of that."

"I'm not actually going to do it." He doesn't like the feel of her fear. He likes the sense that she doesn't want to manage him on top of her own feelings about this even less, because if she's worried about having to manage him… That means this story's just going to get worse from here.

"Good."

He feels the relief she's somewhat ashamed of right now. She's afraid he might do it. Glad he won't. Worried that it might get worse. Kylo's not sure what to do with that. Especially the _worse_ bit. He's probably a bit more defensive than strictly necessary when he says, "I'm allowed to enjoy thinking about it, though. He just… put his mouth on you."

"Does that bother you?"

Kylo's got to think about that. He's usually not bothered when people do the little hand holding game with Rey. He watched what felt like a million of them do it at the First Night party. And as he thinks about it, he knows that some cultures do kiss hands, and… Jon's kissed Rey's cheek, and that didn't bother him at all. So… If it'd just been that… A pleasant greeting… No, it wouldn't have bothered him. But this… does. Because it bothers _her._ "It feels like it bothered you."

Rey looks ambivalent. He can feel her sorting the emotions of different bits of that day out from each other. "It mostly just surprised me. He kissed my hand, blushed, let go, and stepped back, wouldn't meet my gaze. That's about as bold and decisive as he got. It… bothers me because of what it opened the door to."

"The brother?" Kylo's voice is dark.

"He wasn't about to be out cheeked by his brother, so he took my hand, flipped it over, and then licked my wrist and propositioned me."

Kylo holds her tight, closes his eyes, and breathes deeply and slowly, because he's fairly sure that it really is inappropriate to kill a man for licking his wife. Or, at least, Rey would disapprove.

"I don't want him dead," Rey says.

Kylo understands to mean, _do not kill this man._ And she's still nervous about _worse._ He really doesn't like that. If there's _worse_ hiding in this story… Calm. She doesn't want to have to manage his emotions, too, which means he needs to take care of them… Another long, slow breath. "Really?"

She rolls her eyes. "Okay, yeah, I _want_ him dead. I still think it's wrong."

"Fine. I'm not killing him." Buggered if he knows _why_ though. You lick a woman without her permission, some bad shit should come your way and stomp your spine through your skull, and Kylo's perfectly happy to fill the role of _bad shit._ But it's clear that she's really _worried_ that he might actually do it, and… "I won't. But you hit him, right? A lot? He didn't _walk_ out of that room, did he?"

"I did hit him. A lot. He did walk out of that room, but he was bleeding, and when we fought, they had to carry him out."

Kylo's eyes are savage, though there's a very cold, dark smile on his face. "Good." Then he thinks a little more about it. "I don't suppose you recorded beating the shit out of the guy."

"Actually, we did. The idea was that they'd…" She rolls her eyes. "I was hoping, I could fight them each one on one, and beat them both, and then fight them two on one, and they'd win together, and we could use that to show them they were better off with both of them ruling."

"Co-regents?"

She shrugs. "Sort of… Maybe… Just… Keeping K'Ahuana in play. If they went with K'Oanan, he'd… get himself killed. Eventually some husband is going to rip his stones off and strangle him after. But by that point, there'll be a wife and a son, and… Whichever warlord she belongs with will end up ruling, so…"

Kylo thinks he gets what Rey was thinking with this. "So, Co-regents, keep the one you think is best for the job in the running, and he eventually takes over on his own? Why not just find for him?"

"Because at that point I wasn't certain K'Oanan was a lost cause. He hadn't yet demonstrated his amazing capacity to _not_ learn from experience. I was thinking that co-regents might also end up in a situation where K'Oanan learns something from his brother and doesn't get himself killed before he's thirty."

Killed before thirty is very specific. So are the rest of the things Rey's saying about K'Oanan. "Flash of the future?"

"Yeah. As things stand, it's not going to be pretty for K'Oanan."

Kylo tries to make himself relax, and attempts a joke. "I suppose if someone else is going to kill him, I don't have to."

She snorts at that. "That's a good way to look at it."

He knows Rey's a bigger fan of him using his destructive powers to _defend_ so… Maybe… "Of course, if I do it now, some other person won't have to. Won't have to ever _want_ to."

"Kylo…"

"Just… let me be mad at him. Okay? I promise I won't kill the guy."

She shrugs a bit, playing it lighter than she's feeling it. "You wanting to kill people for me makes me nervous."

Unspoken is the fact that they both remember the times he's _done it._

He half-inclines his head, and then squeezes her hand, and says, "I know."

She nods to him, understanding all the things he isn't saying right now, and kisses him again. "I know." She kisses him one more time. "Why do you want to know if we recorded it?"

"Well since you don't want me to lay hands on him, I wouldn't mind, at all, watching you beat the shit out of the guy."

Rey thinks about that for a moment. Then she thinks about how K'Oanan responded to her beating the shit out of him. And the things he said to her. And that Kylo won't kill this man, knowing what he knows now, because it'll make her unhappy, but she's not entirely sure if that will be true if he watches the whole thing. "Uh… You probably shouldn't watch it."

His voice is very dark and cold when he says, "Why?" He doesn't have to. He caught the image of what she didn't exactly think he needed to see. Still, this feels like the sort of thing where actually talking, with their voices, matters.

"Did you… uh… know that some guys get hard when you hit them?"

Yeah, that's what he thought he'd caught out of her mind. He makes his rage cool. Makes it curl into a little ball, deep in the back of his head, so he can sit here and _talk_ to her, instead of running off and ripping this… thing… into pieces with his bare hands.

Rey shivers at his enjoyment at that idea, and that…

He stuffs the rage, further, deeper back. Here, now, with her, talking. Just talking. Maybe… talking will help with wanting to do it. "I swear to the fucking Force, the husband that's going to kill this guy is _me._ "

"Kylo."

He glares at her. "Look, I won't actually do it, I promise you. I won't. I will control myself on this one. But I don't know _why_ you think it's inappropriate. We're not talking about people who happen to be located geographically near where something bad happened to you a decade earlier. This is me wanting to kill someone who has directly… Directly…" He's not sure how to phrase what happened. "I'm allowed to get angry at this, and enjoy fantasizing about seriously hurting this guy. This fucker's… drooling all over you, touching you without your permission, and then you smack him with a staff, and he gets a stand from it?"

"Yes."

"You're verbally telling him no. You're hitting him with a staff. I can't imagine your Force wasn't saying no, too, and he's tenting his trousers?"

"Yeah."

He rubs his forehead, and takes a moment to stare at the ceiling of his room, thinking that maybe being barely conscious may have had some upsides. That's not helping. Putting it into words, both for himself, and her, likely will. "I'm trying, very hard, to make you want to do this. To have being Lady Ren an enjoyable and fun sort of thing for you, because I want you to want to do this with me, and this fucker's tuffing that over sideways as hard as he can, while, also, apparently, attempting to tuff you, with or without your consent, so why, exactly, do you think me, or you, killing him is inappropriate? You _asked-told_ me to kill the trainer who was abusing the trainees. How is this guy different?"

Rey's got to think about that for a moment. There's got to be a reason why, beyond just, _it doesn't feel like it warrants it_. Maybe? Finally, she says, "Mostly, he was just annoying me. I wasn't hurt or damaged, just… angry. He… didn't have power over me, and he wasn't abusing it. My life and success weren't in his hands. He was… young and angry and stupid, and… I'm not sure he's got to die for that. Plus, he already lost his crown through that, how much more punishing does he need for pissing me off?"

Kylo doesn't respond verbally, but it's clear he's thinking that K'Oanan needs a whole lot of punishing, and not the kind that leaves wet spots on his trousers because he's enjoying it.

Then he's quiet for a moment while C8 brings supper in. It's noodles in broth, rich and salty, with veg and little meatballs, and crackers floating on top of it, and Kylo feels his mouth water at the smell of it.

His stomach growls.

Rey gives him a half smile. "Come on, eating while we talk."

There's a few quiet moments while they both eat, and for a moment, he's almost distracted by how good real food tastes, almost. But then he's paying attention to her again. "I feel like… asking you to do this… It's a big favor, okay? You don't really want to do it, and… You didn't sign up to do this with me. So, I'm grateful that you're doing it. But… When cajoolies go out of their way to make you doing this for me difficult, I want to hurt them for it. A lot. In many different ways."

She half smiles at that, and picks up his hand, resting it against her cheek, and nuzzling into it.

He's gazing at her. "Actually, I pretty much want to hurt people who annoy you just as a matter of principal, but, especially if it's because of something you're doing for me…"

She kisses the meat at the base of his thumb. "If we do this… together… It's going to happen, a lot."

He glares a little at that. And then catches a thought from her. "Homebody?"

She rolls her eyes. "Brother the first, the walking shaft, was propositioning me right and left, and wouldn't take no for an answer. I got the sense he rarely got told no, about anything, and considered it very important to show that he'd overcome my 'no.' He'd be the kind of King who would always get what he, or his people, want or need. Brother the second…" She nods to the flower on the table. "He got stupid in a different direction." Rey starts to tell Kylo about K'Ahuana, and gets to him offering her the flower. They eat during that story, and Kylo's a lot calmer about this one. Granted, he's not exactly unsympathetic with people falling in love with Rey, though he, too, wishes that twit had had the good sense to just moon over her in private. Finally, Rey gets to, "He was explaining why I should go with him, and how I'd never have to do any of this if I didn't want to, and…"

She's looking down at her bowl of soup.

"And this isn't easy, and I don't enjoy it, but… that's not entirely true… I mean, parts of it were good. The K'Aar left here feeling settled and safe, and that matters. That was good, and I think… I think I got a better solution than we would have had otherwise, because… K'Oanan wouldn't have shown who he really was to another man. But getting there… Every minute I'm terrified of fucking it up and making things harder for you, but… I don't like the idea that this is some sort of favor I do for you. And I don't like the idea that you're off stuck with this massive job with no one guarding your back. You… need an Ellie. Someone who's as invested in this as you are, who's playing the game and keeping the board and the players in view or it doesn't work… And… he's standing there, talking to me about how I don't have to ever step out of my familiar rut, how I never have to challenge my light…"

Kylo looks curious about that. Curious about all of this, but Rey's mind is still somewhat scattered, so he's scattered, too, but talking about it as a light/dark thing really has his attention.

"He wasn't talking about it like that. He doesn't have my… our… understanding of Light and Dark, but… That's my life, isn't it? Getting stuck in the familiar and never budging out of it? Placid and still and… content, maybe. Light… But not light that leads to anywhere or grows anything new. The light of the vacuum of space, sterile, where once something is on a course it just stays put. And he was offering me that. Go with him, and live in fairly nice luxury, and never, ever have to do anything even vaguely uncomfortable again."

Kylo's not entirely certain what to do with that, but… It's at least more comfortable than wanting to kill people and knowing he shouldn't. "Okay, not that I'm, in any way, suggesting that I'm remotely in favor of you leaving me, but… I think you've had enough shit in your life that if you want something familiar and comfortable, that's okay. And, like I've said, I want you doing this, but I'm not just here on my own. I've got Jon, and, literally, Ellie, watching my back, so if you don't want-"

Rey rolls her eyes a little, and leans over, kisses Kylo, about to say something like, 'I love you, too,' but her lips meet his, and his meet hers, and stroke, and suck, and she's moving closer, a lot closer, not breaking the kiss, but finding herself in his lap.

She's breathing hard when she does break the kiss, and he's shaking, slightly, and not from a fever, not this time. Rey licks his lip again, just to do it, savoring the feel of him against her, and the slight roughness of his facial hair. It's likely been two weeks of not shaving so he's got a decent goatee going right now.

"Right, there's this thing we used to do," she says with a huge grin.

He's nodding, hands on her hips, poking her in the belly, and _relishing_ it. "It's been a while, but I think I remember how this works."

"You damn well better."

He grins at her. "Meaningful conversation about this last week tabled for later?"

She rocks her hips against his. He groans, loud. She sucks kisses against his neck and jaw. "Later."

Normally, he'd just fit his hands around her bum, stand up, and off to bed they'd go. And he tries, because the part of his brain that's aware of anything of his body besides how much his shaft wants to get out of his trousers and into Rey isn't online right now, but…

He can get her ass in his hands just fine. Beyond fine… Shit… That's… so good. She's all soft and warm and fills his hands just perfectly, and she's rocking against him, and he's gripping her, reveling in the feel of her in his hands, and… There was a plan, beyond sit here and enjoy her rocking against him. Right.

Hands… Good, hands are doing what they're supposed to be doing. He gives her another little squeeze because that really feels like something his hands should be doing. She squirms a bit, rocking against his shaft, lifting herself, a little, so she can suck on his earlobe, and Kylo groans, loud, happy, flush with sex and joy.

Push chair back. That… happens. (He's got the suspicion that her Force helped a bit with that.)

And stand up… Shit… No. His knees and thighs are sending some unambiguous messages along the lines of _this bloody well isn't going to happen right now._

He groans, long, and loud, and it's not a remotely happy or sexy sound. He should be able to pick Rey up like normal people pick up a stack of datapads. This should take no more thought on his part than a moment of making sure everything is balanced right.

"I hate this!"

She kisses him, gently, gets out of his lap (which he pouts at), and giving him a hand up. "I know, baby. You're getting better. It'll just take time." She smiles at him. "You go lie down, and I'll get on top, and…" her voice trails off, and there's a gleam in her eye.

That does a pretty good job of killing his frustration, or at least banishing it from the front of his mind. After all, it's not like he's adverse to lying on his back and having her ride him.

He doesn't exactly hop into bed, but he does get on it fairly quickly, and gets his clothing off, faster. "What are you going to do when you get on top?" he asks, grinning, as Rey's tossing off her clothing, standing next to the bed.

She leans forward, breasts hanging in his face, and he can't not lean up a bit to kiss and nuzzle them, before flopping back. She kisses his lips, and says, "I haven't fully decided, yet. Any requests?"

He's laying, head back on the pillows, sprawled out, gazing up at her. "Force, what a question… Uh…" She's scooting her leggings down her legs, and he's staring at warm skin, and her mostly naked, and that's pretty much killed every other thought in his head.

She wiggles a little for him. "Just want to watch?"

He thinks the sound he makes is something like a yes, or maybe just a moan, but somehow she's on the bed, standing over him, slowly, so slowly, thumbs hooked in her panties, easing them down her body, and right now she's got the angle so they're still blocking his view of her maomao, and…

And then she's got them off and is kneeling over him, gently stroking them along his chest and… He's biting his lip so hard it's going to bleed and…

"No… None of that…" She's kissing him gently. "No hurting yourself. Just you and I and feeling good, okay?"

"Okay," he pants it. He's so aroused just from seeing and… He feels like his skin is too tight, too hot, flushed and begging for her hands, body, mouth, anything, on him. His hands reach forward, stroking over her hips and belly and breasts, and… "Oh, _fuck!_ Oh…" He's gazing up at her, eyes traveling over every well-loved centimeter of her skin. "I missed you."

She lowers down, laying across him, her body flush to his, both of them reveling in it, kissing him wet and deep, and thinking back, _I missed you, too._ Another kiss, or maybe just the same kiss, going on and on and on… _Tell me what you want, Kylo. I want to hear your voice._

He breaks the kiss, panting, and takes a moment to find words. "Gods… Rey…" She's propped on her elbows chest to chest with him, grinning, eyes gleaming at him.

"Talk to me, love."

"You… On top of me." He swallows, hard. "I want to see you and feel you. Want you to raise up, on your knees, and let me see you slide down my shaft."

She does rise up, straddling his hips, and she reaches down, making sure he's in place, rubbing the tip of him against her a few times, and he sighs, so happy at that, and she moans, softly, because he's in a very good spot right now, circling her pearl with the tip of his shaft, over and over, wet and slick.

"Nothing else looks like that," breathes out of Kylo. Because nothing does. It's so… everything. Her and him, and them together, his body lighting up hers, and hers making his rise harder and fuller. All of that wet, pink flesh gliding over each other.

"Want to see better?" Rey asks.

"Yes!" Half moan, half gasp, all desire.

She scoots one of the pillows behind his head, so he's got an easier view, and then shifts him back, just a bit, and sinks down on him and… He can't keep his eyes open. It feels too good. They slip shut and her body is on his and all of his focus is on the sensation of wet and snug and her… _Rey._

She's slowly easing up, and back down again, and it's good…

So good… His eyes slide open so he can watch her, pink and glistening, enveloping him.

Too good… Up and down and both of them wet and gleaming in the soft light of his room.

Done.

Kylo winces. That was… embarrassing really. Way too fast, and… not much build up, and maybe three pulses and… He feels cheated. His traitor shaft leapt over the edge way too damn soon. He wanted his first time with her again to be amazing, and the only amazing thing about that was him setting a new speed record for fastest spurt.

Rey's looking down at him, head cocked. She _knows_ what happened. She likely felt it, too, but… "Really?"

He rolls his eyes, and his head flops back into the pillow. "Really. I…" She snuggles down on him, face on his chest, not pulling off or away, which he appreciates, and also not looking him in the eye, which he also appreciates. "thought I took enough of the edge off earlier, but… I guess not."

That gets her propping up on her arms. "Took the edge off?" She's got an interested and amused look on her face.

He's about to just blast her with the feel of it when he remembers how much she liked the idea of him talking about sex with Jon, and… well, his shaft, stupid bloody traitor, is going to be doing exactly nothing for at least a few minutes, and given how sick he's been, likely longer, so… Maybe she'll like him talking about sex himself.

He gets hit with a wall of approving Rey emotions, so apparently, yes.

"The… thing, you touch, when your finger is in me…"

"The spongy nub?"

"Yeah. Sure. That. If…" he kisses her nose. "You and I… or, I guess, me on my own, have enough sex, it mostly just sits there and does whatever it is it normally does, and it's completely unnoticeable, unless you're petting it."

"Okay."

"If I don't have enough sex, either with you or me, I do start to notice it. And if I go long enough, it gets really sensitive. Feels… urgent and swollen… actually, this is a bad comparison, but it's as close as I've got, it's sort of like having an erection on the inside." He imagines the feel of it, and hits her with that.

"That's… good? Maybe?" Rey asks.

"It can feel pleasurable, but… I don't like what I have to do to get it to feel that way. I like it a lot better when it feels that way because you're playing with it."

"Okay, I can understand that. What's long enough?"

"I start to notice it like three or four days in, and by seven or eight, just squeezing my legs together, or sitting on a hard chair is enough pressure to give myself a stand."

Her brows raise. "I didn't know it… did that."

"No reason for you to know that. Not like, except for the last week, we've ever gone that long without having sex since we've been together."

"And you'd really rather prefer it stayed that way."

"You wouldn't?" He raises an eyebrow, and then realizes he's got no idea how often Rey actually wants to have sex. He doesn't know if his desire is contagious enough that he's setting the schedule for both of them, or if they're just generally in synch on this.

She catches his thought. "I used to do it every day for myself when I was on my own."

"Right."

"And, I'd really rather prefer that we didn't have to go a week or more without sex again, too."

He grins at her.

She kisses his grin. "So, that thing gets swollen and urgent feeling, and…"

"And if I keep not touching myself, usually on night eight or nine I'll go to sleep, have some intense dreams, and wake up glued to my pajamas."

"Oh. You don't have to…"

He shakes his head. "Yeah. My body'll take care of itself if I just let it be. Anyway, yesterday… day before…? Not today. I wake up, and I can feel it, I'm, at most, two naps away from completely wrecking the bedding, so… for a moment, I thought about seeing if you'd come help me out, but then I decided I had to smell like something that died, and…" he rolls his eyes again, "I didn't think I'd make it past ten seconds, so… I took care of myself in the shower, and… I was hoping that by the time I got you in on the party, I'd be able to go for more than two thrusts, but… apparently not."

She's smiling at him. "What'd you do in the shower?"

"Gently stroked it a few times and spurted so hard I thought I was going to pass out. Hot water and not exactly being healed up might have had something to do with the almost passed out part, too."

She laughs at that. "I wish I'd seen."

"You want to watch me touch myself?"

"I want to watch you do… anything you want to do. I like seeing you hot and sexy and spurting."

That makes him grin. And for a moment, they're just lying there, together, happy with one and other, and then a thought hits him. "You didn't have the plague all last week."

"I did not."

"So… did you… take the edge off, for yourself?"

She laughs at that. He's grossly underestimating how hard she was working. She also doesn't think he needs to know that, not really. Not now. "Not at first. Healing, tending to everyone, nursing, getting ready to Queen, Queening… Mostly I was just tired. But, when things calmed down…" she's blushing a little.

She's laying astride him, and he's still inside her. Soft, but snug. He likes the feel of it, warm and comforting. Another idea starts to form. He nudges her a bit, so she's straddling him. Kylo licks his lips. He's seen her touch herself when she rides him sometimes, but he's often so into… all of it, that he's not really watching what she does with herself.

"Show me?" he says.

He doesn't say it, but she can feel him thinking, _after all, I'm useless for a while, so you might as well get your spurt, too._

"And watching might help nudge things away from useless?" Rey asks.

He rolls his eyes at that, too. "I hope." He's feeling pretty boneless and limp right now. "No promises. Next week, sure, but…"

She kisses him. "But you're healing."

"Wanna be healed."

"I know." She wriggles a bit on him. "If I move too much, you'll slip out."

"I can live with that."

"Yeah, but I _like_ you inside me."

"And I _love_ being there. But I want to see this, too, so… If I slip out, I'll get back sooner or later."

She kisses him, and then scoots back up, so she's straddling his hips, leaning back a little. "You see everything?"

"Oh yeah…" There's a gleam in his eyes as he's watching her, from face to maomao and back again.

"It's… Not the night after the dinner. I know that. The night after that, or the one after that. I've finally gotten enough sleep I'm not dead on my feet. And the Order thing is done, so I'm not worrying about it. And it's night, and I'm sleepy, sort of, but I'm just not falling asleep.

"You're next to me, completely out of it, breathing deep and easy. Warm and near and—"

"You must really love me."

Rey looks at him curiously. "I do, but…"

"I did my best not to look at myself before I got in the shower, but I've got an idea of how I smelled, so…"

"And now I know what day it was. You'd gotten out of bed long enough to get a shower. I mean, yes, I do love you, but… Yeah, you sort of looked and smelled like something that had drowned in a sewage vat, so I was more than willing to cuddle you, but nothing even remotely sexy was going to happen. But that night, you didn't, and I think we had new sheets, so…"

He giggles at that. "Well, that's the same day I _took the edge off_ so… Yesterday?"

"Probably." She rocks against him a bit. "Day before, actually."

"Okay."

She slips her hands down her body, middle finger resting just slightly above her pearl. "You're sleeping, and I don't want to wake you up. I figured the last thing you needed was interrupted sleep."

"You're welcome to wake me up anytime you like if it involves sex."

She smiles at him. "I'll keep that in mind. Granted, since I know your sleep sex trick, maybe if there's a next time, neither of us will have to wake up."

That's an idea that's never sprouted in Kylo's mind before, but he's certainly willing to see about playing with it in the future. "We'll have to experiment with that."

"We will."

Her hand is just staying still, finger touching, but not moving. "So, it's night, I'm sleeping, and you're… randy?"

"Restless. It's not that distinctly sexual urge you get."

"Okay." He thinks about that. "Do you get randy?"

"The way you do? Rarely. Sometimes, I really want _you_ though, and that's sexual. But if we're not together, I'm unlikely to feel that."

He shifts his hips a bit. Again, wondering how much of what he feels is his own desire reflected back at him through her. "But… you want this, right?"

"Yes!" She leans forward, and kisses him deeply. "I like this _a lot._ But… I'll feel spikes of it off of you while you're supposed to be doing something else."

He nods. That happens fairly often. At least a few times a day when he's healthy.

"And, when we aren't together… I mean, it happens, but it's rare. But when you're here…" She traces her fingers down his chest, and lays them against her pearl. "And that night, you were here, and smelling good, and the bedding was clean, and I wasn't sleepy, and feeling restless. Eager."

He's grinning at her. "An itch that needed some good scratching."

"Something like that. And, it's silly, but it took a while to remember what I used to do when I'd get _restless._ " Her fingers start a slow, easy, gentle circle over her pearl. "Not wet enough." She holds the fingers out to him, traces them over his lips, and he gets the idea, rapidly, sucking them between his lips and licking them gently.

"Definitely want you good and wet."

She nods. "Everything's better wet."

"I remember saying that to you," he replies, giving her fingers one last, soft lick.

"So do I." Her fingers go back to her pearl, and she moans a little as they slip, wet and slick over her skin. "Much better." She's going slow, and he lets his senses flow into hers, soaking in not just the sight of this, but how it feels. His eyes slip shut again, this time to heighten the feel of her doing it to herself.

"I didn't want to wake you up, so I had to go very slow, and very gentle."

It's a tease. Enough to light her up, perk her interest, not enough to get over the edge. He can feel her body swell, and the soft clench of her maomao on him, and the thrum of her fingers playing herself.

He opens his eyes. "But you wanted to go harder and faster?" His eyes don't leave her fingers and maomao.

"I wanted a lot of things."

He glances up to her eyes, steeping in the way she's looking at him. And maybe random sparks of erotic lust aren't part of her makeup, but right now she's definitely got a come fuck me look in her eyes.

Kylo mentally growls at his traitor shaft, because right now harder and faster and deeper would likely be a world of treat for both of them.

Instead he gently pats the inside of her leg, letting her know to lift up a bit. She raises an eyebrow at him, because he'll slip out if she does that, but he knows that, and nods. He's got… a plan.

Sort of.

She does kneel up, and he does slip out, and then he scoots his hand under her, two fingers pointing up. "These go all night, no matter what."

Rey grins at that, and sinks back down onto his fingers, groaning.

That sound, her voice low and needy, the sight of it, her riding his hand as she fingers herself, that gets a twitch out of his shaft. "Better?" he asks.

"Yes…" Groans out of Rey. "I… needed that. I was thinking about if we had a dildo… And…" Her voice stutters as she rubs over her pearl, and he wiggles his fingers a bit. "Just like that."

He rocks them back and forth inside her. "That?"

"Yeah." Her eyes slip shut, and he basks in the sight of it. Rey, head back, eyes closed, skin flushed, rubbing herself, and riding his hand.

"Fuck, Rey… You look…"

Her eyes slowly open, and she gazes down at him. "Yeah?"

He nods slowly, eyes black in the dim light of his bedroom. " _Yeah."_

"I was…" She's rocking back and forth on his hand, and he adds a third finger. "Oh… Kylo!"

He's grinning looking up at her, feeling his shaft start to swell again. "I love you."

"Love you!" She rocks up and down, her fingers moving faster. He can feel her body starting to squeeze his and his shaft gives another little swell of interest in that.

His voice is breathy as he asks, "What would you have done if we'd had a dildo?"

"Oh…" She looks startled, not remembering why he's bringing that up, and… "Right…" She licks her lips, panting a bit. "Uh… Was thinking… What if you caught me using it? Laying next to you, rubbing off, slowly, gently, not trying to wake you up, but with it deep in me and—"

He nudges her hand out of the way, so it's his thumb on her jewel, and his fingers in her, and he moves them both very soft, very gentle.

"Probably would have gotten so hard so fast I'd have passed out." He's not quite there, yet. Fuller, thicker, but not yet _hard._ He lets go of her for a moment, and a few strokes over his shaft with his hand wet from her slick and his spurt does it.

He shifts himself, and she slides down on him, groaning as he fills her, wide and deep.

"There."

"Yeah."

Neither of them knows which one says which.

She's moving fast, chasing her spurt, and he knows he's not going to last long this time either. Just… enough, he hopes.

Kylo doesn't, not really, believe in heaven. And he hopes there's no Hell.

That said, right now, on his back, with Rey straddling him, letting him watch as she rides him… Right now he thinks he's died and gone to heaven.

He's palming her ass, and she's leaning forward a bit as she rocks back and forth, and…

"You're so perfect," he says to her. Each cheek fits in his hand, and she's rocking, fast, breasts brushing over his lips, letting his eyes dance between the view of his shaft in her, or her breasts and face above him, and… "Fuck Rey! I love this and I love you and… Oh, shit! You feel and look so good."

He can feel her grinning.

"You really like to watch."

"Fuck, Rey, YES!"

She uses her Force to shift them a bit so they're facing the mirror on the door of his wardrobe.

He pushes up, leaning back on his elbows, so he can see better.

He's watching her ass. It's soft and giving, bouncy, a glorious bit of jiggle in his palms, with a deeper, firmer core of muscle under…

And the view…

She's spread wide around him, and… _nothing_ else looks like this. Her pink, wet, glistening, and him sliding into her. Her body snug and wrapped around him.

She's rubbing her jewel, keeping herself paced to him right now. He's… almost… He needs to bite his lip, needs a bit of pain to tone him down, but she's already told him no on that… He just wants to slow himself down a _little._

Just wants to really _feel_ it.

Rey slows down, moving up and down him in a long shivery rush. Drawing it out for both of them. Her eyes are closed, jaw clenched, and she's breathing hard.

He's watching her, enraptured, eyes wide, body simmering with pleasure. He can't even say it. His voice won't form the words, but his lips move with it, "fuck, love, fuuck" just breath and prayer and holy profanity of pleasure so sharp it can't pass through lips without staining them with the flush of blood.

She's hovering over him, lips a bare caress above his.

Kylo nods, he's good, he doesn't need to string this out any more.

Rey nods, too, catching his lips with hers, breathing in his prayer of thanksgiving and lust, rocking against him faster, harder, taking him deeper, and both of them leap off the edge, landing in a sparkling shatter of a billion mirrors shot through with light.

She collapses against his chest, both of them breathing hard, and twitching gently.

And there are likely things they should say, or think, but… Right now doesn't need that. It just needs them, together. The rest of it will take care of itself, eventually.

* * *

And later, for the first time in too damn long, Rey curls herself into the curve of Kylo's chest, his arms around her, and sighs in contentment.

She doesn't have much in the way of ideals of _home_ but this sensation, him around her, his breath against her shoulder, the rightness of her body against his, this encapsulates any ideas of it she does have.

He kisses her shoulder, aware of what she's feeling, holding her a little tighter. _I love you._ He thinks it and feels it, and lets it purr out of him and steep through her.

He feels it come back to him, her own versions of those feelings cradling him.

And from there, for the first time in a long while, they drift off to sleep, together.


	23. Many Talks

2/11/2

Kylo's not sure if his lack of leap out of bed, gobble down a good breakfast, and attack the day like it's a ravening beast about to devour his family is because he's still not entirely healed up, or possibly because he's just so fucking comfortable, in bed, with Rey in his arms, sleeping quietly, or that… well… He's not exactly feeling any real need to go do _Master_ stuff.

It just seems sort of vague and tenuous, and if Kinear and Schiff and Jon can do the job without him, maybe they could just… keep doing it without him. At least, for a few more days…

He's not sure if that's a comforting thought or not.

He closes his eyes and snuggles in deeper with Rey. He's probably still getting better. That's likely why anything other than snuggling with her seems like… It's beside the point.

* * *

The second time he wakes up, he's feeling a bit more like, maybe, at some point, getting out of bed would be a decent plan.

Maybe.

If he can't get Rey to get back into it with him.

But she's not in it, which seems like many, many shades of wrong. Though he does notice the door to the refresher is open, and he can hear her moving around, and water. That's the sound of water turning on…

Shower time… With his favorite person.

Okay, that's worth getting out of bed for.

* * *

She smiles at him when he ambles in. Still tired, still weak, but… Well, he pretty much didn't move for a week straight, unless he absolutely had to, so… He's feeling mopey about this, but, it'll probably take at least a few days to get his full strength back.

"I figured you'd be in when you heard the water," she says, brushing her teeth.

"You figured right." He reaches for his own toothbrush, and then glares at himself in the mirror, rubbing his face. Rey's laser hair removal device means he only has to shave once a week, but… He was probably on day five or six when he got sick, and then on his ass for eleven days, and today's twelve, and… Yeah, he's got… well, the part around his lips and chin and neck actually looks like a functional beard now. Less like the wiry half-nest of sad little black hairs that's his mental image of him with a beard. His cheeks and jawline are pretty much hairless, except for the few stragglers. Which is pretty much exactly his mental image of himself with a beard.

His eyes narrow a bit. He, probably, could just skip it. Maybe, if he's feeling really ambitious, he'll see Jon, Kinear, and Schiff today, and none of the three of them will blink if he looks a bit worse for the wear. He just… hates, how even with the scar, even with an extra twenty-five centimeters of hair, and more than a decade of growing up, this is still his image of Master Ben, and…

He eyes his razor. His hands… are probably steady enough, but he really doesn't want to be scraping a blade over his skin when his hands are a bit shaky. He's dealt with enough pain recently, he doesn't need to add cutting a chunk out of his chin or neck to the list.

Rey's watching him do that while she brushes her teeth. When she finishes, she says, "You like it when I wash your hair, and I like washing your hair, so... You trust me, right?"

He realizes that she means that she could shave him, and his eyes go wide, because _that_ hits him, hard. He nods, slowly. The idea of her shaving him is nothing that's ever been in danger of occurring to him, but now that he's thinking of, it he really likes the idea.

Rey grabs his razor and brush and gel, and takes them into the shower with them. "It'll work in here, right?"

He nods. "I do it at the sink so I can see what I'm doing."

"I don't need a mirror to see."

"No, you don't."

* * *

He loves his shower. He loves hot water. He loves, to an infinite power more, Rey in said shower, sharing the hot water with him, shampooing his hair.

It feels so astoundingly good to him. He's sitting on the floor of the shower, and she's a bit higher up, on the little... Well, until Rey was in his life, he always thought it was some sort of shelf, it's where his soap, sponge, and shampoo lives, but she can sit on it pretty easily, so maybe it's a seat.

"I knew I was going to like sex. I maybe wasn't supposed to, and I wasn't sure that I'd ever get to try it, but… I just _knew_ that was going to be good."

His head is tipped forward as the water rinses down over them. His eyes are closed, so he can't see the way she's looking at him right now, a mix of confusion and tenderness, but he can feel it.

So he keeps talking, "But, I had no idea of… any of this. If my parents ever did things like this, I never saw it. Luke certainly never mentioned it. We had communal showers, but no one ever offered to wash anyone else's back, at least not while I was in there." He twists a little and kisses her knee. "How fucking stupid is this? The only other couple I actually _knew_ was Hux and Phasma, and if they ever did things like this, they never thought about it anywhere near me."

She smiles a little, at that, and kisses the crown of his head. She straightens up, and he stands up, too, as she says, "I didn't see, well, _this,_ no water showers on Jakku, but… You don't mean the shower, not really."

He kisses her, and signals for her to sit down, so he can shampoo her hair. "I do, because I really like this," he pours the shampoo into his hands, and starts to lather it, "and I don't because I'm talking about… caring for each other, and… just… this, here, with each other."

Rey moans softly when his fingers find her hair, and began to work through it. "This is good."

"It really is."

They're quiet as he continues to work the shampoo through her hair. Eventually she says, and he can feel there's a sadness in her voice, and he knows why, "There were a few families… Not children… People didn't have children at Niima. Not the people who lived there. Ones who came to trade did… but… Couples, and more… sometimes more. And in the evenings, you'd see them outside, catch that hour before the sun completely set, when the heat was leaving the air, but the ground was still warm. The stars would start to come out, and… I liked that time. And sometimes, before I left Niima… There'd be families, sharing their food and water, laughing, talking, and gentle touches, and happy looks." She rubs her lips together. Kylo can feel her thinking about how everyone on Niima is dead now. "There were times I watch that, and want it. That was my image of my 'family.' People who would share food and water with me, and give me hugs, and listen to my stories."

"But they didn't share with you." It's not a question. He's not, hearing stories like this, sad that everyone on Niima is dead. There's a satisfied purr of warmth in him that the people who didn't share with Rey are dead. And more… understanding isn't the right word, because he does _understand_ why she gets nervous when he wants people dead on her behalf, but more resignation to the fact that he _can't_ do that again.

Rey shakes her head. "Mostly. When… After, the ladies brought me tea, and that helped, but… I was Plutt's, so…"

"So they left you, mostly, alone."

"You wouldn't pick up another man's tools, right?"

Kylo shrugs. "That's… never really been a thing for me. Either everything I've needed is nearby, or it's been communally owned, so it's not like there's any sense of trespass from grabbing whatever was nearby."

"Oh."

He shifts the water a little, and is pleased to see that he can reach out with his Force and get the shower head to move without having to practically kill himself focusing on it, so the water is getting Rey's hair. When it's done, he kisses the top of her head. "I think the important thing is, you aren't a _tool._ You can't just… own people."

"And yet, trillions of them do."

He pulls her closer to him. "We're working on it."

A moment after that, she makes a small snerking noise. "Well, so much for that."

"So much for what?"

"My plan of just _one,_ good, easy day. Nothing sad, nothing…" She shakes her head a little.

He holds onto her, and her arms wrap around his waist. "What would make today good?"

"I think I'd really rather not be dwelling on Jakku."

He nods, his chin against her forehead. "I still need a shave."

"Good."

* * *

It really _really_ shouldn't feel this good. Her hands, the blade, the slight scrape of it cutting through the hair. It should just feel, at most, pleasant. Like getting his hair washed. It should be relaxing and nice, and… pleasant.

But this is a _lot_ more than _pleasant._

Granted, she's naked and standing between his legs, and he can feel her thighs against his, and feel the heat of both of their bodies, and the steam of the water, and… It's a _lot_ better than pleasant.

He, absently, supposes that maybe he can't blame that twit for getting a stand from Rey smacking him. After all, he's sitting here, filling out and lifting up, as she runs a blade over his face, so…

"I'm intentionally being gentle and sensual, and trying to make this feel good. I was _not_ trying to make him feel good."

He doesn't speak because she's got a knife to his upper lip. He does think. _I know, but… The danger is certainly part of it. There's probably a certain kind of man who really enjoys having a beautiful woman hold his life in her hands, okay?_

Her eyebrows raise at that. "Really?"

 _Yeah. I probably like this a_ lot _more than I should._ It sort of purrs through him as she tilts his head up and swipes the blade slowly over his throat. He doesn't shiver or wriggle at the feel of it, because he _really_ shouldn't move. He wants to, though.

His shaft nudges her leg as it lifts a bit more.

"Huh…" She's contemplating him. "So, this…" She gently slides the blade down his throat again, and uses her Force to, very gently, trail down his shaft.

She can feel the way he _almost_ jumps when she does it. He keeps his position still, but every muscle in his body tenses as his eyes go wide. _REY_ sort of whimpers, a mix of sexual urgency and alarm through his mind.

"No?" She steps back, and he sighs, slumping a little.

"I loved that. It felt absolutely exquisite. And please, don't do it again. I'm not sure how well I'll do at staying as still as I need to for that."

He sees her think about it, and tuck that away to play with later. "Okay." She hits him with an image, a future play date, where he's feeling healed, in control, and she's trailing the blade over his throat as she sinks her body onto his, saying, "That's it, you're doing so well, baby, just stay still for me, love."

He groans, _loud_ at the image of that, and his head thuds against the back of his shower, baring his throat to her, more or less begging for her to do it to him, while knowing that _now_ isn't the time for it.

She steps near again, kissing the tip of his nose, which isn't slick with shave gel. "Just shaving."

"For now."

She grins at him. "For now."

* * *

After… after warm water, and warm touches, a blade on his skin, and Rey's hands following, and lips, and hot touches, and… all of it.

After, toweling off his hair, as she's putting hers up in a ponytail, he looks like Kylo again.

Thinner than he should be, but… That's _his_ face. No shades of Ben.

"I might decide to stop zapping my face if you want to do this regularly."

She finishes up with the ponytail, and kisses his lips, nuzzling his chin. "Replace as many of the bad memories with good ones?"

He drops to his knees, holds her close, gently rubbing his very smooth face against her chest and breast. "That's the idea."

* * *

"Oh, come here, my love…"

Rey's eyebrow raises as she watches Kylo _pet_ his coffee mug.

He grins at her, and takes a long, deep sip. He usually drinks his black, but today it's rich with milk and sugar, partially to get more calories into him, and partially to just ease back into it.

She rolls her eyes a little, and takes a sip of hers, while spooning a little of her scrambled egg onto her toast.

"Is finishing up last night's conversation part of 'the good day?'" Kylo asks as he's contemplating what he wants to eat first. He's got toast and eggs and fruit, and there's some sort of spiced porridge, and… So many flavors and textures, and he doesn't know what he wants in his mouth first.

"Will it bother you if I want to kick it a bit further down the line?"

He picks the fruit. "Only to the extent that it seems to bother you."

She shakes her head. "Just… processing. There's something big there, and I'm not quite… there… yet."

He nods. "You mind if I talk to Jon or Poe about it?"

"No." It's clear she's thinking about something, and he's very much not poking it, so it's a bit of a surprise to him when she says, "Do you pray?"

"Uh…" He blinks at that. "Rarely. A little, these last few months, but… Not… Like I used to."

She nods at that. He can feel her tucking that away.

"Do you… want to talk about that?"

"Not right this second."

He nods at that, too. "It really was a hell of a week, wasn't it?"

That gets a tight smile out of Rey. "Yeah."

* * *

"C8, can you—" Kylo hears the door slide open, and Jon's there. "Or he can just magically appear."

"You're vertical!"

Kylo rolls his eyes. "For the moment. I'm probably going to get a nap this afternoon."

Jon's watching him carefully, clearly not missing the lost weight, his skin pale, or the general 'I'm not up to full strength' vibe. "You look like you could use it." He sits next to Kylo at the conference table.

Kylo's eyeing him, Jon up and hale and hearty, getting a feel for Jon's light. "You don't get sick, do you?"

Jon inclines his head a bit. "I certainly told Rey that."

Kylo raises an eyebrow at him.

"Assuming I'm not being abysmally stupid, no, I don't get sick."

"Like… what, going into a plague zone? Rey can do that, and you've got a lot of the same feel as she does on this."

"More or less..." _Fucking Luke Skywalker._

"Uh… I'm… not trying to read your thoughts, but that one was really loud. And while that's a sentiment I'm unlikely to challenge you on, I also have no idea why you thought it."

"He's the one who sat you down and did the sex talk, right? Or should I be thinking _fucking Han Solo?_ No, I already know the answer to that. He'd had to have known better."

Kylo nods. "It was Luke." It's also clear from the look on his face that Kylo cannot figure out why he's linking getting sick to sex.

Jon sighs a bit, and nods to C8 as a cup of tea, the way he likes it, is placed in front of him. "Thank you."

C8 nods at that.

"Do you record these conversations?" Jon asks the droid.

"Unless expressly directed not to, of course. If the Master wants a reminder of what's been discussed, or a transcript, that's the only way for me to be able to retrieve one."

"Okay, stop recording. I'll let you know when to continue," Jon says. The biggest problem with C8 being black in a black room is that if his eyes aren't glowing it's easy to forget he's in there. That's not an issue now, so Jon's feeling a bit uncomfortable with him just hovering there in the background.

Kylo's blinking. "That's how you do that?"

"How else could I do that?"

"Can anyone else get those recordings?" Kylo's suddenly thinking of all the conversations he's had within C8's hearing.

"They're coded to your voice, and now Lady Ren's. Anyone else attempting to get them through slicing or faking your voice will trigger a full scale deletion."

"Oh. Okay. Uh… For future reference, any conversations about Luke Skywalker do not need to be recorded."

"Yes, sir."

"You were saying," Kylo looks to Jon.

"Okay." He glares a little at the stars passing them by. If Kylo's clueless on sex and getting sick… How much more of this didn't he get? "Uh…" Another _fucking Luke Skywalker_ thought dances through his head. "Uh… You and Rey don't have kids."

"Astute observation."

"Intentionally?"

"You want to know if I know what a preventative is. Yes. I do."

Jon's feeling rather doubtful on that. "Uh huh. What do they prevent, Kylo?"

"Babies…" He's looking at Jon like he's being appallingly stupid right now.

"Among other things."

Kylo blinks.

"Yep. That, right there. That blink. And the way you're staring at me like you just noticed a gaping hole in the floor at your feet. That's the _Fucking Luke Skywalker_ moment. A slick'll keep you from making any babies you don't want _and_ make sure you don't catch any of a long and wide variety of social diseases."

"Oh." Kylo blinks again. "Abysmally stupid."

Jon nods. " _Going into a plague zone."_

Kylo startles a bit. "Oh."

"Yeah. I… know better. I've known better for a _long_ time. But… It feels better without, and… I'm not supposed to need them, you know? I'm supposed to be fluid bonded, and uh… monogamous… and uh… Especially from the back, he looked enough like Lane, and smelled enough like him, too, and… Well, eyes closed… I could pretend.

"And I knew it was stupid, I _knew_ it was going to bite me, and I did it anyway, and I wasn't even drunk enough to blame it on that. But, besides moments where I act like a flaming idiot, I don't get sick."

Kylo nods slowly, and then another thought hits. "Uh… Are you… okay?"

Jon waves that off. "Yeah, saw the med droids the next day. Maybe that's part of 'feeling like Rey.' I knew I'd caught something, so I went to get it taken care of. Got an update on all of my anti-virals, and a pile of antis. In men, that one's more or less asymptomatic. You don't know you've got it unless a screening goes positive, or, three decades later, you get cancer in a place you _really_ don't want it. But if you pass it on to a woman, it'll fuck her up something fierce."

Kylo nods again, chewing on his lip, feeling cold all over. "So… there are… a lot of these?"

"Dozens and dozens."

"And some of them don't have symptoms?"

"Yeah. They'll just lurk in the background until they jump up and bite you, or someone you give it to, something fierce."

Kylo's rubbing his forehead, starting to beg the Force that he didn't pass something on to Rey.

"Kylo…"

"When Snoke was around… I saw the Specs a few times. They always put a slick on me, and I wasn't about to ask why." Mostly because, since most of what they were doing was oral sex, he just assumed they didn't want to actually _touch_ him. "After that, but before Rey… I mean… There were a few officers who… Back then, I didn't exactly mind if all they wanted was my power if I got a good spurt from it. If it was the sort of thing that could make a kid, I'd use one, but… I just didn't know."

"Sir," C8's voice is mild. "When Rey brought you here and told me you needed medical attention, the med droid scanned you for _everything._ If anything other than Hiffa had shown up, you'd know by now."

Kylo sighs with relief.

"Also, fewer of them get passed around through oral, and if you're the guy half of it, even fewer of them, and on the receiving side, fewer yet. There are some advantages to having a shaft. That said, they're supposed to check for all of that in your yearly physical, too," Jon adds.

This time, when he's met with a confused look on Kylo's face, he says, _"Fucking Snoke._ If you're an Order soldier, every year, you've got to visit the MedBay, and they poke and prod you, make sure you're healthy and fit for duty, and update all of the drugs and whatnot you're supposed to be on. You didn't do that?"

Kylo shrugs. "Might not have been necessary to make a separate trip. I was in there every few months for broken bones, stitches, concussions, burns…"

Jon's nodding. "Oh. Yeah. Probably not. But it's been more than a year now, right?"

"More than a year, or maybe two days, depends on how you want to look at it. Before last week, it was… Maybe…" He's looking at his hands, remembering hitting the walls in his office so hard he broke them when he was screaming because Rey had been in his arms, warm and close and naked, and then she wasn't. "Sixteen months? Eighteen? A while."

"Okay. Well, uh, yeah. Every year." He thinks about it for a moment. "I know Rey's got all the light Force stuff, but…"

Kylo inclines his head. "Yeah. I'll mention it to her." He's already starting to feel ready for that nap, and a quick check of the chrono tells him he's been up for two hours. "Okay, before I fall asleep, business." He glances to C8 and waves him closer. "What happened with the two of you? Rey didn't exactly say, but…"

C8 explains his side, while Jon leans back in his chair and sips his tea. Kylo listens, nods, and then says, to Jon, "I am really, truly sorry about that. I…"

"Didn't think you needed to explicitly give the order," Jon's saying, nodding along. "Speaking of which, resume recording, C8."

The droid nods.

"And yes, we figured that out. Rey made sure I was covered."

"Okay." Kylo turns to C8. "And, you got Rey an ID and set her up as a Citizen of the Order and…"

"I gave her access equal to yours, Master."

Jon looks shocked at that.

"Okay, good. Does Jon have that level of access?"

"No."

"Kinear and Schiff?"

"No."

"All right. As of right now, I want Jon to have the same level of access that I do. If he and Rey decide that I am not fit to rule, bump Kinear and Schiff up to that level, while I'm out of it."

"Noted," C8 replies.

"Good."

"Kylo," Jon says, voice nervous.

"Look, I know Kinear and Schiff are very good at what they do. More than that, I respect them. And I trust them, to be themselves, which isn't the same thing as I trust them to be good for me. I do trust _you_ to be good for me."

"I… thank you."

"I should have done that earlier. Okay, now tell me how many assholes I need to kill."

Jon slumps into his chair. He sighs. "I was sort of hoping that that bit might have flown past you."

Kylo just stares at him. "Rey hasn't given me the blow by blow details, yet, and I'm doing my best not to press or demand the holos."

Jon sighs again, and then says, "They're an honor culture, and a patriarchy, so if you request K'Oanan show up so you can shove a saber through his balls or whatever, they'll deliver him, and likely hold him in place for you if you request it. Though it will greatly reduce the chances of them renewing the contract with us in ten years. Now, K'Ahuana was more or less behaved, until the end, and-"

Kylo's just staring at him, horrified. "I didn't… I mean… Yes, I want to, but… They'd really just deliver him?"

"Yes. Again, they might quibble if you asked for K'Ahuana as well. But, as codified in their laws and their culture, if you go to their palace and hunt down the boys, they will not complain."

There's a second where Kylo's thinking about how wildly satisfying that would be.

And there's a second where he's feeling how sad Rey was at the idea of _everyone_ on Niima being dead.

Then he sighs.

"I don't really want to do it."

Jon raises an eyebrow at him. And he understands that means, _Don't lie to me._

"Fine. Rey would really appreciate me not doing it, so I didn't intend to actually do it."

"Oh." Jon pauses. "Good?" He pauses again. "You're saying no, but you look serious about doing it."

"I'm serious in the sense that it's a currently ongoing fantasy that I'm enjoying immensely, but if I indulge in it too much, it annoys Rey, but… They really wouldn't be bothered?"

"I mean… Personally, yes, I assume his family would prefer you didn't murder him." He makes a dismissive noise. "Murder is the wrong word. You can't murder someone if it's not illegal, and what you want to do would be completely allowable in their culture. Politically, if you want to, you've got every right to take him out. That's how they play the game there, and… honestly, it would likely win you some more status points, though that I'm a little less sure of."

Kylo raises an eyebrow. He doesn't have to say explain more.

"You're the man who has a woman who can drop both of their princes. They've been learning to fight since they started walking. If even your _lady_ can do that, what the fuck can you do? It's possible you've already got all the status points, so…"

"Ah…" Kylo rolls his eyes a bit. "I take it you guys didn't mention she can and has dropped me, too?"

Jon's voice is dry as he says, "Yeah, somehow _that_ didn't manage to come up."

Kylo snerks a little. He sighs again. "I've got Rey's sense of it. And my own reaction to how it felt to her, but… That might be _touchy_ for us. How far out of line was this guy?"

Jon exhales. He knows this isn't as _touchy_ for him as it is for Kylo, but he certainly didn't enjoy watching it. "Again, K'Ahuana is a different story, but for K'Oanan, literally no one in his culture will blink if you castrate him and stuff his balls down his throat to choke on them. And, honestly, most of the men around here who saw it, won't, either. He fucking stood there and _licked_ Rey. And then there was the fight." Jon rubs his eyes. "I thought… At first… He was maybe just being… twenty-two. Something of a hypersexual jerk. Then we got to the fight. The only reason I didn't shoot his ass is I didn't have a blaster, and I had the feeling that it was important for Rey to handle it. I'm certain Poe would tell you the same thing."

"So, it was more than, she just didn't like it?"

"I thought the guy was dangerous. Rey thought he was, too. So did Poe. Take that for what it's worth. What I don't know is if he was the kind of guy who doesn't know how to handle being told no, so he turned mean in the moment, because he was horribly embarrassed and angry, or if he's an actual sociopath. I was the only one who only observed him. I didn't personally interact with him."

Kylo thinks about that for a moment. If Rey _and_ Poe thought this guy was dangerous, that likely means he is. "Do I want to see the footage?"

"Given what you know now, how much of a struggle is not killing this guy?"

"Sort of like an itch I can't quite reach. It's not unbearable, but I don't like it."

"And… uh… how bad is not knowing, exactly, what happened?"

"I'm not loving that, either."

"So, I'm not going to say you can't see the footage, or read the reports, or whatever, but… You might find it a lot easier not to."

Kylo nods. "How about this, how badly did Rey damage him?"

That gets a wide grin off of Jon. "Three cracked ribs, a lot of bone bruises, and she shattered his wrist. Every bone in it was shards after that hit. He left here with his right hand and forearm in a suspension cage in a bacta tube."

That gets a smile out of Kylo.

Jon glances to C8. "Stop recording."

Kylo raises an eyebrow.

"The man's a righty, and she took out his right wrist. I don't know how much company he's got at home, but if it's not a lot, he's in no position to do for himself, likely for a few weeks, given how badly she fucked over his wrist."

Kylo does laugh at that.

When he's done, C8 says, "Should I just not record whenever you two start talking about sex?"

"Good plan," Kylo replies.

Jon nods. "Uh… sex, personal stuff, non-Order related business…"

"Would it be easier if, when it's just the two of you, that I keep conversations in short term storage, while you're having them, and set up a blanket do-not-record, and if you don't tell me you want it permanent, I erase it after twenty-four hours?"

"That would make a lot of sense, C8," Kylo says. "I have a feeling most of them don't need to be kept forever."

"Noted. In fact…" He heads toward the door. "I have a feeling that now would be a good time to go pick up more datapads."

"That would be an excellent plan," Jon replies.

"And maybe some lunch," Kylo glances at Jon.

He shakes his head. "I'm going to have to get back to work soon."

"Just for me. Okay, other than the fact that the one Prince was… an issue, how did it go?"

Jon grins. "Really well. Sneaking a warrior queen into your place was a little rocky at first, but once we got things going… Rey did great. The K'Aar was very impressed with her. They approved our solution. We've gotten the first payment of 5%, and we're getting people into play and ready to move out.

"I understand K'Ahuana will have a coronation in the next six months. You and Rey will very likely be invited to that, and if so, I'd certainly suggest attending. Likewise, Rey has offered that if you two ever get around to a wedding, that you will be inviting them, as well."

A small, very dark smile spreads across Kylo's face. "So, you're saying, I'll likely have a chance to _talk_ to K'Oanan."

"Uh… Yes."

"Good."

"You're going to literally scare the shit out of him, aren't you?"

"And I'm going to enjoy it intensely." That smile just gets wider and darker.

"Ah."

"So, what else happened?"

Jon blinks. Well… If anyone currently on this ship will know… And… rather than re-reading the damn note for the seventh time, maybe it'd be good to just make sure he actually _knows_ what he thinks he knows. Jon nods, and then pauses, and then decides he might as well just do it. "Tell me about Poe."

Kylo blinks. He wasn't expecting that shift of conversation. He'd been expecting more about… treaties or something. He also doesn't know what Jon wants to know. Jon appears to be under the impression that he's said something common and extremely telling, but Kylo's just staring. Finally he says, "Tell you _what_ about Poe? Didn't you spend like three days with him?"

Jon sighs. This time when he thinks _fucking Luke Skywalker_ it's a lot quieter. "Which would be why I'm asking. Is he 'verse or narrow, and if he's narrow, narrow for what?"

Kylo blinks again. It's abundantly clear that _Jon_ knows what he's talking about. From the feel of it and context it's some sort of sex question, but… He's got no clue. _More fucking Luke Skywalker._

Jon slumps. It's clear that Kylo's bewildered, but he's reading the bewilderment as Kylo just doesn't know the answer to the question, as opposed to he doesn't know what the question means.

Fortunately, Kylo can feel why Jon's slumping, so he says, "Uh… I know it's a sex question, because I can feel it off you, but… I don't know what you're asking."

Jon unslumps and rolls his eyes. "If I ever meet Luke Skywalker, I'm smacking him upside the back of the head."

Kylo grins at that mental image. "Luke would likely duck. He's good at that. Plus, he's dead, so if he didn't, your hand would go straight through. But I'd enjoy watching you try."

Jon rubs his forehead. "Fucking Luke Skywalker."

Kylo nods.

"'Verse, narrow… means nothing to you?"

"A small chunk of poetry and not wide, that's obviously not what you're asking me, though."

"Well, that's pretty much where I was when my mom got done talking to me. Brent did a lot better."

"Brent?"

"Tasha's husband. I was four when they got married, so he's halfway between my big brother and step-dad."

Kylo fits that into his mental picture of Jon's life and then says, "And unlike your Mom, he's in possession of all of the equipment and is a bit more familiar with how having it works?"

"Yeah. Plus he'd apparently decided sometime around his and my sister's third anniversary that there was no shot in hell of turning me into a proper, upright paragon of Imperial virtue, so he wasn't trying to do that with said chat. Like he said when I was fourteen, 'Look, I've known you since you were two, figured out you were something of a floof by the time you were seven, so let's just chuck what your Mum had to say and start fresh…' Anyway," Jon sighs. "Luke apparently left this out: 'Verse, as in diverse, as in your sexual interests are _diverse._ You like men and women, you like other species, you like-"

"I'm grasping the concept."

"Narrow. You only like one thing."

Kylo nods. "Makes sense. Uh… Luke… He told me a lot about how wanting things was a problem, and the most basic, mechanical, up, in-out, and done description of how sex worked on a physical level, a bit about how it wasn't forbidden, but one needed complete mastery and devotion to the light to be able to indulge without tempting the dark, and nothing on the idea that not everyone wants the same thing, or that there are options."

"Ah." Jon looks mildly disgusted. "That's pretty similar to how my mom told it, too."

"Yeah, but your mom was trying to shape you. I'm honestly not sure if Luke knew there were options. Actually, looking back on it, I kind of think Luke may have been asexual. That or he was off the charts good at shielding. Fifteen years with him, and I'm _good_ at feeling what's around me, especially if I spend most of my waking hours with the person, and not so much as a single stray thought. If he was ever thinking about sex, it was _hidden._ "

Jon contemplates that. His lips purse, because now he's wondering how many of his own stray thoughts Kylo might have caught. Then he rapidly decides that if Kylo's caught them, he's done a good job of pretending he didn't, and he's not about to tip over that perfectly balanced upside down pyramid.

Kylo, who had gotten a sense of what's going on in Jon's head, decides to continue not tipping over the upside down pyramid, and says, "Would that be narrow?"

"That's an entirely different scale."

Kylo's look indicates _tell me more._

"All or none."

"And all would be those first couple years after your shaft wakes up and it wants everything all the time and the damn thing never goes soft?"

"Pretty much."

Kylo decides that also makes a lot of sense to him, and that it's probably time to answer Jon's question. "I don't know if Poe is narrow or 'verse or… whatever. We haven't talked about this. He and Rey have, so I know he has sex with men, but I don't know if it's only men, occasionally men, or what." Kylo pauses for a second. "Rey said it like, 'You know Poe likes men,' which, at the time, I didn't, so... That's what you want to know, right?"

Jon nods. He's quiet for a moment, and the rush of excitement Kylo was expecting from Jon at hearing that doesn't materialize.

Kylo raises an eyebrow. "I was expecting you to be more enthusiastic about that."

Jon's quiet for another moment. "I was, too."

Kylo cocks his head, feeling, and thinking. "Are you… okay?"

"I really don't know."

Kylo really doesn't know what to do with this. "Uh…"

Jon waves it away. "I know you'd like to help, but you don't know how to do it, and I'm not sure what I need right now, either."

"Okay. I… you feel confused and… almost disappointed… and confused about being disappointed, and-"

"Stop, okay?"

"Stopping. Just… sometimes it helps to say it, right?" He's sure Jon said that to him, or at least thought it very clearly, once.

"Yeah, sometimes it does. However, it's generally useful because it requires the person feeling the emotions sort them out and decide what they are. You banging about in my head and telling me what you think I'm feeling does not have that effect."

"Oh." Kylo looks at the floor. Then he reaches out and just holds Jon's hand. Jon gives him a little squeeze, and a pat, and Kylo understands that as a _let go_ gesture, so he does. Kylo swallows. "If… you get to the point where you do want someone to listen to you talk…"

Jon nods. "I know how to reach you." He looks at Kylo more carefully. "And you look ready for another nap."

Kylo rolls his eyes but goes along with the subject change. "Eat first. This… I hate this." He gestures to the piles of datapads. Just the idea of moving them feels exhausting. "This should not be _work._ "

Jon nods. "You still want to do that film thing? See a bunch of Handsome Princes princing-about with their ladies? Seems like the kind of thing that'd be easy as a way to get back to being _Master Ren._ "

Kylo thinks about that. "Just sit there and watch stories?"

"Eating snacks that are stupidly fattening is often part of it, too."

Kylo inclines his head. "I've been told that's a good plan, too."

"It is." It's clear that Jon hasn't missed how much weight Kylo's lost. "We were planning on doing it for tomorrow anyway, so…"

"Yeah. Sure. Tomorrow."

"Good." Jon stands up. "Okay, I'm going to go meet with Threepio. We're talking about moving the whole diplomacy branch down here."

"Here?"

"Not, literally _here._ But XX, YY, ZZ."

"That makes a lot of sense."

"Yeah, get everything centralized."

"Good."

* * *

Lunch. That's good. Nap, that's good, too, though he's annoyed that he needs one. Attempting to work out, that was… depressing, and he's not going to say anything else about that, and then back to his desk for _more_ datapads.

"C8."

"Sir?"

"Why the hell are there so many of them?"

"I'm assuming you mean on a level beyond, 'You were sick for eleven days?'"

"Yes. Most of these have, what? Three files on them. I know I've got one that holds literally billions of files, so…" He's holding the current one in his hands, and it looks identical to his main one, which holds entire libraries full of datapads worth of information.

"Security, sir. They could just send the files directly to your main pad. But by putting it on a clean pad, making sure only your fingermark-retina can open it, and having a droid directly walk it to me, there's no way for anyone other than you to read it."

Kylo looks at what has to be, literally, a thousand data pads on his conference table. "There's got to be a better way."

"Would you like me to put investigating that onto the to-do list?"

"Yeah. Rumor has it we employ slicers, get some of them on this. I don't need a stack of datapads half as tall as I am piling up every single day."

He glances at his next report, it's on tax evasion techniques in their occupied territories. "And I really don't need absolute top security for things like this. Send out a memo letting them know that unless people are going to literally die if whatever it is ends up in the wrong hands, they can just _send a copy_ to me."

"Done, sir."

* * *

He's tired. And hungry. And pulling on an extra sweater, and his cowl, because right now, Kylo doesn't care how cold home is, he wants to be there.

Bundled up, dinner in hand, he's porting, and… home.

Alone right now. He gets a feel for Rey. Just like he's going through his backlog, she and the rest of the Maji are going through theirs. Unfortunately, for them, the backlog is a billion kilos of snow.

For once, he's not feeling any disappointment on being on the outside. _Not_ shoveling the snow that's choking their street isn't bothering him at all. (Though he does make a mental note to see if they've got any sort of device that does something like that, and then he'll see if Poe's willing to fetch it home, because he knows that no one on shoveling duty is enjoying it.)

He's just turning on the cooker, when he feels Rey think, _How are we set for dinner for three?_

 _Poe joining us?_

 _That's the plan._

He looks at the plates in his hands. _Small for three._

 _There are cookies in the cooler._

 _It'll work, then._

 _Good, and Poe's going to bring something, too._

* * *

A few minutes later, after Kylo's got supper on three plates instead of two, and settled in the cooker to stay warm, Rey and Poe appear in his living room.

He kisses Rey, hugs her for a moment, and can feel her think _Long day?_

 _It shouldn't have been, but…_

 _You're healing._

 _Yeah, spiffy._ He nuzzles against her hair, and she holds him a little tighter.

He can hear Poe moving around, pulling out the plates, putting something on the table. And after a moment, he lets go of Rey, and says, "Hey, Poe."

"Hey, back. I get you probably wanted a night just with Rey, so I won't barge in, too much, just…"

"Just?" Rey asks.

"I want to borrow your man for some guy talk," Poe says. "After dinner."

Both Rey and Kylo look confused by this.

Poe snerks at them. "We'll gossip, and I'll braid his hair."

Kylo knows he's being teased, but he says, "No," nonetheless.

Poe winks. "Nah, mostly I want to question him about Jon, but… I mean, if you want to stick around Rey, that's fine, but he knows Jon better, and this one looks like he could do with some practice when it comes to friendly one-on-one social situations, so…"

Rey waves that off. "After dinner, go, have some guy talk."

"And," he opens a bottle of something, and pours it for the three of them, "during dinner, I figured he, and you, might like to hear about how much ass you kicked and how awesomely the Maji stepped up and took charge while Mr. Chosen One was flat on his ass with Hiffa." Poe smiles a bit at that, and well, Kylo really wouldn't mind hearing Poe's version of how it went/looked.

* * *

"And thus, asses were kicked, hearts were broken, treaties signed, and according to Jon, in the next few days 400 million credits should be heading your way. It was, without a doubt, the most entertaining three days I've had in months, and possibly years," Poe says as he's rounding out their conversation as they tidy up after dinner.

Rey's staring at him, on the verge of dropping the plate she's putting back. "Four hundred million?"

"Yeah. It was a ten year, eight billion dollar contract, and that's the first five percent. The rest get paid biannually, right?"

Kylo shrugs. "I don't handle that part. Apparently, on this one, I didn't handle anything, but… About the time the first draft of the contract got written up, I was out of it."

Rey's staring at both of them. "Eight billion credits? They put me in charge of an _eight billion credit…_ " She's very clearly going over every single moment of the entire three days and whimpering at every decision she made.

Poe squeezes her shoulder. After, that's when the nerves set in. This is exactly how it works for him with a fight, too. "You did great, Rey. They liked what you gave them. I caught the K'Aar before they left in the morning, and he was _very_ pleased by the whole thing."

"Including me breaking his grandson's wrist?"

Poe smiles. "Especially that part. I got the sense that he's under the impression that K'Oanan could have used a bit more telling 'No' in the past, and he's grateful you told him 'No' without killing him. It's clear he's hoping that he can use that to shape a 'valuable lesson' and get that kid pointed right before he goes really wrong."

Rey sighs. "Me, too." She shakes her head. "Eight billion credits." Her eyes are narrowed. "Jon told you that, and not me."

"Well, I did _ask._ Did you?"

"No."

"I don't think he was keeping secrets. He was just _really_ stretched."

"Oh."

Poe looks to Kylo. "So, did she do you proud?"

It's clear to Kylo that part of Poe being here, right now, and doing this, is to hammer home that he needs to do some serious praising and petting, because Rey was out on a ledge all by herself and she didn't much like it.

Kylo realizes he didn't specifically say it, either. He knows she felt how pleased he was, but that's not the same thing.

He steps closer to her, cuddles her against his chest, his lips on her forehead. _You, really, absolutely, did. I love you. And I love that you did that. And I_ know _you did better with it than I could have. Thank you._ He kisses her forehead, and her lips. Then, without looking away from Rey, he says to Poe, "More proud than you can imagine, and more proud than I thought I was capable of feeling."

"Good." He puts the last plate away while they snuggle. "Okay, enough of that. Guy talk. Back at my place, because you don't have anything real to drink here."

Kylo lets go of Rey, kisses her one last time. She smirks a bit at him, and then raises a brow to Poe.

Poe looks up at Kylo. "Let's get porting. Not having to walk in this cold is really convenient."

Kylo rolls his eyes a bit. "I thought the idea of porting bothered you."

"That was twenty-five degrees ago. Right now, I don't want to freeze my nards off." He extends his hand.

Kylo inclines his head a bit, Poe's certainly not wrong about _that,_ and grabs Poe's hand.

* * *

A heartbeat later, Poe opens the hatch to his ship, and a moment after that, they're in his galley. "It's too late for coffee, for me, unless I'm going to put some booze in it. So, what do you want?"

"What do you generally drink this late?" Kylo asks, sliding into one of the booths at Poe's table.

"Tea or whiskey."

"Tea."

Poe nods and gets to it. He pours himself tea (hot this time) with a slug of whiskey in it, and the scoots in across from Kylo, setting the cups in front of them. "Do you drink alcohol? I don't think I've ever seen you do it. Your mom could really put it away, though."

"Rarely. I don't really like how it tastes. Sometimes it's good in other things. And Jon'll carefully measure some out for me if he wants me calmer than I'd otherwise be in a social situation." He takes a sip of the tea. Again, it's… fine. Coffee is better, but he knows why Poe doesn't drink it this late, and he really doesn't need that either.

Poe's got his hands cupped around his mug, letting the heat of the drink seep into his hands. "You know, I wouldn't mind the _Supremacy's_ climate control right now. Micah's rated to -550, but I swear I can feel the chill."

"Warmer here than our place." He's actually thinking about taking the cowl off, because it is warmer in here than in their place.

"Because your place isn't rated to -550."

"It's not that cold out there."

"I know. I think it might be the sound of it. We can hear the wind and the storm."

Kylo inclines his head and sips his tea. Friendly social situations, okay. He's not sure how long they're supposed to sit here and talk about the weather. The memory of Poe saying, 'So who talks now?' goes flashing through his head. "So, Jon…"

"Tell me about Jon."

Kylo's feeling pretty good about that, because _this_ time, he knows how to respond. "He's 'verse and likes you, a lot."

Poe proceeds to rip the rug out from under Kylo's feet. "I _know_ that. Everyone knows that. His fish know that. You do not need to be an accomplished reader of body language or Force sensitive to figure that out."

Kylo glares at him. "Then what do you want to know?"

"How's he doing?"

"Can't you just comm him and ask. Or go visit? He'd probably like that." Probably. Or maybe be confused by it. Either way, it wouldn't involve Poe staring at Kylo looking for… something.

Poe sighs, again. "I'm not asking did he have a good day today. And I'm not asking if he wants to fuck me. I'd hope he had a good day, and I know he wants to fuck me. Bigger picture, _how is Jon?"_

Kylo blinks. "What the hell happened the last time the two of you got together? He's asking me if you're interested in men, and you want to know how he is."

Poe smiles at that, pleased to see that Jon's interest survived his hangover. "He got drunk. I didn't. And when he metaphorically crawled into my lap, I gently removed him from it, and walked away."

"Why would you do that?" Kylo's stunned, and it's clear to him now why Jon was asking if Poe actually likes men.

"I'm asking myself that every bloody day," Poe mutters. Then, full voice, he says to Kylo, "Because I _don't_ know how he is, and I… want this to work, so… What's going on with him?"

Kylo's staring at Poe, and Poe can feel him start to rummage through his head, trying to figure out what the hell he means by _how is Jon?_

"Stop that. _Ask_ for clarification."

"I don't know what you mean by _how is Jon._ It's obvious there's some specific information you're looking for, but I don't know what it is, and my first guesses were wrong."

Poe sort of shrugs. "Is he okay? I mean… In general."

"In general… I… Think so. I mean… Why are you asking? What's got you thinking to ask this? Not because he wants to have sex with you, right?"

Poe snorts a laugh at that. "Not because he wants to have sex with me. My estimation of a person goes up when they want to have sex with me. Shows they've got good taste."

Kylo snerks a bit at that. Then he just _looks_ at Poe.

"Because I want to have sex with him, and then sleep with him, and probably wake up with him, and maybe do the whole get breakfast thing, and then _keep doing it,_ and… If he's who I think he may be, then maybe do it for the rest of our lives."

Kylo sips his tea. "You know, this sounds like it's got a really obvious answer that doesn't involve talking _to me._ "

Poe rolls his eyes. "Not everyone has a Force-ordained soulmate that the universe decided to drop in our laps, you know? Some of us have to actually plan this stuff out and work at it."

Kylo takes another drink, and says, "Fine. I still don't know what, exactly, it is you want to know."

"Lane died."

Kylo nods. "He told you about that?"

"He did." He glares at Kylo. And then kicks him, not gently, but not with any real force, under the table. It's clear he's annoyed, and not really attacking, so Kylo doesn't smack him back and into next week. "Oh, and speaking of things I shouldn't have been walking into blind. You know what would have been nice to get a heads up on?" Kylo winces. "The only saving grace on that is that I'm not personally responsible for the man's death." Another sigh. And it's clear that Poe's thinking _but I could have been._ "But, even if he didn't tell me, the man lives in the home they shared, is still wearing his marriage band, there are pictures up all over the place, and… _How is Jon?_ "

Kylo nods. "In relation to Lane?"

"And everything else, too. He's seeing people again, right?"

Kylo thinks for a moment. "Seeing is relationship-y things, not just fucking, right?"

 _Fucking Luke._

"Okay, first of all, in my defense, you thought that very loudly. Second of all, as a general principal, yes, always. Third, were you and Jon talking about me with each other?"

That gets an amused look out of Poe. "Yes."

"And about Luke?"

"About the things you should have been taught young, but weren't." Poe gets up, he holds up one finger, and heads to his room. A moment later, he's back with a tube of… something, that he hands to Kylo. And Kylo's just staring at it. "Rub a little of it under your arms after you get out of the shower. Get your stones too if you're going to be doing something really hot and sweaty later that day. Just a dab on your fingertip, you don't need too much."

For a long moment Kylo's just dumbfounded, staring at Poe like he's gone beyond insane.

Poe shakes his head. "One of the things _Fucking Luke_ should have taught you, but didn't. Like, yes, _seeing people,_ is code for relationship-y things, not just fucking. Can he have a decent conversation with someone, often involving meals, fuck them, then a good cuddle, and do it again, on a somewhat regular basis? Preferably without getting scared or feeling guilty about stabbing his memory of his husband in the back. Meanwhile," he touches the tube, "This is one of them, too. Deodorant. Most adults, especially male ones, use it. It helps us not smell like death warmed over if we're doing hot, sweaty things."

Now Kylo's staring at the tube. "It's unscented." By which he means he doesn't understand how it can work, but that's not how Poe understands his comment.

"Yeah. I prefer unscented. I still want to smell like me, or whatever cologne I might wear. I don't want to smell like me working hard all day without deodorant."

"Uh… Okay… Do I… normally smell okay?"

Poe shrugs. He leans a little closer to Kylo and sniffs. "Right now you're fine. And, I've never really noticed, which is a good sign that you're likely usually okay. A lot of guys you can smell from the other side of the room if they don't use this. But, I never spend any time with you after a workout. And Jon noticed so…"

Kylo glares at the tube. "And this is… basic hygiene that pretty much everyone else in the galaxy knows?"

Poe inclines his head a bit, and then gets just about knocked back by the force of how Kylo thinks _Fucking Luke._

"Yeah. Okay. Back to Jon. I know he's fucking. Is or has he been seeing anyone?"

Kylo thinks about every conversation he's had with Jon. "Uh… I mean. I know he's had the one friend, but… I think she's actually a friend. If it's more than that, I think it's more of a hobby than a romance."

Poe nods. "Lots of casual sex?"

"Maybe? I'm not sure what counts as a lot."

"More than one new person a week?"

"I don't keep track of him that closely. Would three in one party be a lot?" Kylo pauses as he feels the wave of shock crash off of Poe. "Don't answer that. I can feel it coming off of you. I think he works really hard, and then parties just as hard."

"Drinking a lot?"

"Again, I don't have a good map of a lot. I know he drinks more than I do. I think he drinks more than you do."

Poe sighs and looks at his cup of doctored tea. "If he's drinking more than I do, that's _a lot._ "

"Is that a bad thing?"

"Maybe. It can be. Any other drugs?"

Kylo almost shrugs, and then he remembers. "He's mentioned using stims. I didn't know he was doing that until he was so worked out he needed to crash in my bed."

"That's too much. Anything else? Self-destructive behavior?"

Kylo's about to say no, but then he remembers Jon's appallingly stupid comment. "Sex with strangers without a slick."

Poe full-body cringes, writhing at the idea of that.

"It's that bad?" Kylo had the idea it wasn't smart, but… He's getting a very strong PAIN response off of Poe.

"Sex without slick _hurts._ So, he's either getting off on receiving or giving a _lot_ of pain." That's a layer of fucked up that Poe hadn't even begun to think of, but maybe Jon meant that comment about smacking people. _Shit._

Kylo recoils at the feel of everything going through Poe right now. "Uh…" He knows they can't be talking about the same thing. "I think it feels better without."

"You fuck women. You don't need slick. It's built in for them."

He rubs his forehead. "Okay, I know we're not talking about the same thing." He thinks for a moment and finds non-slang words. "Prophylactic sheath."

Jon relaxes, fast, at that. "Oh... Rubbers. You call rubbers slick?"

" _A_ slick, or slicks, yeah. At least in the First Order _._ Not like I knew any other slang for them before I got on the _Finalizer._ "

Poe nods at that. "Lube. I'm talking about lube. And… uh… For men, sex without lube, that's a _really_ bad sign. You can really rip a guy up if you don't use lube, and it's going to hurt you, too."

That makes Kylo squirm uncomfortably. He knows that burn from one, well-oiled finger, with Rey. Trying it dry sounds _bad_ to him, too. "Sex without a sheath?"

"I mean, that's not good, but it's not the same level of not good. Sometimes that's just drunk and stupid and horny." Poe just looks at Kylo.

Kylo rolls his eyes. "Speaking of _fucking Luke_ until this afternoon, I didn't know it was a requirement for anything besides preventing pregnancy, so…"

"Yeah, a lot of us have some variation on that theme. File it under young and stupid. That said, it's one thing to decide 'I want this to feel even better, fuck the consequence' and it's another to decide, 'Hey, I'll go away from this bleeding, likely end up with a nasty infection, and possibly have sphincter control issues after, or do that to someone else.'"

 _That's_ a bit more graphic than Kylo was expecting, but he's understanding that full-body cringe now. "Okay, yeah. Got it. Stupid and lonely, not damaging himself or someone else." Though as he's saying that, he's less sure. _Plague zone._ But Poe's already moving on.

"What's he do on his off time?"

Kylo shrugs. "I… don't know. I mean… We're not swimming in off time, you know?"

"Look, even enlisted get eight off a cycle, and two days per ten fully off. That was true under Snoke. If Finn got that sort of off time, you guys have to have some, too."

Kylo blinks and sighs. "Not that I'd ever noticed."

"Great." It's clear that Poe's thinking _what's the point of being the boss if you're never off,_ but he doesn't say it. "You've never seen him at a good time party, have you?"

"No."

"Okay. Works too much when he's on… Just forget I asked that. You've got no map for that, either."

Kylo's looking very deeply disturbed. "Poe, is Jon _okay?_ I… He's not cutting himself or anyone else. He's not picking fights so other people will hurt him. He doesn't break things when he's frustrated. He's not… I don't feel black and red pouring off of him. Sluggish blue-gray sometimes. There are no sharp edges or knives on him."

Poe sighs, and rests a hand on Kylo's. "I forget that your map of okay is so far away from a normal person's that you just can't accurately judge. Yeah, I mean, all of that is possible for _not okay_ but that's not what I'm thinking of for Jon." He sighs. "Light side not okay."

Kylo smirks, but it's not a pleased or happy gesture. "Light siders are always _okay_."

"Shit! You're sarcastic sometimes."

"Yeah, well, my map of okay starts at apparently the far edges of your map of not okay, so…"

"I know, buddy, I know." He doesn't think _fucking Luke_ quite so loudly this time. "And, to answer your question of why I removed Jon from my lap, it's that… Shit. I _like_ him. In a way I haven't liked anyone for a _long_ time. You can feel that off me, right?"

"Yes. It's all warm pinks and golds, content and pleased. Eager."

"Good. But… I'm at least attempting to learn from past mistakes."

Kylo's curious about that.

"I'm really good at falling for guys who aren't good for me, or would be, if they suddenly decided to start sleeping with other men, but that's just _not_ going to happen."

A vivid image of Finn pops into Poe's mind, and Kylo does his best to pretend he didn't notice it. "Oh."

"So, here's this little ball of perfect wrapped in golden skin and hair, with big blue eyes, and fuck me lips, and for once, he appears to be a decent man _and_ likes fucking men. He's the whole fucking package, okay? Except, you know, he's still wearing his marriage band, and has all the pictures of his husband up, and…" Poe grits his teeth. "So, I want it to _work_ this time, which makes me think that I need him to be _okay_ before we can get this thing going."

"Oh."

"Because, I'm not ever going to be Lane, you know? And if he's looking for a Substitute Lane, I'm gonna be a shitty one. I need him to be looking for a Genuine Poe."

That makes a lot of sense to Kylo. He couldn't be what Rey needed, not while she was still looking for Ben.

"And, I've got the feeling that maybe he's not in deep mourning, not anymore, but he's still in mourning, and he's not _okay_ yet, and honestly, he's not even wearing what most people would consider a particularly good okay-mask, and until he's at least in the neighborhood of being able to see okay, I've got to sit on my hands and wait for him."

Kylo sighs at that. He's quiet for a moment. And then he says, "Rey left me. Twice. I wasn't okay enough for her either of those times. Granted, they were less than a week apart, but… Really, the second one was the one that mattered. I'd killed Snoke, and turned to her, and begged her to rule the galaxy with me, and she more or less knocked me out and sprinted away, because not only was I not in the neighborhood of being able to see okay, I also couldn't have located it with a map and a team of trained navigators."

"Smart woman."

"Yeah. Granted, I wanted to kill her and everyone else because of it, but…"

Poe nods at that, too. "Yeah. That's pretty common. Hurts like fuck when someone you want rejects you."

"So…"

Poe shakes his head. "Yeah, I'm trying to figure out how to thread the needle of making sure he knows I'm interested in him and want to be with him, while also giving him enough room to grieve and get on an even keel."

"Better you than me." Kylo's quiet for a moment after that, too. Then he says, "When he asked about you, and I told him that you liked men, he seemed… almost disappointed."

"Could be a lot of reasons for that. Among others, thinking I'd just kicked him to the side."

Kylo shakes his head. "It was internal to him." He cocks his head. "Just… I guess I'm saying I think you're on the right path by giving him more time."

"Yeah. Why does the right path always suck?"

Kylo smirks at that. "Because the Light writes the rules, and we keep trying to shove ourselves into it, with… varying results."

"Amen to that." Poe's turn to be quiet. "Jon's light?"

"Is that not clear to you?"

"I can't pick up on other people's Force signatures. Wait… Is Jon Force sensitive?"

"His mom is, a little. He's… just immensely good at reading people."

"Yeah. And wildly attractive to them."

"Probably." Kylo's shrug indicates that he's aware of the fact that there are ideals of male beauty, and Jon's got a lot of them. "He's… deep and still. Calming. You feel that when you're near him, right? He walks in the room and you feel… better?"

"Yeah. And he's good with empathy and caring about people and… Light."

"Light."

Poe fiddles with his drink a bit. "Speaking of that… Finn… Dark, light? Where the hell is he on the scale?"

Kylo shrugs. "If he was a Force sensitive, I'd have a better feel for it. Rose is light. That's really clear. Paige is, too. She's just a cuddly bundle of bright, eager glowing."

Poe raises an eyebrow at him. Then he says dryly, "Paige is a sweetheart, but, I think that's more you wanting a kid of your own than a genuine read on her." Granted, it's possible that since he spent a good thirty-five hours with Paige and Chewie, where she was not having a great day (they brought her back to mommy and daddy with a new tooth) his view on the subject may be _skewed._

Kylo's not on any level fussed by that. "I like being near her."

"Good. Finn?"

"If you asked me to bet, I'd say fairly-well-balanced leaning dark, or just over the line dark, but I don't actually know. Why?"

"You and Rey are dark and light. Jon and I are light and dark. Sometimes I wonder how far the Force is jerking us around, and if they're also part of this balance idea."

Kylo shrugs. "I personally believe there is no end to the amount of jerking people around the Force is willing to do, so sticking yet another dark/light mirror here wouldn't shock me at all. Why?"

Poe fiddles with his mug. "Just thinking about it, I guess."

Kylo nods. "Has Rey or Jon told you about the Handsome Prince and His Lady thing?"

Poe just stares at him, and then snorts a sharp laugh.

Kylo doesn't laugh back.

"Oh, fuck. You're serious, aren't you?"

"I've been told it might be a good way to… build an image to encourage other people to join us."

Poe collapses against the seat's backrest and just _laughs._ After a moment, where he can _feel_ the eye rolling aimed at him, he stops. "It's not you… Not… just you. I mean some of that's you, but… Shit, your Mom would die if she knew about this. She _hated_ being Princess Leia. She used it when she needed it, but, just the idea of it irked her."

"Probably part of why she was willing to throw it away for me. Without mentioning it, let alone asking my opinion on the matter."

Poe can feel the heat in that sentence. He holds up his hands in a peace gesture. "So, you're not asking me about how to handsome prince, right?"

"No. Though… shit… If there's a book or something, on basic how to not offend people just by existing…"

"Just look up male grooming in your library. There'll be stuff. Or… I mean, I can't imagine there isn't somewhere you can get it done on your ship. I'm sure Jon knows where you can get a scrubbed end to end, buffed, shaved, waxed, and trimmed."

It's clear Kylo's not only not entirely sure what Poe means by that, but he's also not interested in diving in any deeper. "Good. Okay. No, I wasn't asking for help or your opinion on the subject, what I was going to say, is that part of learning how this works and looks is that, tomorrow, with Jon and most of the kids, we'll be watching some movies involving Handsome Princes 'princing about' as he put it, and if you wanted to come along, and maybe see for yourself how Jon is, and spend some time with him, we're just going to be sitting around watching movies, so…"

Poe nods. "Any other day, I'd take you up on that, but I've actually got a lead on a new Force sensitive. There's an acrobat on Gilieans VII, and I'm going to go see if she's just really good with hiding the stand, has a mini-field generator, or if she genuinely can levitate."

"Oh. Excellent."

"Don't get too excited. Gilieans VII is a backwater. The kind of place where less than one in a million people even know a field generator is a thing, so... A lot of the time I get a lead somewhere like this, it's just a con, where the conman has better tech than the locals know exists. I don't even mention them ahead of time anymore, because most of them are scams, but… I've got tickets to her show, so that's where I've got to be tomorrow. If you guys do movie day again, sure, that'd be fun."

"If we do it again, I'll give you a heads up. And, one day soon, I'm going to track down something that removes snow from streets. If you feel like fetching it home..."

Poe nods. "Thanks. Let me know when you've got that. I know R2's going to want a lift back soon, too. Get that all in one sweep."

Kylo looks at his empty cup. "Are we… done?"

"Yeah, go back to your sweetie." It almost feels like Poe's done, but then he says, "And get her a nice present when you're feeling up to wandering around more than twenty-five meters at a go. That was a fuck ton of responsibility that got dropped on her out of nowhere and she absolutely killed it, so bend the fuck over backwards to make her feel good about it, okay?"

Kylo nods, thinking about what he could possibly do to say thank you for that, and ports back to Rey.


	24. Enough

Hey Guys,

So, traditionally, if you're playing by "the rules of good writing" each chapter is a complete chunk of plot. (Yes, you can end on a cliffhanger, but you're supposed to wrap up whatever got you to said cliffhanger in the chapter.)

Now, a complete chunk of plot may be one action. It may be one thing by A POV character (and then seen again from a different POV) whatnot.

Anyway. I've got three chapters here, and one big lump of plot. I feel like I broke each one into it's own lump, but they're all interconnected. If something is rushed, glossed over, feels a bit off, doesn't quite seem... *finished,* there are two more chapters covering the same stuff from different POVs.

Also, unique to this one, we're picking up with Jon the morning after he got the note from Poe. So, we're moving back in time a bit.

All right-y, housekeeping done, let's get on with the plot. :)

* * *

2/7/2

"Hey, Em," Jon says.

After getting his head back on from reading Poe's note seventy-tree times, trying to figure out what the hell Poe's playing at, Jon decided he's not going to figure it out just staring at it, so he's back at work, and ready to deal with everything else in the Order, again.

"Boss," Emily Fruman, or Colonel Fruman of Tactical Design and Personnel Equipment, looks up from the huge stack of datapads on her desk. They used to be his. The datapads at least. He's still in his old desk and his old office. That's got to change, though. Not only is he preventing her from using the space he's got his stuff in, but because she's right next door, he keeps not hiring new people to do the jobs he needs done.

Right now he needs a different sort of help, though. He nudges a few of the stacks over, and sets a hip on her desk.

She smiles up at him, "So, how'd it go?" Before he can start, she says, "And I appreciate that you found someone else to handle the set up for you."

He nods. "Yeah, that's part of how it went. I've told you about Poe, right?"

She looks like she cannot begin to believe that he might actually ask that. "Your pilot? Short, dark, and handsome? The narrow boy you were lamenting? Honey, you've told me a saga about Poe."

He sighs. And nods. Of course he has. Granted, he's _listened_ to more than a few sagas, too. After all, there's a reason why Emily is where she is right now and that's because she's the only other member of the original Tactical Design who wasn't on duty when the _Supremacy_ was cut in half.

They were friendly co-workers, and shared loss (her husband had been on-duty seventeen floors below and ended up just as dead as Jon's), mourning, a need to find something to fill the hours (rebuilding Tactical Design certainly took care of that), and the need for comfort (they could comfort each other), turned them into friends.

"Well, I've got a few new chapters to add to it. You got time?"

She looks at the piles of pads. "Eh…" She glances to the chrono. "You got like… two hours' worth of a project?"

He nods. "Yeah, I can do that."

"Okay, two hours, then off to the F-deck for lunch, and you can tell me all about it."

"Good. You mind if I send you something to read?"

"When have I ever minded?" She looks at the million datapads, many of which had been, once upon a time, his, and he would, without a second thought, toss on her desk if he needed another pair of eyes on them.

"This isn't work. He wrote me a note."

"A _note?_ "

"Yeah."

She grins at him. "Oh, this is getting better by the second. Sure, send the note."

* * *

Two hours later, they're just another two officers walking the F-Deck, both with a drink in hand, looking for a noodle cart without too much of a line. Jon's finishing up everything he remembers about working with Poe, his stint as Commander Dameron of the Maji, as much of the flirty stuff he could recall, and then Poe more or less sprinting out.

"And then, in the morning, your virtue unsullied—" Emily says as Jon gets to the end of his tale.

Jon glares. "I was damn well trying to get it sullied."

Emily snerks and then sips her drink. "You wake up, and find that note, and a droid with a hangover potion?"

"Yeah."

"Good one?"

Jon shrugs. "Wasn't really hung over. Stim crash, tired, a bit logy from the night before, but it's not like my head was throbbing or I was puking." He put the potion in his cooler. Figured he'd save it for a morning he needed it.

"How drunk were you?" Emily asks. She's seen Jon on a tear before. She's been on one with him, too. More than once. In the early days, just after the body count was confirmed, and they'd gotten the message that search and rescue operations were ending, when it was just the two of them and some droids… Well, who was going to say anything if they passed around a bottle at the end of a shift? Or, strictly speaking, before the shift ended. Or, if, really, shifts weren't exactly a thing and they just sort of drifted from one thing that had to get done to the next, and got blitzed in between, and, occasionally, during.

After all, it's not like there were any higher ranked officers breathing down their necks. It's not like there were any higher ranked officers, period. Not in their command chain.

Not like there were underlings to gossip. Not at first.

Say what you like about droids, but they don't care if you're working on specs for streamlining your production lines because you've lost half your forces in the last month and a half while killing your third bottle of vodka that week.

"Glass of wine at his place. An hour plus trip back to here. Three shots, fast, and that was it. I was nice and loose, but I wouldn't say I was drunk."

Emily shrugs. "Would he have said you were drunk?"

Jon shrugs. He doesn't think so. He knows that Poe knows his way around a bottle, too. Both of them had multiple drinks at Kylo and Rey's. But… Well, not like the two of them had gone drinking before, and Poe did watch him put three away in less than half an hour.

Emily shoots him a bit of side-eye. "Uh… You know some guys won't fuck you if you're drunk."

That stops Jon short. "Huh?"

She nods at him, and nudges him so he starts walking again, the F-Deck isn't too swamped right now, but they are in one of the thoroughfares, so keeping moving is important if they don't want to get trampled. "Seriously. That's a thing. Like, maybe you can't really consent if you're drunk."

Jon's eyes roll so hard they're about to pop out of his head. "Oh… Holy fuck! I am an adult. If I want to get out of my head and get my rocks off, I can get out of my head and get my rocks off. I'm not some nervous virgin who doesn't know what he wants or needs."

Emily certainly isn't in any mood to challenge that. Not like she hasn't gotten out of her head and rocks off before. Not like the two of them haven't done that together, either. "Look, I'm just saying, some guys won't fuck you if you're drunk. How much did he have to drink?"

"Fuck." Jon mouths it that time. "Half a glass of wine. We were talking about relaxing, and I asked what he was doing, and he told me he'd watch my back if I wanted to get blasted."

She wraps her arm around his waist and gives him a little squeeze. "Sounds like short, dark, and handsome is a gentleman, too. Noble enough to tuck you in with a kiss and _not_ take advantage."

Exasperation rolls off of Jon. "You know, that's not exactly an upside if I'm more or less lying in his lap, begging _take advantage of me, please!_ "

Emily gets a little more serious. "Jon?"

"Yeah?"

"Have you had sex sober, yet?"

He just looks at her, and she knows the answer. If he could have sex sober, the two of them might have moved from comfort sex to being genuine lovers. For about a year, they moved through grief at about the same pace, but Emily kept going, and Jon stalled out.

"Yeah. I thought so. Look, I don't know what Poe's story is, but he sounds like he's at least attempting to be a decent human being to you, so…"

"Yeah… so…" He downs the last of his tea.

* * *

He fills the rest of his day with bits and pieces.

He doesn't think about Poe.

Too much.

He doesn't think about the wine in his glass as he eats supper, alone.

Too much.

* * *

2/8/2

"General."

"Grand Marshall."

He's in his usual uniform. There are just a few more hexes on it now. But, of course, Threepio has his correct title. Though he's wondering, since he's specifically told him to call him Jon, if this is irony or something. It's clear Threepio has a sense of humor, but Jon's not sure he's tracking all the nuances of it.

Threepio slowly turns in a circle. They're on the YY deck, two floors above Kylo's space. Right now it's mostly empty. "Future home of the Order's diplomatic wing?"

"That's what I was thinking." Right now it's just a million square meters of mostly empty storage space.

"We'll need to improve the look of ZZ. And install multiple elevators."

Jon nods at that. "Wouldn't do for _important guests_ to be flying into a landing bay that looks like empty, industrial blackness."

Threepio nods. "Several landing lanes. Space to hold at least a hundred mid-class cruisers at once. I'm thinking some sort of central courtyard, where the elevators will be, plants and something garden-like if we can grow things here."

That makes sense to Jon. Something like a garden is probably the fastest, and least expensive status symbol they can get on a ship like this. "I think that's a possibility. And it would certainly indicate a level of wealth and comfort not generally found on space-going vessels." After all, gardens in space aren't cheap. But hopefully, they can use the planets they already control to bring plants in, so that should keep the costs down.

"Exactly." Threepio's seeing the same things Jon is. "Elevators go up to here. We can break this section off into a sixteen grid. Another wide central courtyard…"

Jon's nodding, he can feel how this will work. "Our offices, and some sort of space for formal greeting of incoming bigwigs."

"Exactly. And we'll put the guest apartments one level up. We should have some sort of high end market on that floor, too."

Jon can understand that. That's the kind of market his mom wants her shop at. Something to show guests exactly how flush this ship is. Parks, boulevards, high end shopping, maybe a theater, the sort with actual, live actors, orchestra, something like that... "Embassies?"

"Realistically, for now, we have the room for them here. Hopefully, for the future, I-Deck."

Jon thinks about that. "Start as you mean to go on."

"Jon?"

"Something my mother would say. It's easier to set patterns from the beginning than it is to move into them later."

"That sounds accurate. Embassies on I-Deck then?"

"I think so. Direct elevators from here to there, express ones. And since we're starting as we mean to go on, let's make sure we've got real transportation hubs on I. I'd like to see some sort of shuttle that can get from one side to the other in under half an hour."

"That should be doable." Threepio is staring around the empty space. "Jon?"

"Yes."

"Why does your mother know me?"

Jon blinks and turns to Threepio. "Uh…"

"It was abundantly clear, that when we met, she recognized me. I, unfortunately, cannot place where I know her, so…"

Jon shrugs. "I… How did she react to you? Was she angry?"

"No. Possibly irked, but not angry."

"Well, there goes my best guess. She's not, uh… What do you know about my father?"

"Major William Frakes of the Imperial QuarterMaster's Brigade: Logistical Planning Division, his last command was maintaining adequate building supplies on the Second Death Star. He died there."

"That's pretty much what I know about him, too. But, as you can likely guess, Mom's not a huge fan of the Rebellion in general or Leia Organa and Lando Calrissian in specific."

Threepio nods. "Do you think she recognized me as a member of the New Republic?"

"If she'd refused to work with you, or was appallingly rude, yes, but…"

"She was, perhaps, curt. I don't know how she usually acts with people."

"You'd have known if she was being rude."

"Ah." It's clear Threepio is thinking. Then he turns away from Jon, looking over the space. "I've already gotten the cost projections and building timeline set. In three months, the entire layout will be finished, and in six, we can move operations down here, by the end of the year, we should have everything ready for a grand, public opening."

Jon nods.

"Jon, in my experience, many organics of our level will often have at least a small apartment attached to their office. I know Leia certainly did. It made the commute easier, and meant that if a night went long, there was a comfortable bed, a change of clothing, and a good refresher available. Would you like me to make sure there's space for an apartment to go with your office?"

Jon's immediate response is _over my dead body._ He doesn't say it. His secondary response is a sense of despair. He _can't_ move. That's his home, with Lane, and if he… He shuts that line of thought down, fast. His third one, which is the one he gives voice to, is to say, "A small one. Maybe just a bedroom with a nice refresher. I do have an apartment I'm fond of, and have no desire to leave it. But, someplace near where I work to crash on late nights…" And he said it because he knows there will be late nights. A lot of them. He's got a cot in his office now, because there are a lot of nights when the half hour commute between his office on R-Deck and his apartment on F-Deck just seems like too much.

It's _rational_ to have a space here for sleeping. It makes _sense_ for his life to shift and move. It just feels _wrong._

"Of course, Jon."

Jon does his best not to think about that, and then looks at Threepio. "What do you do when you aren't working?"

It's occurring to him, that he's never heard a droid laugh before, but apparently, if you hit him with it _just_ right, you can make Threepio laugh.

"So, that was a flamingly stupid question, I take it?"

"I'm choosing to take it as a compliment. You've decided I'm so much a person, that I would desire off-time."

"That's… a good way to look at it."

"I do, every ten or so days, take a few hours with my primary processing down to update my programming, scan for viruses or programs that shouldn't be there, and have someone tend to my physical systems."

"Sounds like R&R."

"Possibly. I do often feel better after it. And like many droids of my sort of make and model, I do like a good dip in a hot oil bath. Makes the joints work better."

"And you'll make sure there's a place for you to do all of that down here?"

"Of course, Jon."

"Good." Jon continues to look around. "Make sure there's something like that for droids that come to visit us, too. I know you can't be the only droid in this line of work."

Threepio can't smile, but Jon's certain he's pleased by that.

* * *

2/9/2

Two glasses. That's what he used to do.

He and Lane would, most nights, have supper, together. Granted, some of those nights were just the two of them shooting down to F to grab an hour for a meal together before they'd go back to whatever it was they were working on.

But, most nights, they'd get home, and they'd have a glass of wine, or two, with food.

It was part of the line between work and not-work. Part of being _home._

Get home, take the uniform off. Dinner, talking, gentle touches and soft words, and a shared bottle of wine, and then maybe they'd read, or maybe work some more, sometimes watch a show, sometimes go out…

But that was the line, uniform off, dinner, and two glasses of wine. If it was ever more than that, it was because they were both off duty the next day, and they were going out, or staying in, and playing.

He's had one glass. He pours the second one, and then looks around for something to seal the bottle. He doesn't find anything, because, between the two of them, kicking a bottle with dinner wasn't a big deal.

But by himself…

He pours it into a pitcher, and puts it back in the cooler. There's not a lot in there. A few left overs, and several other bottles of wine, and one bottle of vodka in the freezer.

Jon rolls his lips together. He and Lane used to go through one a season.

He goes through one a month now.

It's not, all things given, a problem. He knows men who had problems with alcohol. He doesn't. He does his job, his life is moving forward, he's just… sad. And sad is normal. It's… fucking what he should be. So… It's not a problem. It's a rational response to the current situation.

It's not a problem.

Yet.

But it could be one.

And the Grand Marshall can't be a drunk.

Two a day. Unless he's off duty, and celebrating.

That's… tenable.

* * *

2/11/2

C8's voice on his comm. "Grand Marshall, you asked me to let you know when the Master was back on his feet, and I have a feeling he's going to up and about today."

"Thanks, C8. You think he'll be up to some company?"

"I think he would like to see you, sir."

"Excellent. I'll be down in an hour or so."

* * *

Jon supposes, that if he thought about it, he'd have put together what he knows about the symptoms of Hiffa, and what that does to a human body, and the idea that Kylo would look like he'd been run over by a herd of Banthas.

He just… didn't.

But, Kylo's either distracted or tired enough that he doesn't see Jon swallow, hard, looking at him, and by the time Kylo's paying attention, he's got the reaction covered.

Poor man looks like he lost ten kilos in a bit more than a week, and while that's not the problem it would be for Jon if he lost ten kilos in a week, it certainly wasn't _good_ for him.

Food and time. That's the only fix for it. Lots of naps, too, likely.

* * *

Leaving Kylo to go back to his primary job, he's thinking about what he learned about Poe from Kylo.

Poe likes men… Well… Not a surprise.

So, what the hell just happened?

Poe… doesn't like him?

That just feels so _wrong._ Plus, you don't write a note like that to someone you don't like.

Poe's cloaked?

Eh… his fantasies of Poe aside, he's thinking that's not true.

It'd be one thing if Poe were cloaked. But if Poe were cloaked, there's no way Kylo would know he 'likes men.' That gets a sigh. That's not strictly true. 'Like's men' might have been the sort of thing Poe told Rey, thinking it would go nowhere else, and Rey told Kylo, knowing he didn't have anyone else to tell, and then the landscape shifted.

But, even if he were cloaked… Jon shakes his head. Poe's not cloaked. If he's cloaked, he's doing the worst fucking job of it ever.

Poe doesn't like 'verse guys? Shit… He went sprinting out more or less right after that. _That…_ could be it. Maybe. He knows some people think 'verse means, 'unable to settle down with one person' but… He was married, happily, for years. Still would be if he could be.

He thinks about the note.

That note really didn't feel like "Hey, I found out you sleep with women and men, so I'm about to run away."

He's almost tempted to turn around and try to get more information out of Kylo, but… No. With any luck he's eating, and then getting a nap, and doing it again. The last thing he needs right now is Jon pestering him for more information about Poe.

* * *

Work. Work is good. Meet with Threepio again. Get films together. Make sure the cinema is up and ready for them. Watch shows tomorrow. That's a good way to spend a day, get plans in place, move them closer to the Order of the Maji.

He checks his inbox, and the signed contract from the K'Aran dynasty is there. There's a note showing the first of the payments have cleared. He's got lists of troops they're getting ready to move, and a time table for when the first of them should hit planet side. It's got all the right signatures in place, though he doesn't recognize the general in charge.

Then he gets the copy of the orders from Kinear highlighting who's been put in charge of overseeing the setup for the K'Aran Planetside Security contract, and why them, and what each of them will be doing. Jon adds his own initials to it, showing it's been seen and read, and then uploads it to their central filing system. All the blanks filled in.

At least from their end of things, the K'Aran situation is _done..._ Well, planned out. It won't be done for ten years. Still... It's good.

There's another note from Threepio. They've got another of these security deals germinating. The T'Quelleths and D'Muirs are attempting to set up a marriage to end a half century of war. They're being requested to hold the talks and wedding. No mediating here, they'll do that themselves. Their job is to put everyone up and secure the peace.

Jon smiles at that.

At least something is starting to move in their direction. He CCs the wedding specs, assuming a deal can be struck, to his Mom. After all, if they're going to do something like this, and try to get others to come, they might as well exceed expectations by light years.

* * *

Dinner again. Alone, again.

"'A loaf of bread, a jug of wine, and you…' That's how the line goes, right?"

Lane would have known, but… Well, Jon's not only lacking a loaf of bread, but he's also lacking Lane, who he's fairly sure had said something like that to him one afternoon when they were planet side and could contemplate something like a picnic. (They stayed in, and had a picnic in bed. That was a _good_ R&R break.)

He does have wine, so at least that corner's covered.

And he should have a _you_ to share the wine with.

Jon glances around his flat. His empty flat. The flat where he's sitting with his wine, a bowl of surikin noodles, a stack of datapads, and no _you._

He scoops a bit of the broth to his lips.

By all rights, having gotten the answer he was looking for from Kylo, Poe should be here, sitting next to him, likely with his own bowl of noodles and some of the wine, and he should be finding out if Poe's good for more than just looking at.

Should be.

The bench next to him is still quite empty.

His comm is just sitting there. He could use it to call Poe. He's got his link number, he knows how the device works. The man was flirting with him, and would be unlikely to turn him down… Hell, the fucker literally spelled it out and wrote it down for him, _I'd like to see you again._

Jon shakes his head. It's got to be the sober thing, which… Okay, that's fucking weird, but… He wouldn't put it past the New Republic to be into things like that, so…

He could call.

He glances at the wine. It's the other half of yesterday's bottle.

Two glasses worth. Only two.

That's… just taking the edge off for him. Not even in the neighborhood of drunk, so he can't imagine Poe could possibly object to that. He takes another sip of his wine, and looks at what's left in the pitcher.

Not enough.

He just… can't… not on two glasses of wine.

* * *

2/12/2

Cinema-time.

However it is that Kylo and Rey's transportation magic works, it either won't transport twenty-four people in addition to them, or it's got to be somewhere they've been before, or… something.

Instead of the two of them and a pile of kids popping up in the theater out of nowhere, Jon finds himself waiting around, at the front entrance, as the owner assures him that everything is ready, and the children are welcome to try any of the snacks they'd like, and… He's blathering, nervous to have the Master, his Lady, and this collection of kids he's fond of, in his cinema.

They're later than he'd thought they'd be, but it might also mean that however they got here, it took longer to get here than expected.

Then he notices the crowd around him getting quiet, and a moment after that he catches sight of… An abnormally tall child… No, that's a kid riding Kylo's shoulders. From the looks of it, having an absolute blast doing so. (Kylo appears to be enjoying this, too.) Jon's not the only one staring in amazement at that.

After a moment, Kylo, Rey, Rose, Paige, and this huge collection of kids are all crowded around, waiting.

Rey looks at the kids, gestures to Jon, and then says, "Kids, this is Master Jon. He's a friend of ours."

"Jon, this is…" And then Rey introduces the collection of "children" in front of him. Some of them are definitely kids. The littlest of the bunch is a baby, snuggled on Rose's chest, and then the next littlest one, the one who had been on Kylo's shoulders, is… he's got no idea. Little. Younger than his youngest niece. Most of them look like they're not quite adolescents. A clot of teenagers are toward the back, whispering to each other, looking around and joking.

And for the most part, introductions go fine. Jon's good with names, and he's good with people, and he makes each of the kids feel welcome and ready to have a good time. Like with his nieces and nephews, when needs be, he's more than willing to get on his knees to get eye level with the kids. They tend to like it when people try to make eye contact with them, and offer to shake hands like they're equals.

That pattern continues with the kids, until he gets to the last of the bunch, who he also assumes is the oldest of them.

For a heartbeat, Jon just stops and stares.

 _Fuck._ His brain freezes for a moment.

The first thing that hits is the Order uniform. He's in the blue of the pilot corps, and the lack of any pips or stripes means he's an Ensign-in-training.

The second thought is: He's… young… too young… Too young for him… Now… Probably… Jon's licking his lips, unconsciously. Wellll… Shit… He can't be _that young_ if he's an Ensign-in-training, right?

And he's _staring_ at Jon. Light eyes and ginger hair, enough of a beard to be interesting to kiss. Long and lean and eager, Jon barely has to look down to make eye contact. The kid is practically vibrating with want, and oh... there's something about taking a person who's just past the cusp of adulthood and showing them how much fun their bodies can provide… A slew of happy memories from several weddings go cascading through Jon's mind. And the kid, Jacen, he says his name is _Jacen_ , as he takes Jon's hand in his, and suddenly Jon wants to hear himself gasp it as… Okay, he's got to not think about that. Jacen holds his hand a bit too long in greeting, eyes on his, tracing down the line of his uniform, and… This kid'd be _so_ good to go.

Disapproval is radiating off of Kylo at this, slamming into Jon, derailing his fantasies.

Jacen just smirks at them.

A hot blush lights Jon's face. He can feel Kylo wondering if this was a good idea, and Jacen's still _staring_ and… adding a few images of his own to the flood of fantasies dancing in Jon's mind, and, okay, his shaft is starting to take notice, and… Shit… Force user. He looks down, breaking eye contact. Little bastard probably watched his own happy memories and is now playing with them. Jon's eyes narrow. He looks up again, straight into Jacen's eyes, and says, "Stop it. You can try again in five years, when you're on the other side of twenty and more than half my age."

A few of the other teens giggle as Jacen smiles brilliantly at him, nibbles his lower lip, looks him up and down again, eyes lingering in places that make Jon feel hot and much, much too dressed before making eye contact, and saying, "I'll mark my calendar, _Sir._ "

Jon only mentally whimpers at that.

Jacen smirks at him again, making it clear he caught how much Jon liked being called, Sir, and then turns to join his friends, walking with a swing to his ass that should be illegal outside of the goodtime zone.

He intentionally does not turn to face Kylo, not yet, because he can still feel the wave of disapproval arcing off the man, though it appears to be aimed more at Jacen then him.

Jon's not sure what to do about that.

* * *

Jon _thinks_ movies are going well. The kids appear to be having a good time. Or at least enjoying the food. He makes a mental note to increase whatever they paid the cinema owner by 10% because if there's a single edible thing left in this cinema when they leave, he'll be shocked.

He's sitting next to Kylo, and can _feel_ him and Rey… communing or however they put it when they talk in their heads to each other.

Okay, maybe not _feel_ it. Maybe he just knows what sorts of stuff in these shows will likely poke them and get them, like they are right now, huddled in against each other, eating popcorn, watching the show, but also, obviously, _talking_ about something.

Part of him wants to say, "Okay, quit it. Talk out loud, to me, let me in."

Part of him knows that it's likely best to let them have this time to consider and ponder to themselves.

Part of him keeps looking at Jacen, three rows ahead, who occasionally looks back and sort of grins at him. He's not sure if the kid's lips actually move, but he certainly can feel that he's beyond entertained by this.

Jon sighs, gently whacks Kylo's wrist, and he hands over the popcorn he and Rey have been sharing.

* * *

Four movies was probably two more than was wise to try and shove into one day.

He can feel Kylo getting edgier next to him, and the little kids are running around, and… Yeah. He can and has and will again do kids, but this is significantly more fun for a day or two than a lifetime.

And movies brings talking with Kylo, which, of course, was the point of this.

Okay, Kylo was not thrilled about mentioning the deodorant thing to Poe, but… Well… Fine.

And he wants Jon to just go down the list of everything he apparently doesn't know about being a person in the galaxy and…

So, he does. And…

It had not gone past Jon's scanners that Kylo has some _issues._ He didn't realize they were, on any level, attached to his physical body. Jon's basic theory is that the only way you get to look like Kylo is if you're deeply invested in how your body looks, but… apparently, no.

So, he was expecting to spend today convincing Rey that she was just as pretty as the ladies in the movies, and Kylo that, yes, he could handle social situations that involved him having to at least attempt to be charming and flirt.

So, of course, Kylo flips the script on him, and _he's_ the one who's having the body image crisis, and Rey's just… off.

He doesn't know what's going on with her. Not too deeply, and she's making it clear that she'll talk when she wants to, or to whom she wants to. Which is not necessarily him.

He wonder, idly, how friendly she really is with Rose. They seem close. But… He's got the feel that right now she could really use a good girlfriend to chat with.

Or maybe just… Oh… Yeah. He can feel the pieces falling into place. Rose doesn't exactly love Kylo. And Rose's husband, who has to be the Finn that Poe's mentioned, _really_ doesn't love Kylo, so if there's anything going on with them that isn't entirely perfect, she feels like she can't talk to Rose about that, and… Probably part of not really opening up to him about it either.

(Though him sticking both feet in his mouth up to the ankle with that comment about K'Ahauna likely didn't help matters.)

And none of that much matters. He's sketching Kylo, because he's sure Kylo's got no idea of what he actually looks like, while he and Rey watch some of the New Republic propaganda vids, so both of them can get an idea of how exaggerated the good looks of Handsome Princes and Princesses get when they get turned into movies.

* * *

When the propaganda vids are done, Jon looks at Kylo and says, "Well…"

Kylo rolls his eyes. "All I'm going to say is, I've seen Luke Skywalker naked, and he did _not_ look like that."

Jon laughs. "No eight pack on Skywalker."

" _I_ don't have a bloody eight pack, even _now,_ I don't have one, and I can promise you I'm the best in shape Skywalker to ever Skywalk."

Jon's laughing, hard. Rey is, too.

"Luke dragging us, and himself, to the middle of nowhere makes a hell of a lot more sense, now."

"Good. I promise you, no one, in real life, looks like the people in the movies," Jon says.

Kylo nods at that. Rey's holding his hand. Jon crooks a finger at her. "C'mere."

She moves around to his side of the conference table.

He flips over his sketchbook, but holds it so Kylo can't see what's on it. "Okay, before we show it to him, Rey, is this what Kylo looks like?"

She looks at the sketch and smiles. "Can I keep this?"

"Uh… Yeah, of course." He rips the sheet of paper from the pad. "I'd have worked a bit harder on the shading if I knew you'd want to keep it."

Rey waves that away. "No. Just like this. It's a little rough and unfinished, but Kylo is, too, so… It's… right."

Jon realizes that Rey didn't answer his question, and Kylo's getting edgy about seeing the image. "Art style aside, does it look like him?"

"Oh… Yes. Black and white… Gray and white… But, yes, it's a good likeness."

Jon smiles. "Okay, let him see."

Rey flips the image around, and Kylo just stares at it. He told Jon once that he liked him too much. It's clear he's thinking something along those lines again.

It's also clear that this is not his mental image of himself.

He keeps staring at it, and finally says, "My ears are bigger, and my nose isn't that straight, and…"

"Hush," Rey says to him. "No, they aren't." She gently traces the bridge of his nose. "Yes, it's a bit skewed from the breaks, but it's not _that_ off. Your ears are distinctly shaped, and large, but they aren't _huge._ This is a really good likeness."

Kylo glares at it a bit. "You both like me way too much."

Jon rolls his eyes. "My mom would tell you it's a good likeness, too. As good as you can get with less than an hour to sketch. And, even if I did like you too much, I've got too much pride as a professional to muck up a sketch just to flatter your ego, so… There. That's what you actually look like.

"Traditionally, _handsome_ is a mix of symmetrical features, vibrant health markers, and whatever the culture considers rare and expensive. Okay, you do not have symmetrical features, almost no one does, and the broken nose and scar certainly didn't help that, but you're not wildly lopsided or anything. You look _healthy._ Well, when you aren't coming off a week of all liquid diet. Your face is a little more hollow right now than the sketch. But, generally, that's beaming on through. And it's a facial sketch so wealth markers aren't going to be a thing really.

"Assuming you're wearing something made to fit your body, you'll look like one of the handsome princes, at least as much as any of the real ones do."

Kylo rolls his eyes a little at that, but he doesn't argue.

He does trace his fingers over the sketch.

Rey kisses the top of his ear.

Jon's got the sense of the two of them saying something to each other, though it's less clearly a conversation this time. Maybe they're just on the same thought.

Rey grins at him. "Okay, I'm supposed to be riding herd on the kids for dinner time. I don't think they're going to make or eat much, but it's my night to be the resident adult."

Jon and Kylo both nod at that, and Kylo kisses her, and then she's gone.

Jon glances at the chrono. "Probably about time for me to head off, too."

Kylo nods at that, staring at him more intently than is comfortable. It occurs to Jon, that if Poe got around to the tossing a tube of deodorant at Kylo part of the conversation, _other_ things could have been talked about.

He's not sure if that's exciting or not.

"Jon… are you okay?"

Jon sighs at that. He knows by the way Kylo's asking, that he doesn't mean on any specific issue, but his life in general. He sighs again. Whatever it was he got talking to with Poe likely opened some mental doors in Kylo that Jon would have preferred stayed closed. One of the things he's generally found restful about being with and near Kylo is the fact that he's, for the most part, not aware enough of the idea of okay to even ask that question. Let alone be staring at him with huge, concerned-looking eyes. "Enough, Kylo, I'm okay, enough."

Kylo nods at that, and Jon's got the feeling that he's had a lot of days that didn't even get to enough, so this is… maybe familiar ground for him.

"Do you want to have dinner with us? Not be alone."

Jon shakes his head. "You and Rey want to talk, to each other, about everything you watched today, and I want to think some, on my own."

"Okay. Just… It's a standing invitation. Whenever…" Kylo licks his lips. "It's," he swallows, looking at the stars streaming past them. "It's a whole lot easier to be okay, when you're not alone, and I know it's not the same but, you don't have to be alone. Not… if you don't want to be."

Jon offers him a little half-smile. "Thanks, Kylo. But, you know, sometimes, I do. You and Rey do, too. That's just part of being a person. Alone isn't the enemy. But I understand and appreciate the offer. And I'll take you up on it, but not tonight."

"Okay."

He's almost out the door, when Kylo says, "Jon, what is the enemy?"

"The only one we can't beat. Death."

Kylo inhales and exhales, slowly at that, and then nods. "Okay."

* * *

Two glasses.

It's enough.

And that's all it's got to be.

* * *

2/13/2

In the morning, Jon re-reads the note. He doesn't know why. He's got the bloody thing memorized. That _feels_ interested to him, but… But if Poe was interested… wouldn't he have… done something about it?

Jon sighs and grits his teeth. Then he gets out of bed and heads to the refresher.

Kylo's asking if he's okay.

Kylo, who's more or less, _never_ even thought to ask about his mental health before is suddenly interested.

Because someone, and he knows it's Poe, finally said something to him to indicate that he's not _okay._

Jon grabs his pad and glances at the note again. He supposes he could call Poe and just _talk to him._ But, at least right now that's just… not hitting him right.

That makes him wonder, too. _Why_ isn't that hitting right? Not like he's fucking shy. Not like he's never called a man up and asked for company. Okay, it's _been_ a while, but he still remembers how it works, and Poe is explicitly telling him to reach out if he _needs_ anything.

He looks down at his shaft as he hits the water temperature control in his shower. It still fairly stiff with his morning stand. Then he glares a bit, _that's_ probably not what Poe meant by _need._

And even if it is…

Two glasses isn't enough.

* * *

After dinner, he's looking at Threepio's formal set of orders to move the Court of Ren, Diplomacy Wing, to XX, YY, and ZZ. He's signed off on it, approved it, and is, supposedly, working on how to use that space.

But he keeps going back to how the Maji are supposed to look. How they shape the Court of Ren, but… That's an excuse to think of things he can put Poe in. _Commander Dameron of the Maji._

Fantasy Poe.

Wank-Fodder-Poe.

Poe-Who's-Narrow-For-Girls and couldn't be interested in him, and…

A million years ago, when he was in the midst some teenage existential crisis or another, Tasha was stroking his hair, letting him cry on her, and she'd said to him, "Come on, Jon, you can sort it out. You're so good with your feelings you're practically a girl."

At the time, he hadn't understood she meant it as a compliment.

At the time, it was a good way to distract himself from whatever else he was angsting about.

But the time was a long time ago, and having spent a lot more time with other men, he's come to the conclusion that Tasha was right. He is better at understanding what's going on in his head than a lot of other men are.

So…

Fantasy Poe, Narrow-For-Girls-Poe, Wank-Fodder-Poe is… Well, exciting really. He's been enjoying putting Fantasy Poe through his paces.

Fantasy Poe is a good time, several good times, in a lot of different ways.

Jon sips his wine. He's been nursing that second glass, taking smaller and smaller sips so he doesn't have to see the bottom of it. So… Real Poe likes men. Real Poe seems to like him. Real Poe was definitely flirting with him. Real Poe should be Fantasy Poe tied up in a ribbon with a cherry on top, because Real Poe is _real._

But he's not.

Real Poe is… He lets the images roam around in his head. Real Poe, here, in his rooms, really _here._ Talking with him. The little flirty bits. The serious bits. The obvious intelligence behind the FlyBoy. The regrets.

Real Poe is a fully rounded human being with a lot of history and experience and loves and a home and… More than just a warm body for him to wank to.

But that's true of _everyone._ It's been decades since he's had a crush on a fictional character. Everyone in his fantasy life is _real._

Granted, his fantasy life tends to leave out the warts and whatnot, but… that's sort of the _point._ It's about being able to experience and explore something that _isn't real._

Another sip. _Isn't real._ Well, that's the key now, isn't it? Fantasy Poe isn't real. He can't be real. He's… everything Jon needs him to be, no matter what that need might be on any given day.

Except, corporeal.

Real people are good with corporeal, and generally not nearly as good at the rest of it.

That's… close. He feels like he's on the edge of what he's looking for.

He focuses back on Fantasy Poe. Fantasy Poe likes girls. Fantasy Poe is "narrow," mostly. Fantasy Poe gets… coaxed… into being with him, and is new to this whole _men_ thing. He's not cloaked. Not intentionally. He likes girls, he's just… been ignoring the fact that he likes boys, too.

Which, is, apparently, so far off the mark, it's in a different quadrant of an entirely different galaxy.

Jon chews on that idea. He likes those fantasies. He certainly wasn't kidding about the fantasy with Jacen, either. There's something… _exquisite_ about being someone's first _really good_ time. But it's not a _thing_ for him. It's not like he's got an inexperience kink. Or if he does, he's doing a terrible job indulging it. Most of the people he's had sex with in the last two years are Specs, so it's not like they're _inexperienced._ Lane started fucking before Jon was potty-trained, and by the time they'd gotten together he'd already tripled Lane's score, so, again, lack of experience, on either side, wasn't a thing for them.

Hell, they never even role played it. It just wasn't on the scanners.

And, before Poe, it also wasn't something he often fantasied about. Now and again, sure. And he certainly fondly remembered a lot of those adventures, but it wasn't anything he was actively seeking out.

He rubs his forehead and thinks. Why is Fantasy Poe narrow?

Better question, why did he immediately decide Poe was narrow for women?

Most men are. True, but… He's usually able to spot guys who like guys, and Poe's not exactly hiding who he is. Not like the man has a wife and two kids. He doesn't have a pretty girl painted on the side of his ship. Hell… _Micah_. That's the name on his ship. That's a _male_ name.

Poe didn't flirt, at first… Jon thinks. Yeah, that's right. He didn't flirt until he got into Jon's apartment and saw the pictures of Lane. Why… He thinks further through their interactions. Right… The first thing Poe ever heard him say was about his _girl_ friend.

Okay, that makes a certain amount of sense. He started to flirt _after_ he saw the pictures of him and Lane, and must have decided that if he had Lane and a girlfriend, he was open to play.

Well, that explains Poe's side of it.

It doesn't explain his.

Why decide Poe was narrow? Why fantasize about it? Why…

When it hits, Jon pours himself another glass of wine, and drinks it down, fast.

Narrow Poe is _unavailable._ Narrow Poe likes _women._ The only thing Narrow Poe can't ever be for him is anything other than a fantasy.

* * *

 _Disappointed._

Kylo had said that, and… He wasn't wrong.

It's slipping into place now. Real Poe is _real._ And… Real Poe is good for more than a wank. (He's likely good for that, too.) But… Real Poe has opinions and skills and a history and… Force, so much history, but… It's not a deal breaker. He felt that ache when he was starting to talk about the attack on the _Supremacy,_ but… would have talked and found a way to slip the tracker…

He doesn't think, won't think, about what Poe would have done if there hadn't been a way to slip it. He knows. Bad odds, not a suicide mission. He would have led what was left of the Navy of the Resistance against the _Supremacy,_ hoping for another one in a million chance, probably praying to Luke Skywalker for that one fatal flaw, and died bravely.

He _likes_ Real Poe. He knows he felt a spark of eagerness. Sewing the outfit while Real Poe slept, looking forward to him getting up and talking to him more.

That was real.

He's fairly sure Real Poe likes him, too. Real Poe was flirty and attentive and warm. Real Poe enjoyed interacting with him, even if he is an Imperial cast off. Real Poe… He makes himself see them on the sofa, makes his mind clear the fuzzy edges. Real Poe wanted him. But didn't act on it.

Opposites attract. That's another line, right? Well, they'd been set up to be perfect opposites, and if this Force stuff is real…

Kylo talks about being more or less designed for Rey. Destiny and all that.

Jon stares at his empty wineglass. Two isn't enough for _destiny_ either. Three isn't enough for _destiny._ There probably isn't enough alcohol in the galaxy to handle _destiny._

He looks at one of the pictures of him and Lane.

"Fuck destiny." Fuck any _destiny_ that he's got to go through _here_ to get to.

Fuck the Force, fuck the Gods, fuck anything that's made him have to be here, alone in this fucking apartment filled with ghosts and memories and no real… no real… anything.

Fuck a universe that ripped his home in half and…

And that's where it crystallizes, sharp and perfect.

He _likes_ Poe. Poe likes him. That's how these things start. But it's not how they end.

He touches his wedding ring. The ring that no longer has a mate.

Jon swallows, hard. He leapt fast and stupid with Lane, and got lucky. So fucking lucky. And whatever this is with Poe… He sighs a little, glares a lot. Jon twirls his ring around his finger. He looks at the wine glass, and he knows what he can't do sober, and…

He _can't_ do this again. He cannot go through this one more time. He cannot sit in a shredded home with his heart on fire, and lost, and…

This _cannot_ happen to him again. He's barely made it through once, and he will not make it through a second time.

But he can feel it, in the way he's remembering spending time with Poe. It's there in the lift in his mood at the idea of seeing him. "Fucking hell," it's here in this moment, now, in his fear and his pain.

It's here because this is starting, whether he wants it to or not.

And he doesn't know if he can kill it, and honestly, he doesn't _want_ to kill it, and the fear is choking him, and the desire is there and real and…

And he _really_ wants another fucking drink.

He's moving toward his freezer. The vodka is in there. The vodka that isn't a problem, yet. But it could be. Could be so easily…

He stops. Growls in frustration, and then taps his comm. "Hey, Em."

"Yeah, Boss."

"Can I see you? I'm having a really bad night."

"Of course, Jon. Meet me half way?"

"Sure." She lives seventeen klicks away. Getting out and moving toward her will help. "Yeah. I will."

"Good. See you soon."

* * *

A/N: Last thoughts. I think it's important that Jon have a life outside of Kylo. So, I get that some of you probably wished he'd taken Kylo up on his, 'You don't have to be alone' offer, and, eventually, he will, but... Right now, Kylo and Rey, and uncomplicated domestic bliss isn't what Jon needs.

Also, one thing we're not going to go into is what Jon and Em do. Shoulder to cry on, comfort sex, long walk around the F-Deck... Any and all options are on the table, but for now, I'll give him his privacy for how he's dealing. We know that he is, in fact, attempting to make good choices.

And, for right now, that's enough.


	25. Princing About

2/13/2

It had never, ever occurred to Kylo that getting twenty-four kids, him and Rey, Rose and Paige, to one place, at once, would be an issue.

Likely because he didn't, on any level, think about it.

Because, well, honestly, in his world, logistics is something that happens to someone else. He says, "This needs to happen." And then somehow, magically, it does. He almost never has to _make_ any of these things happen.

If he had though, he probably would have thought of it like moving a few squads of troops. Completely and utterly missing the point that twenty-four kids are about as not a few squads as it's possible for people to be.

It was during breakfast, with Rey, when she says, "I had to make three trips to get the kids to the F-Deck," that it occurs to both of them that teleporting everyone is possible, but it'll be long and annoying.

"My command shuttle should have room for everyone." Because he does, in fact, have a vehicle specifically designed to move him and a few squads worth of troops, plus some officers, from place to place.

"When was the last time you flew it?"

He thinks. And thinks. Probably returning from the _Supremacy_ to Qualee, after the fight. "It's been a while." He grabs his comm. "C8, how long would it take to have my command shuttle ready to go?"

"Eight minutes, sir."

"Get it ready for me."

* * *

If he'd been thinking about it, it would have occurred to him that attempting to land his shuttle during a major snowstorm would have also been annoying.

It's not an issue. Not like it would be for a pilot who needs to use his eyes to do things like this, or has to rely on the ship's sensors, which also do not appreciate the snow flowing through their fields, but even though he can feel the ground below him, and even though he can help stabilize his ship (though _that's_ taking more energy than he'd like, _fucking plague_ ) it still takes a few passes to get his shuttle on the ground.

Technically, by Lirium's standards 70 kmh winds aren't a blizzard. But they are a pain in the butt for an easy landing.

* * *

It's getting the kids onto the shuttle where the complications of putting twenty-four kids and Rose and Paige on his ship come to life.

First of all, the kids don't just queue up nice and orderly and march on up. Stormtroopers do that. Tell Stormtroopers to get on a ship, and they get on a ship. Stormtroopers do not require reminding to get on the ship. Beyond one, lone, single order, they do not require instructions to get on a ship.

Children are not Stormtroopers. Children mill about, stop in the middle of the ramp to stare at the ship, decide halfway in that they forgot their pet cuddly toy and that it absolutely has to come on the trip with them, or, thirty seconds before closing the hatch decide they *HAVE* to go to the refresher now, and they *CAN'T POSSIBLY* wait to get to the _Supremacy_ and… of course his command shuttle, which is not designed to do more than move a few squads from the _Supremacy_ to wherever they're landing, does not have a refresher.

(Kylo is somewhat suspicious that if Finn were here, the kids would have queued up with no problems, because it does seem that when Finn says 'Move' those kiddos move, but he's with Chewie on their first post-plague run.)

And Jacen, and Critt, and Marrok, and Opal, and Rey all want to fly the bloody thing.

And Rose is giggling as his blood pressure is rising as they're trying to get the kids on the damn ship.

She steps closer to him, enjoying his discomfort vastly too much, and says quietly, "If you think this is fun, wait until we've got to walk them from wherever we're landing to the theater."

He doesn't groan, out loud.

* * *

Once they're off the ground, and out of the snowstorm, Kylo lets Rey fly.

It's not that she's not a good enough pilot to get the shuttle off the ground. It's that he's nervous and on edge enough with the kids squirming about all over the place that giving up control of the ship in the middle of an almost-but-not-quite blizzard is just a step too far.

Once they're past the atmo, and the ship is still moving, and the kids haven't broken anything, he's willing to slide out of the pilot's seat and hand it over.

The kids mope a little as Rey scoots into the pilot's seat, and there's an undercurrent of _favoritism._

After a few moments of it, Kylo decides to just laugh about it. "Of course, she's my favorite person. I _married_ her."

The kids are amused by that.

Rey pets him.

Rose smiles.

That feels good.

For a moment, until he's lunging over to stop Blaine from pushing the buttons that deploy the weapons. (And a wet, cold, liquid snow down his back thought is hitting him because those buttons aren't far from the ones that jettison the cargo (not a problem) and the fuel (massive problem.)

It's a command shuttle, so it doesn't have a lot of them, and they're in deep space, so they likely wouldn't hit much, but…

Technically, the flight is thirty-six minutes. Kylo would tell you it took at least sixteen hours.

* * *

They're ten minutes in when the kids start complain about getting hot. Likely because, they're in a ship rated to -600. They're dressed for moving through an almost-but-not-quite blizzard on Lirium.

So then there's removing coats and snow pants, there's tucking them in around his seats, there's…

He's staring at Jacen. "Why are you in uniform?"

Jacen shrugs a bit. "I enlisted?"

Kylo knows that's a banthashit answer, but he doesn't poke it. Jacen earned that uniform, so… "Some Captain sees you and sets you on busy work, I'm not going to get you out of it."

Jacen grins. "You won't need to."

A moment later, as he's helping Torine get a stuck zipper unstuck, he hears Critt say, "Really, why are you wearing it?"

Jacen shrugs again. "Not sure. I just know it'll work better if I am."

"Future flash?" Savarah asks.

Jacen nods.

Kylo sighs. _Great._

* * *

They want to see _everything._

That's the biggest problem with taking a bunch of kids anywhere, and especially somewhere new. They want to see the landing bay. They want to see the other ships. They want to push every button in the elevators. They want to see all the floors between the landing bay and the F-Deck. They want to stop at _every_ shop between the elevators and the cinema.

And it's not that every single one of them wants to do every single thing, but enough of them want to do enough of the things to make everything chaotic and tense.

(Why Luke never took them anywhere is occurring to Kylo. He sighs. The feel of compassion for that is irking him, deeply. After all, once upon a time he would have very happily been a kid on a trip like this, wanting to linger and see every fucking ship within the range of his vision.)

Rey and Rose are at the front of the group, holding the hands of some of the younger kids, and leading them on. Savarah, Cassie, and Magiit are in the middle, keeping them on track. He, Jacen, Critt, and Elias are in the back, making sure there are no stragglers.

Mostly he's side-stepping left and right, grabbing small people who "I was just looking…" as they fall behind the rest of the group. By the time they're a quarter of the way to the cinema, he's got Rugh riding on his shoulders "So she can see everything" and he doesn't have to keep eyes on her to make sure she doesn't wander off.

He's glad he's in his casual clothing, because he's already getting a lot of attention as is. A wave of stunned silence is moving through the F-deck with them. If he'd been in his command blacks, there would likely be a collection of officers leaping to attention, offering to help corral kids.

He's almost tempted to see if he could do that.

He feels Rey laughing in the back of his mind. _You know I do a version of this every day, right?_

 _No, I didn't, and better you than me._

She laughs out loud at that. _So, you're saying you don't want twenty kids?_

If it had been just a few of them, he could see how this could be fun. And Rugh on his shoulders is more or less bubbling over with joy, and that's infectious. So, this… on a much smaller scale, could be a good time. (And he really doesn't mind the feel of a very happy little person on his shoulders, squealing with glee at everything she sees. That's… _nice._ )

 _How about we try one, see how that goes, and add another if it works well?_

He feels her laugh at that.

* * *

Finally, they're at the theater. Finally. He gives Rugh a hand down, but she keeps standing with him, holding his hand, until Rey starts introducing Jon to the rest of the kids.

That's a relief. Jon is good with kids. He'll kneel down to talk to them. He learns all of their names. He gestures to the counter where the snacks are and tells them they're allowed to pick two snacks and a drink each. Rey goes with the youngest ones to help them get what they want.

He's so relieved to finally get the kids into an enclosed space, and to see Jon getting along with them, and that they didn't lose any of them on the trek, and… For a moment, that's all he's paying attention to. The overwhelming feeling of successfully getting all of these kids to the right place at something close to the right time.

For a moment. Then a new sensation begins to creep up on him. He feels it and starts to wince, head turning toward Jacen before he entirely knows _what_ he's feeling.

Jon's saying hello to the older kids.

Jacen's behind the rest of the bunch.

Jacen has _not_ missed Jon.

And it's true that male beauty isn't exactly anything Kylo pays any attention to. He knows it's real. He knows that Jon is _handsome._ He knows these the way someone who can read music knows that a song is pleasant to the ear. He can _understand_ this in an academic sort of way, but he can't feel it.

Until now. A massive, deep, throbbing wave of _OH, FUCK ME!_ both an exclamation and a request just rolled right over him as Jacen set eyes on Jon.

It's strong enough, that for a heartbeat, he _knows_ what Jacen is seeing when he looks at Jon. Jon is fucking sex on legs and Poe's description of him, perfect, golden, fuck me lips, it's all _there._

And then Jon looks back at Jacen.

 _It'll work better._ Oh, shit! Jacen's standing there in an Ensign's uniform. Trying to make himself look like sex on legs, too.

And Jacen can _feel_ that Jon likes men. And, apparently, Jacen's succeeding in his attempt at sex on legs.

And it's like watching a slow motion ship crash. He _can't_ turn away, and right now he feels powerless to do anything about it.

Jon extends his hand, Jacen takes it, licks his lips, and Jon _quivers._

The other teens are having a blast. Critt's mentally cheering Jacen on, _Go get him!_ is the least salacious thing hurtling around in Jacen's mind right now, and Jon, poor fucking, massively outclassed Jon, is… Kylo refuses to get into his mind enough to know what he's seeing. He just… Does not need to know Jon that well.

He does, he thinks, need to stop him from acting on anything he's wanting to do with Jacen.

Kylo finally gets his wits, and powers, back together and slams both of them with a very strong _STOP._ He knows Jacen got it as a word. He thinks, from how Jon responds, that it was just a feeling for him.

Jon blinks, squints, blushes for a moment, breaks eye contact, pulls himself together, looks up and says, "Stop it. You can try again in five years, when you're on the other side of twenty and more than half my age."

Jacen, utterly unperturbed by Kylo's _STOP_ command, looks Jon up and down, plants a few images that… if Kylo had been unsure of what two men may do with each other while having sex, he's bloody well not _now,_ in Jon's head, and says, "I'll mark my calendar, _sir_."

* * *

When the first film begins, Kylo is not paying attention to it. He's staring at the back of Jacen's head. He's a few rows ahead, with the rest of the older kids, munching through popcorn and snacks, giving off a general, _this is fun, we should do it more often_ sort of sense.

Of all the things he could have possibly anticipated for this outing, Jacen attempting to seduce Jon was nowhere on his list.

Jacen catches the stare, and knows why it's aimed at him. Kylo can feel the eye roll, and see Jacen slump down further into his chair. _I wasn't going to do anything,_ he thinks to Kylo, mental voice a bit sulky.

Kylo aims a mental glare at him. He's simultaneously starting to possibly see the value of enforced celibacy among kids with mind-control powers, and the extremely uncomfortable moment of thinking that Luke might have been onto something with that. This is well beyond his earlier moment of compassion, and he doesn't much know what to do with it.

Rey gives his hand a little squeeze. _Cinema, love._ _This doesn't need to happen now._

He kisses her hand. _I really think it does._

 _Fine. Get it out of your head so you can focus._ She leans in against him, and he can feel she's right. The only reason he's got to do this _now_ is that if he doesn't it'll just sit there and chew at him.

He thinks to Jacen. _Next time we train, we're going to have a chat about appropriate uses of your powers._

That gets an eyeroll, too. _He liked it._

 _That's not the point._

 _Really? I wasn't making him think anything he didn't want to think. Just letting him play with the idea._

Another mental glare. _You were trying to get him to play with you._

Snotty, sarcastic, teenage eye roll aimed back at Kylo. _Come on, we're in public, with twenty-five other people around. Nothing's happening other than thinking. I was just enjoying the attention. It's been a million years since I got a second look from anyone._

Kylo pauses at that. He glances around. Yes, this is a very dark room, with even darker curtains, and some secluded corners, and… Yeah, Jon obviously doesn't have a do-not-look spell, but it'd probably take Jacen about a minute and a half to figure the trick to it and-

 _Oh…_ Jacen's grinning widely, turning back to gaze at Jon (who is sitting next to Kylo, and has not, on any level missed the fact that _something_ is going on around him) very amused and wishing he'd put just a bit more lust into his voice. _Huh… Well… That would have been fun._ Then he catches Kylo remembering his and Rey's tryst in a room very similar to this.

Jacen laughs out loud at that. _I'll certainly have to add this to my to-do list._

Kylo's head drops into his hands and the shudder of _Why am I dealing with randy teenagers?_ flows through his head.

Rey strokes his back. _Because he likes you best out of the group of us adults, which means it's possible he might actually listen to you._

It's Kylo's turn to roll his eyes, but… Well, that's the point of uncles or big brothers, or whatever the hell it is he's attempting to be for Jacen. Be an adult the kid is fond of, provide some sort of guidance, and try not to fuck it up too badly.

 _You're not fucking it up._

He kisses Rey's hand again.

The credits finish.

And the story begins.

* * *

Rey falls into the story _hard._ Part of it is just she's never actually _seen_ one before. Yes, there was that one 'romantic comedy' and the 'adventures in physical therapy' holo they'd watched, but this is the first time she's sat down to see a full-on adventure designed in bright, flashy colors with beyond state-of-the-art animation, complete orchestral musical accompaniment, and singing and dancing animals.

It's _blowing her mind._

Kylo's not exactly enjoying the movie. Once it started playing, he knew he'd seen it before, as a child.

He is enjoying feeling Rey watch it for the first time.

This one starts with a Princess whose parents die and the step-mother who's in charge of raising her is absolute scum. She tries to kill the Princess, but fails, because of the intervention of the singing/talking/dancing animals, who whisk her off to safety to live in hiding with a collection of Ewoks.

(That's part of why Kylo doesn't like this movie, even as a child. He's always thought Ewoks were kind of creepy, likely because, according to his Dad, they were trying to eat him. And, of course, when Threepio tells a story, he _tells a story_ so the part where they're getting ready to roast Dad and Uncle Luke alive was a really vivid image in his mind for a very long time.)

But, she's off with the Ewoks, and life is going pretty well, but the Evil Step-Mother Queen realizes she's not dead, so off The Queen goes to fix that problem, and en route to do that she gets into a fight with the Handsome Scoundrel. (Who does not, as of yet, know he's a prince.)

He survives by the skin of his teeth. (And more intervention from singing animals. Kylo's also never been sure why this show is a _musical_ but, again, Rey's sitting next to him, holding his hand, tight, leaning in toward the screen, so entranced she hasn't eaten any of her popcorn, so whoever made this might have known what they were doing.)

The Scoundrel (while running away from the Queen's men) runs into the Princess, and the two of them join forces to retake the crown, and get rid of the queen. (With the help of the singing animals and the Ewoks, and a few friendly robots. He's got the sense they probably sold a lot of toys to go with this movie. As best he can recall, he had two of the Ewoks, who had big, black shiny plexi-plast eyes that always followed him no matter where he was in the room. This also may have had something to do with him not being a fan of Ewoks. And possibly a few years of his night-terrors.)

At the end of the movie, the Queen has been dispatched. The Handsome Scoundrel and the Princess have fallen in love, but she's got to marry a prince, and he's not one, so he heads off, having kissed her cheek, and she and her advisers go prince hunting for her.

She's turning princes down right and left, annoying her advisers. Eventually, they point out to her that she's got to pick _someone._ So, she does. Because, apparently, she lives in some sort of bizarre corner of the galaxy where Princesses can't become a Queen unless she's got a Prince stashed somewhere. (The Evil Stepmom Queen didn't have her own prince, but... He can feel Rey shushing how he's thinking about the plot holes. He focuses on the story.)

The Scoundrel, lost and feeling useless, wanders into a bar, where someone notices the ring his father gave him just before he died, and suddenly he's a prince, too, because he's the son of the King in Exile of… (Kylo really didn't remember this movie being this complicated, but a few new singing animals show up and…)

It's the wedding day, everything is ready to go. The Princess is gloriously beautiful in her very fancy dress. The castle has been scrubbed to sparkling. Prince Disposable Plot Point is standing around looking wan and dull.

She's walking down the aisle toward Prince Disposable Plot Point. Rey's tensing up, because she can't believe _this_ is how the story is going to end. Kylo strokes the back of her neck.

They start their vows, and then there's a commotion, and the Handsome Scoundrel, all dressed up, with his Prince Bonafides shined up and ready to go, bursts in, decks Prince Disposable Plot Point when he gets annoyed that his wedding was just hijacked by this no one from nowhere, and…

He and the Princess kiss, and the vicar seals their vows, and they head off, happily ever after into the sunset.

Kylo, absently, notices that his face is wet. He wipes a tear away, and then turns to Rey. _You're crying?_

She wipes her face and sniffles. _It's so…_ She doesn't know how to finish that sentence.

He cuddles her close and kisses the top of her head.

* * *

The movies are… interesting, sometimes.

Two of them didn't do much for Kylo, but he can feel a lot of the kids liked them.

The one they're on currently… He likes this one. Rey does, too. Rose, Jon, and the teens are having a good time. The plot is solid, the actors in this one are pretty good, and there's enough genuine tension and attraction in this one that it feels _real._

The kids are a little bored, possibly because this one doesn't involve any talking animals, or musical numbers. Though, even right now, they're watching closely.

The Handsome Prince is about to explain, in an extremely bloody and very permanent sort of way, that messing with his Lady is a _bad_ plan. (Kylo's only, momentarily, wishing he could do something like this with the-would-be rapist princeling. He lets that go fast, not wanting to share it with Rey right next to him.)

Kylo's leaning forward, feeling the fight about to start, and there's that heartbeat, that he knows so well, where there's still a chance of _not_ doing whatever it is, and then it passes and the fight is on and… He's tense leaning into it, ready, and…

This was the first of the movies Kylo really got into, because this was the first one where the Handsome Prince felt… real, to him. The other two were just too damn perfect, but this is a man with edges and some depth, but…

That's falling apart fast as he's drawing his sword.

Kylo squints, jerking back a bit.

His lips purse and then roll.

He glances at Rey, and yes, she's having a similar reaction to this.

 _I don't… look like that… when I fight, right?_ Kylo thinks to her.

 _No. I… Think he's dancing with a sword. That's… not a fight._ Mr. Handsome Prince is whirling his blade around in a stupidly fast circle, zipping it from right to left and back again and… Kylo could, almost, sort of, see why you might do that with a light saber if people were shooting at you. A lot of them, but… This is a metal sword and everyone else here has metal swords, and…

This just looks like a good way to tire out your arms long before the fight's over.

 _No… I didn't think… You don't look like that when you fight, either._ He thinks back to Rey.

She shakes her head. The Prince's Lady is in head to toe silk satins, thick rich ones, brocades and solids, layer after layer of it. _How would you even do it in that heavy of a robe?_

Kylo shrugs. _I mean… If you had to, I guess you just would, but… By my reckoning, she'd have been dead a few moves ago, while he was prancing about burning energy on useless flourishes._

They watch for a few more moments. Finally, Rey says, _You do that._

 _Which that?_

 _The thing where he's swinging the sword around for no real reason. Twirling it, at the end of each swing. I remember that. When we were in the forest…_

Kylo rolls his eyes a little. _I was_ showing off _when we were in the forest. I… didn't actually consider you or Finn a real fight. Not until he actually hit me, and I took him out two moves later. And, I was attempting not to hurt you. You didn't see me doing that with the guard, did you? Or Qualee._

He feels her think. _Not sure. I was a lot more distracted when we fought the guard. And I saw Qualee from your point of view, so I have no idea what you were doing outside your immediate view._

He smirks a bit at that.

 _Well, maybe he's showing off, too,_ Rey thinks to Kylo.

 _Bad time for it. You'll notice my complete lack of showing off when there was a chance something might actually hurt_ you.

 _If they ever make a film of us, you'll have to tell them no showing off at bad times._

He sniggers at that, and has another bite of popcorn.

* * *

By the last ten minutes of the third one Rey's feeling… unsettled. Not so much in the way of nervous or wary, but… That image Jacen said wasn't coming into focus maybe because she didn't want it to focus.

It's focusing whether she wants it to, or not.

The Prince and Princess are holding each other's hands. Their binder is tying a length of ribbon around them. They're gazing into each other's eyes, minds on what they've overcome to get to that moment, hopes on a future where they'll be Mr. and Mrs. Handsome Prince. The Royal Couple.

Rulers supreme, the face of their people, together, in all things.

There's no chance, that when this is done, the Handsome Prince goes off princing about, and she starts an orphanage.

That's not how this story works.

* * *

By the end of the third one, Kylo's definitely feeling like he's got the script on this. And he's more than a bit unsettled at the idea that this _story_ has not only been told and retold, but seems to track so well with his own life.

Okay, yes, it's not measure for measure dead on. Handsome Princes, even really "bad" ones, don't seem to have nearly the kill count he does, and for two of them, "bad" seemed to be more by association than by slaughtering adolescents based on their Force sensitivity, or murdering bankers because they won't extend his credit indefinitely, or blowing up planets because something he didn't like happened there a decade earlier.

He chews his lip. Rage. Blowing up a planet because he couldn't master his rage.

The men in these stories never burn red, let alone black, but… Two of the three of them are designed to entertain children, and the one they just finished was appropriate for young adults, so… They may be _edited._

They likely won't put in how he got the nickname JediKiller, let alone what happened to his father, or Jakku if they ever make a film of them, either.

* * *

It's a fight. A drop down, drag out, four on fifty, good guys are drawing the line in the sand (or on the ship, this one's a literal sailing on water ship) and will take not another step.

They're going to win or die here.

"Captain! Marry us!"

Both the Handsome Prince and the Captain blink at that, neither expecting that right here, right now, in the middle of a fight to the death that the Princess would think _now's_ the time for some nuptials.

But…

"If today's our last day, then I'll end it yours," The Princess says, fending off the blows of one of the seeming endless number of bad guys, and that… resonates with Rey.

It's the fastest damn wedding in the history of weddings, and likely the bloodiest, but it feels… real… probably because she can remember the feel of fighting the guard.

And maybe that's not the moment that made them married. There's probably no _moment_ that did it. Just a long series of them.

But that's the moment they chose each other. The moment where it became a possibility.

They win. And live.

And the story ends with the two of them on a beach, and there's a pretty dress, and he's in a nice suit, and a few close friends are together to celebrate with them. Rum and bonfires, fiddles and dancing. The handsome couple, "King and Queen of Pirates, married by blood, wedded on sand.' ('Bedded on a hammock,' the amusing side kick adds, under his breath.)

She snuggles closer to Kylo liking the idea of that. _Married by blood, wedded on sand,_ she thinks to him.

He turns his head to her, and holds her a little tighter. _If it ever thaws out, there is a beach on Lirium._

Rey smiles at that.

 _Do you know what a hammock is?_ Kylo thinks. There's a mental smile to go with that question.

 _Like a big net with pillows on it._

 _That could be interesting._

* * *

By the fourth one of these, Kylo's feeling a bit edgy. Part of it's just sitting around in one place for too long. A lot of the younger kids aren't even watching the show anymore. They've got that same sort of too much sitting in one place energy that he does, so they're not exactly quietly, but not making a ton of noise, either, running up and down the aisle and crawling around under the chairs.

He's somewhat tempted to join them. And it's not escaping his attention that Critt appears to be leading the run around the aisles games.

(Why they rented out the whole cinema for this is making a lot of sense. If other people had wanted to watch this, the little guys would be deeply annoying.)

And part of it is… He doesn't look like the men in the pictures.

Rey looks like the women. Maybe not right this second, when she's in her casual clothing. (The women in these films do not appear to have casual clothing.) And she's not wearing makeup. (The ladies in the pictures appear to have been born wearing makeup. Even when they're supposed to be dirty and disheveled, even in the middle of life or death fights, they're just… slightly less well-kempt. Even in the one mildly salacious scene where the Prince finds the Princess swimming, she's still, somehow, got makeup on.) But, apply some makeup to Rey, and put her in Princess clothing, and she looks like a princess. Maybe a bit more muscly than the ladies in the pictures, but…

She's awfully close. (Though he does feel her shake her head, _no_ at that, but… She's just wrong about that. All she needs to look like a Princess is a pretty dress and some makeup.)

He's not.

At all.

He's bigger than all of the men. Wider, thicker, taller, bigger ears, bigger nose, bigger lips, bigger feet. Bigger. These men are on the long and lean side of things, and while he's certainly long, he's not (usually) lean. They look like Jon. Even the one with dark hair. (Two of the four of them have been blond, and one has had light brown hair.)

Every one of these films has involved the Handsome Prince fighting. Often with a sword of some sort. (He's not entirely sure if that long, thin, metal toothpick looking thing the one prince is using qualifies as a sword.) Once with a blaster. None of them have any scars. At all. (Though two of them have taken wounds to the shoulder, about where Rey ran him through with her lightsaber. Apparently, that's a 'manly' sort of place to get wounded, or something. Though, on them, it doesn't appear to have impeded the use of that arm, or the ability to crack jokes, at all. He's fairly sure he wasn't making snarky remarks after Rey ran him through.)

Their teeth are perfect, gleaming white, and they smile easily. Even the 'dark' one put him much more in mind of his father's attitude than his.

They do not have moles. Their skin is perfectly even.

They have short hair, and it looks fine because they don't have to try and hide ears the size of scanner dishes, that are determined to jut out of the sides of their heads.

All four of them have light-colored eyes, blue or green, in one case a mesmerizing violet shade, that Kylo feels like he shouldn't be paying that much attention to, but he can't for the life of him figure out if it's real or not.

If this is the universe's ideal of a Handsome Prince, he's going to fail miserably.

Rey squeezes his hand. _Yeah, I know that feeling._

He sighs. _Rey… You don't look like the women because you aren't dressed up. I don't look like the men because I'm practically a different species._

 _No, you aren't!_

 _I've got at least seven centimeters, probably fifteen kilos, even now, and a pile of scars on all of them. I've got the wrong hair and eye color. You can tell by looking at my face that I've_ lost _fights. These men don't lose fights. Put you in the right outfit, and you look like you've stepped out of the show. Put me in the right outfit, and I'm going to look wrong, because, like Jon keeps telling me, I'm not built for those sorts of clothing._

 _Kylo._ She sighs a little and snuggles close, trying to flood him with warm, happy feelings.

He kisses her forehead. _I know. I love you, too. I don't look like those guys._

She sighs a bit more, and offers him a sugared nut. He eats it from her fingers.

* * *

When the movies are over, Kylo and Rey take a moment to talk, and decide to port the kids back. Yes, it's time consuming, but compared to the stress of taking twenty-four now antsy, tired, wired and apparently over-sugared kids through the F-Deck…

Neither of them want to do that.

Jon nods at them, and says to Kylo, "I'll meet you in your office in an hour or so, okay?"

That sounds good to Kylo.

Also, he can, fairly easily, grab four or five of the little ones in one go, so that speeds things up.

And an hour later, he's in his office, sitting on the bench, looking out at the sky, when Jon gets there. Rey's got the kids with Rose, but she'll be joining him in a bit. Both of them know Jon wants to talk to them about what they just watched.

Kylo's not sure what he wants to say about what they watched, so… "Look, I'm sorry about the thing with Jacen. He's… seventeen." And the way he says that number more or less wraps all of the issues up. It's always easier to talk about someone else than himself. And Jacen's prime someone-else-to-talk-about material.

Jon chuckles. "Yeah, I remember seventeen." He says with a knowing nod, and a smirk. "Wouldn't be the first time a seventeen-year-old had an inappropriate hard-on. Had more than a few of them myself back in the day."

C8 decides now's a very good time to fiddle with something in the throne room and heads off.

Kylo raises an eyebrow at Jon. He knows Jon was _not_ unaffected by Jacen's magic... body… self… All three.

He shrugs a bit, runs his hand through his hair, looks away a little as he rolls his eyes. "Wouldn't be the first time a seventeen-year-old caused one, too." He meets Kylo's gaze again. "I certainly did back in the day."

Kylo doesn't know what to do with that. As best he knows, seventeen-year-old-Ben did not inspire anything approaching erotic or lustful feelings, in anyone, ever. "He's too young."

"Yeah, even I could feel that boiling off of you, Papa Urus. I'm not about to go tearing through your young and despoiling them. Though, if anyone was ever gaging for a good despoiling, it's that kid."

Kylo blinks, because he knows the meaning of all of those words, and can feel the emotional content behind them, but that's a bunch of ideas he's never run into before.

Jon really notices that Kylo's sort of lounging, says, "You know what, fuck it," takes off his jacket and gloves, and then gets himself a drink, too. "This isn't an in-uniform formal sort of chat. We might as well both be comfortable."

Kylo blinks a little, looking at Jon. "I thought… Aren't the shirts supposed to have sleeves?"

"The standards ones do, but I find them too hot with the coat. Since the coat was required in the regs, I tailored the shirt to make it work for me. Okay," he sits near Kylo getting comfortable. "When'd you find Jacen?"

Kylo's not sure. "Six months ago?" He purses his lips. "He might be eighteen by now." He thinks for a moment, no. "Seventeen. He was sixteen when I found him."

Jon shrugs. "Doesn't matter. Seventeen, eighteen, all the same. Hell, as we just saw, twenty-two can also still be in the thick of it. Okay, I'm going to say this, and you can agree, or not, or just think about it, but, if he'd been in training with us, as a pilot, for six months, we'd be sending him out in real ships by now. And he'd likely be starting his first combat training runs. So, he's old enough to enlist with us, he's old enough to kill for us, he's old enough to die for us, I'd say he's old enough to choose to fuck and to choose who to fuck." Jon gives Kylo a long look. "Without Daddy butting in and pulling the rug out from under him. If he wants advice, he'll ask you for it. That kid is _not_ shy."

That's another idea that's also never threatened to go wandering through Kylo's mind. And it's clear on his face.

Jon continues, "Yeah, I don't know what you want to do with that, because it's clear you don't think he's old enough to fuck, but…"

Kylo shrugs. "He's… a special case. It's not… seventeen-year-olds in general are too young. I don't know. I didn't think seventeen was too young when I was seventeen, and now it seems freakishly immature."

Jon cocks his head at that, conceding that point.

Kylo's eyes narrow, and he realizes that 'old enough to fuck' might not mean 'Jacen is old enough to have sex' and Jon may be saying to him, 'seventeen-year-olds are old enough for _me_ to have sex with,' "And, I honestly do not care how old your friends are. Again, seventeen seems young to me, but—" He doesn't say that they aren't sure how old Rey is, and it's possible she was nineteen when they first got together.

Jon rolls his eyes. "That's not the way I meant it. And I'm not saying I haven't had some awfully good times with more than a few seventeen-year-olds, but I was…" He thinks. "Twenty-two the last time it happened."

Kylo's not sure if that's a good thing or not. It's also not exactly where he wants to go with this. "Like I said, Jacen's a special case. And, I am attempting to get you to be aware of something specific to him. He's got too much power, and his ability to make good decisions with it isn't exactly balanced well against how badly he wants to get fucked, or be desired… and… All he has to do is _ask_ and you'll say yes, so… Just as a heads up for you personally, which is why I'm mentioning this to you, and as being aware of the challenges of dealing with Jacen, _if you're ever alone with him_ … Just… He probably won't push it, but… He can feel you're tempted, so maybe he would… It might be a good idea not to be alone with him."

It's clear from the look on Jon's face that he's fairly sure he can handle Jacen.

Kylo shakes his head. If Jon's sure about that, it also means he doesn't get the scale of what Jacen can do. And why it's an issue. "Like you said about your Mom, it'll always sound reasonable. Now turn the power up by a factor of a million, if not more. He was just playing with you. Bored, lonely… He used to be at a circus, and then here with the Order; he's used to having company. And just like everyone else, he likes being desired. Which just isn't happening back home. He likes Critt. And that's going nowhere because Critt's all about Savarah. And for all I know both of them are fucking each other, and it wouldn't be an issue, even though they're both younger, because they're equally balanced with each other. But you and Jacen _aren't._ If he's ever not playing, you'll think it's your idea, you'll think it's a good idea, and you'll want it. He'll look you in the eye, suggest something, and _you will say yes._ Hell, you practically did, here. You were about to, until I basically screamed _NO_ in your head. He's… honestly… off the charts on voice control. On pure talent alone, he's stronger with that than I am, and Rey, likely combined. He just doesn't know all the tricks. And, we're intentionally _not_ teaching him the tricks, yet, because once he knows them, he'll likely be able to use his voice control on us, too. And if there's anything the galaxy doesn't need, it's a seven… eight…teenager who can get whatever he wants just by asking for it."

Jon can see where that could go, remembers himself at seventeen, and winces. Then he thinks about looking at Jacen and… _You'll think it's your idea._ And he can't for the life of him figure out if he was genuinely attracted to Jacen or not. Probably. He mentally sighs, imagining Jacen. Definitely. He's a very good looking kid, a very good looking kid who clearly wanted him, and that's always been something Jon's responded well to, but… Would he have done more than just notice… Especially with all the Poe stuff bubbling around in the back of his mind. _Shit. Force users._ "He's the most dangerous of the lot."

"Now. We don't actually know what all a lot of the younger ones can do. And right now, he's pretty well-balanced. Especially given where he came from and what happened to him. That tattoo on his face is not a fashion statement. That circuits I mentioned _owned_ him. That's his bond mark. And, I haven't seen them, but Critt's thought hard about the scars on his back when we've been working together. So, whoever owned him wasn't kind. Given all that, he's astonishingly normal, but… He's still a horny kid who wants what he wants, and… We're working on helping him get what he wants and needs without _taking_ it from people who don't necessarily want to give it to him, or _do want to give it to him, but aren't good for him, long term,_ when it comes to giving it to him."

Jon takes that point. He nods. Jacen looks like a fun afternoon, possibly even a fun few days, after all there's something to be said for a seventeen-year-old's refractory period, especially combined with someone old enough to have some damn stamina, and… If he'd run into Ensign-in-Training Jacen on the F-Deck one evening, and had a look aimed at him like that… Even with the Poe stuff. He rolls his eyes. _Especially_ with the Poe stuff, Jacen would be an _excellent_ distraction from the Poe stuff, he likely would have wandered over, had a bit of a chat, a few drinks… offered to show him his office… Jon rubs his eyes. Okay, he's really got to stop thinking about that, too, because fuckable or not, Jacen's certainly too damn young to be a decent relationship. After all, it would be nice to, eventually, fuck someone who's good for a decent conversation after. Which brings the image of Poe to mind. Which makes him glare at himself and the fact that the universe seems to be filled with good looking men who would be a treat in bed if you could get them into yours. (And then he glares at his mental image of Poe, because he should have been in his bed, but wasn't, and if it was just about being drunk… and that thought dies as Jon realizes that his mental image of Poe is _in his bed_ and all of his images of Poe are of Poe _in his home,_ and at least, as of this point, that's not anything he's done… and that seems worth thinking about, but Kylo's staring at him, waiting for him to respond, very clearly _not_ responding to any of the things he's thinking about. So…) "Always a difficult balancing act, and I'm not saying, especially at seventeen, that I was any good at that. Not sure how good I am at it now, other than better at it than I used to be."

They're both quiet for a moment after that, watching the stars go past.

Jon nods, getting them back to work. "Tell me about what we just watched and what you thought about it. Is this something we can work with?"

"Rey'll be here—"

"I want to talk to you on your own. I want to get her on her own, too. Get the gut feelings on both of you, first, before you go shaping each other's version of it."

Kylo's not sure what the value of that might be, but it likely won't hurt, so… He shrugs a bit. "I don't know. Some of it looked silly, and… I'm not sure how comfortable I am with people fawning over me," Because handsome princes, especially when they're princing about, get fawned at. Not being fawned over seems to be a major aspect of what attracts them to their ladies. He supposes Rey's more or less the polar opposite of fawning, especially when they first met. "and fights _really_ don't work that way," they watched a good six fights, and _all_ of them looked like dancing with swords or blaster.

Of all the things Kylo could have come up with, _that_ wasn't what he was expecting. Jon's voice is dry as he says, "Well, in movies, they're trying to not kill the actors, and they're trying to make things look good, so _of course_ the fight scenes don't look right. If we'd watched something with sex scenes you'd have noticed those are off, too, because the actors, generally, aren't actually fucking each other, and positions that look good don't necessarily _feel_ good."

"Oh. Uh… good." He's quiet, and Jon doesn't miss the way his finger trails from his ear to his scar or the way he chews his lip. He slumps in on himself a little and makes himself talk about what's really going on. "The men in the movies are _handsome._ They… look like you. And… charming, witty. Like Poe. They… know how to flirt. People flock to them just to be near them. The pretty lady swoons into their arms. And… That's… not me."

Jon's not sure if he should joke or take it dead on. He tries the joke, first. "Like Rey's never swooned into your arms."

Kylo rolls his eyes. "I used the Force to knock her out. She wasn't overcome by my masculine charm."

Jon smirks. "Yeah, well, as someone who knows dress design, let me tell you that if the ladies in the movies' real life counterparts swooned when Prince Handsome came her way, it's because the corset was so tight she couldn't breathe. He didn't knock her unconscious with his masculine charm, either."

Kylo does smirk, a little, at that.

"The guys on the screen are an idealized version of whoever the real guy was." Jon thinks. "You grew up out in the middle of nowhere. You ever see the propaganda pieces the New Republic put out?"

Kylo shakes his head.

"Okay, when Rey gets here we're going to go for a walk, and I'm going to fetch some holovids. I'm going to show you what Luke Skywalker looks like in the movies I saw, and you can tell me if it's even in the neighborhood of the real guy." He takes another moment to look at Kylo, and then adds. "And I'm going to sketch you, too. My guess is you've got no idea what you actually look like."

The skepticism coming off of Kylo is so strong it's about to knock Jon back.

"No. I know what I'm talking about. First of all, you've only seen yourself in mirrors, right? Or have you actually seen a photo of yourself? Without the mask."

"Not since I was eight."

"All right, so we'll start with this. Every image you have of yourself is backwards. And then, if you're like most people, you see yourself as a massive teaming pile of flaws held together by some skin and attitude."

He nods at that, thinks about flaws, and his complete lack of Princely-graces, and how the men in the movies, even during massive fights, didn't sweat, and, "Deodorant?" pops out of his mouth before he meant to say it.

Jon blushes, very slightly. "So, I guess Poe mentioned that."

"Uh huh. You two talking, with each other, about me?"

"Yes, but not the way you're thinking."

Kylo raises an eyebrow.

"Look, as best I can tell, a pack of wolves would have done a better job of setting you up to be a human in this galaxy, and… I was asking about your Mom, because Poe really knew her, and… He wanted to know what I meant by you had holes in your education."

"Oh." He nods, and then licks his lips. "Look, you remember me saying I wasn't going to slap you for mentioning things I need to know? I'm really not. I'd… take it as a personal favor to have someone point this sort of thing out to me, before it bites me. And I'd… rather you just said it to me, instead of talking to… well, anyone who isn't Rey."

Jon nods at that. "Okay."

"So…" Kylo says. "What's missing?"

Jon looks both curious and like he's afraid he's about to leap into a black pit and he's got no idea what's at the bottom of it. "You really want to do this?"

"It's probably better to just get it all out at once instead of… I don't know, tripping over it later."

"Okay. Uh… These are things that I don't know if they're intentional or not. Which is actually why I mentioned it to Poe, because I didn't know if you were doing it on purpose or not."

"Sure, just…"

"Hair?"

"What about it?" Kylo thinks his hair is fairly nice, or at least Rey seems to like it.

"It's good hair. The texture and color are nice. Except when I've got a meeting with you right after you hit the gym, it always looks clean and soft, but… Most men don't wear it longer than shoulder length."

Kylo's eyes squint at that. "Didn't you tell me you used to wear yours long?"

"Uh… No. I don't think I did." Jon's got the feeling he must have thought it though, and that's a bit unsettling. Kylo's looking at him like he's not sure if he just dreamed it up, so however he got it, it doesn't appear to have been intentional. "Though that's true. But I did that when I was a teenager, and… Okay, first of all, blond, so I was in my twenties before I had anything like visible stubble, and, until I got here, I was slim, but I didn't have to do any real physical training, so I wasn't exactly," he gestures to his current, still lean, but muscled body, "and… I don't do it now, but occasionally I'd wear some cosmetics, and speaking of inappropriate hard-ons, back in the day I tended to go as androgynous as possible because it greatly increased the chances of me finding someone to fuck."

Kylo blinks. "You're telling me that you badly surprised a bunch of men, aren't you?"

Jon tilts his head a bit. "And two _extremely_ irate, narrow for women, women. The complete and total lack of breasts and hips _should_ have been a clue, let alone the fact that I'm not exactly a soprano, but not everyone caught it. Long hair, pretty eyes, and it wasn't like I was difficult to get in your lap if I liked the looks of you. Most of them got over it and decided to… expand their horizons a bit. Some didn't."

"Ah." He touches his own hair.

"No one is going to mistake you for a woman. Hair length is just a matter of fashion for this. Though make sure you get it trimmed every other month or so, and… whatever else it is you do to it to keep it so shiny, that's good."

"Rey likes it long."

"Then keep it long." Jon's looking at Kylo's hand as he touches his hair. "What do you do with your nails? Chew them off?"

Kylo doesn't roll his eyes. He _asked_ for this. "Not for a decade. I _fight,_ Jon. That often results in bruised hands and less than perfect nails. Rey'll fix up the bruises when she sees them, but the nails are just short and stubby."

"Don't you wear gloves when you do that?"

"The gloves are heat protection. I'll use them if I'm using my saber or training blade. I don't for hand to hand."

Jon nods. "Okay. Once a week, your hands go in the manicure box my mom gave Rey. Get your feet, too."

Kylo can understand the idea of his hands, people see them, sometimes, when he's not wearing his command blacks, but… "Rey's the only person who sees my feet." He took his boots off when he decided he didn't always need to do his business at the conference table, but he's still got his socks on.

"Now. Who knows when we'll be hosting or attending something where people think socks and shoes are rude?"

"There are people who consider shoes rude?" He can't keep the incredulity out of his voice.

"Yeah. Anywhere the streets are dirty, people tend to prefer shoes go off before you enter their home."

"Oh." He supposes that makes sense.

"Plus, the manicure box feels good. I guarantee you'll like it."

He shrugs a bit at that. "After the receiving line we did the massage boxes, and that felt good."

"That's basically the same thing." He keeps looking at Kylo. "You ever think of growing out your beard? You… look a lot younger than most of the men in this sort of position, and a beard may help with that."

"I _am_ a lot younger than most men in this sort of position."

Jon can feel there's something defensive about the beard, hence that response. He decides not to poke it.

Kylo's fidgeting a little. "You gave me the colognes… Do I… need them?"

Jon shrugs on that one. "Scent really is, most of the time, a personal preference thing. Again, part of asking Poe, I didn't know if it was intentional or not. Scent… It's… you know this, instinctively if you haven't thought about it, but… It's really tied in with our sexual response cycle, so… I didn't know if that was something for you and Rey, or if you just didn't know deodorant was a thing."

"Until last night, neither of us knew it was a thing."

"Okay. When it comes to cologne, many men wear it. But not all, and most don't wear it all the time. Again, except when you hit the gym before a meeting, you… Don't smell like much of anything, sometimes just yourself. Sometimes her on you." Jon leans a bit closer to Kylo and inhales. "It's, generally, pleasant." Then Jon rolls his eyes a bit as he settles back. "But… unlike a lot of men you work with, I enjoy the smell of male skin and fresh sweat. Uh… lots of good memories attached to those sorts of scents. It's... well, tied into my sexual response cycle, too. So… Take that for whatever it's worth. In the meantime, use deodorant or hit the sonic when you get done with working out, _then_ go to your next meeting, if looking ragged and smelling sweaty isn't what you're going for."

Kylo opens his mouth, decides he doesn't have a comment to add, and shuts it.

"We were talking with Rey about this, some. Most cultures have status symbols. Ways to indicate that you're the guy in charge, or that you demand respect just by existing. To an extent going straight from the gym to meetings is a power move. You're the guy so secure in his position that he doesn't _need_ to make nice for the others around them."

"Put that way, it's rude."

Jon inclines his head, knowingly. "That's kind of the _point_ of a lot of power moves. You're showing you don't have to play nice. But it doesn't have to be that, for example, you _not_ wearing a First Order uniform, and the lightsaber, was also a power move. You don't need the uniform to command respect."

"But, because I'm attempting to act like I'm some sort of peacemaker and… secure in my command, I guess, I don't carry the saber every day now…"

"Exactly. You're packaging yourself in a way to send certain messages. No saber, no visible weapons, and no guards says you're secure in your holdings and you can, with your bare hands, level anyone who tries to make things otherwise.

"Just like that, how you take care of yourself is also a collection of status markers. Hands that aren't bruised and smooth, shiny nails tells people you don't _have_ to work with your hands. Meaning you've got smarts or wealth. You've got both, so… Since your formal and command blacks have gloves, it's less of an issue, but…" He glances at Kylo in his casual clothing.

"But I'm also wearing both of them less, because I'm… Not sure. It just doesn't feel as necessary all the time."

"That's a status marker, too. The man secure enough in his command he doesn't have to dress for it. That's a different lesson for a different day, though. Anyway, the colognes I got you, they're a status symbol, too. Both are fairly subtle, mid-range expensive, and rare enough that most people couldn't name them at the first whiff. You can get them on this ship. Obviously, I did, but it's not on the shelf of just any apothecary. Something one out of ten thousand guys can afford to wear, maybe one out of a million would. Just trying to send the message that you're a man who takes care of his physical body and is willing to spend some money on it, but not so involved in himself as to make a hobby out of his grooming."

Kylo nods slowly at that. "Some guys do that?"

"People make hobbies out of everything." He pauses. "I mean, don't get me wrong, getting all cleaned up can be pleasurable. Treat yourself right, get stuff that smells good to you, and… I mean, you've got to do it, so you might as well enjoy it, but… Some guys are _really_ into it."

Kylo thinks about that for a moment, too. "Poe said there are probably places on this ship that'll take care of this for you?"

"Oh, yeah. Uh… a lot of the Specs'll take care of grooming if you like that, too. For some of them, that's all they do." Jon shrugs a little. "Having an attractive human hop in the bath with you, scrub you from head to toes, shampoo you, give you a shave, trim your hair, and take care of your hands and feet feels good. And they sell feeling good." Jon smiles a little. "Add in a massage and a suck or a ride, and that's a really good evening, you know?"

Kylo nods. "Not with the Specs, but… Rey'll wash my hair and…"

"So, you know. But, yes, for example, there are shops on this ship that sell nothing but shaving stuff. Soap, gel, cream, after shave, balm, razors, brushes, pre-shave, in every scent, color, slickness, whatever, you can think of. And then, if you like, they'll take all of your goodies use them to shave you. So, yes, for some guys this is a hobby as well as just getting clean."

"Ah." Kylo's not sure if he wants to investigate that or not. He thinks of something else Poe mentioned. "What's waxing?"

"A way of getting rid of body hair. I…" Jon's eyes narrow. "Thought you must have known about that. Your chest is naturally hairless?"

Kylo rolls his eyes at that. "Just about." Kylo thinks back to Jon post-shower before the Last Night party. "And yours isn't?"

"No. I like shaving, but I don't want to do most of my body every day, so…" He stops. "Some cultures prefer men with some hair, some with lots, and some with none. If I'm planning on playing, and don't know who I'm going to be playing with ahead of time, I take most of my hair off."

"What's _most?_ "

"I like the little line of it from my naval down, and leave my pubes. I feel like adults should have some hair, you know? Most of the time men have some, but I've played with some completely hairless women, and… It feels nice, but it's also sort of distracting."

Kylo just blinks slowly. Feels nice he can understand. Distracting is completely out of his range of experience. "I don't really want to know what you're talking about, do I?"

"You're probably fine not knowing. Especially since you know the person you have sex with real well, so soft and smooth might just be fun."

Kylo looks at the floor, and quietly says, "According to Rey the growing back in part is really uncomfortable and itchy."

"What did she do, shave it off?"

"Yes."

"Yeah, don't do that. If you want to try, go get one of the Specs to do it." Jon grins at him. "Seriously, soft and smooth is a treat."

"Ah." Kylo's not sure if he should blush at that, or see about setting up an appointment.

Jon's still eyeing him. "The scar."

"What about it?"

"A decent plastic surgeon could have it gone in probably a few hours, and a day of bacta patches." Jon can feel how horrified Kylo is at that idea. It hits him like a wall. "And I'll just never bring that idea up again, shall I?"

Kylo nods, slowly.

They're both quiet, and then Jon says, "Why am I not ever bringing that up again?"

He's about to say that Rey put that scar there, but… She also put the one on his shoulder, and one on his leg, and he's fairly sure he wouldn't have a full body disgust reaction at the idea of losing them.

He touches his face, thumb along the edge of his scar. He can't feel it anymore, it's flush with the rest of his skin now, but he knows where it is. The line of his face under it is numb, and likely always will be. "Ben doesn't have the scar. For years… I wore the mask so I didn't have to catch reflections of Ben. I… never see him in the mirror anymore. That's… uh… also why I don't grow my beard out. Master Ben had a beard. Or at least attempted to grow one." He touches his cheek. "Hair doesn't grow there." And the underside of his jaw. "And looks like some sort of diseased rodent down there. Only place it comes in well is around my lips and under my chin. I shaved it off and changed my name when I was twenty-two. But, Ben was still there. Now… I used to feel like I was Ben, except Ben wasn't anything anyone could ever be. Ben was hope and dreams and… No one could have been Ben. But I was supposed to be Ben. And for a long time, I felt like I was a failed Ben wearing a Kylo suit. So, I kept Ben covered, completely." He touches the scar again. "Ben's dead. He has been for a while now. His ghost pops up now and again, and I get to deal with that, but… The scar, the long hair, no beard…" He gestures to his sweater. He's in casual clothing. Most of it is still black. "The black. That's Kylo, not Ben."

Jon nods once, and says, "Oh."

Kylo nods, too. "Yeah. Anything else?" He can feel Rey returning to the room. She's a few meters behind them, and closing, and now she's behind Kylo, wrapping her arms around him, and kissing the top of his head.

"Not a bad idea to always have a few mints on hand. I tend to eat one at the end of every meal. Just to make sure I'm not wafting whatever I ate last at everyone." Jon looks up to Rey. "Great. Okay, you come with me, I want to pick your brain before he gets a hold of it. You," he looks to Kylo, "go chew through a few more data pads or something. We'll be back in a few hours."

Rey looks amused by this. "And what are we doing?"

"Chatting, and I'm going to go find a few things to help convince your man that he doesn't look horribly out of place among the Handsome Princes."

Rey smiles at both of them. "That's exactly what I want to hear."

Kylo doesn't roll his eyes. He does look at the stack of datapads he hasn't put nearly enough of a dent in.


	26. Married By Blood, Wedded on Sand

2/13/2

Jon and Rey begin the trek to his office. "So, how terrified was he?"

Rey doesn't quite understand what Jon's asking. "I don't think he was terrified. I mean, it is kind of nerve-wracking to keep track of that many kids in that big of a crowd, especially if you've never done anything like that before."

Jon opens and closes his mouth. Kylo with Rugh on his shoulders makes a lot more sense if that was part of kiddo control. "I suppose that's something of an answer. I was talking about his reaction to the Handsome Princes. I assume if he'd spiked a true fear reaction, you'd have felt it."

"Oh, yeah. In a heartbeat. Especially that close. That close, you likely would have, too." She rubs her lips together. To some degree if feels odd to say this to someone else, but… This is Jon. "Inadequate. Ben was… probably supposed to literally be a Handsome Prince of some sort, and, well, he wasn't Ben, so…"

"Ah… Yeah. And you?"

She shrugs a bit, and a sensation of sort of unsettled annoyance washes over Jon.

He nods at that. "Do you want to talk to me about this?"

"I… kind of want to keep thinking about it. There's something… I can feel I'm close to it. Could you hear what K'Ahuana said to me?"

He shakes his head. "The K'Aar said he was trying to get you to agree to leave with him, but, all we could make out of it was him handing you the flower."

She nods. "He… had a few things to say, and I'm still thinking about them."

Jon's eyes almost fall out of his head he's so shocked. He's deeply pleased that they've got a _long_ elevator ride, and they aren't doing this in the middle of the F-Deck. "You're not… leaving… right?"

Rey physically jerks; she's so shocked that he might think that. She's staring at him in abject horror as she stutters, "What?"

"Good. You'd bloody well kill him if you left."

She shoves him. "How could you…"

"I don't know what he said to you. All I know is that he was offering to take you away, and not just for a vacation."

"No. That's not what I mean by thinking…" She just looks at Jon. "How could you even…"

He shrugs a bit at that. "Even good things don't last forever, Rey. And… That's the sort of thing you'd want to think about, for a long time, and not necessarily talk to your husband's closest friend about, you know?"

"I'll take your word for it. And… No. That's, not, at all, the sort of thing I was thinking about."

Jon just looks at her.

Rey sighs. She doesn't exactly want to talk about it, but… The only other people she knows, really knows, and feels even remotely comfortable saying something like this to are Rose and Finn, and… somehow this doesn't feel… right. "What does being married mean to you?"

Jon's eyes narrow. "Yeah, see that's not an even remotely comforting sort of thing to ask when we're talking about pretty boys trying to take you away from home."

Rey shoots him the stink eye, and when someone with Force skills does that, you _feel_ it. Jon blanches at it.

Then she takes his hand, and lets herself _feel_ Kylo. It flows through her, and Jon nods. He knows the feel of that, and even secondhand, knowing it's not his, that the person who felt that way about him is gone now, hurts.

"Yeah. Why would I ever want to walk away from that?"

"Because you're the one with the good sense to leave if you need to. He'll follow you to the end of the galaxy and back, stupid or not. Burn himself out on it if that's what has to happen. He doesn't know when to quit, but you do."

"But I don't need to."

"No, you don't. Okay… So, I don't really understand what you're asking. What did it mean?"

She nods. "It's different than just living together, right?"

Jon shrugs a bit. "Obviously, on a day in and day out sort of way, no. Wake up, get a shower, eat breakfast… It wasn't different after you and Kylo married. Not step by step. Not in any tangible way, right?"

Rey nods at that. "But… It was, too. It… felt different."

Jon nods back. "But it was, too. Under the Empire, Lane and I couldn't have gotten married. And my family, was, mostly, horrified at the idea. You can legally do it on Coruscant, now, because, of course, that was a New Republic hallmark. Any adult could set up any family, anyway they liked. But, back home, you're likely to get a clerk who 'loses' your registration, or 'forgets' to stamp it, or 'accidentally' spells your name wrong, or…"

Rey nods. "Passive resistance."

"Yeah. So, it was different because… Because it was a way to tell my family in specific, and anyone in the universe who disapproved in general, 'fuck you and your ideals, I love this man, we're married.' It was a way to… show it off to everyone. Scream it to the heavens. He was mine and I was his and together we'd made a family." _From this breath to my last._ He doesn't say his last vow to Lane. Lane's last vow to him. The one that wrapped up all the others in a nice tidy bow. He doesn't need to. Rey feels it.

She nods at him, and gently squeezes his hands.

Jon nods back. "And, of course, unlike just living together… I've got his pension, and next-of-kin rights—"

"Taking over his job when he died?"

And Jon's finally feeling like he's got an idea of what Rey's looking for here. What _Lady Ren_ may be thinking about.

Married in _practical_ terms. Married as _rulers. Being_ the Prince's Lady.

"Uh. Well, first off, no, not exactly. Lane was in charge of Tactical Design, but he wasn't a designer. He started out in logistics, and… No one talks about that, but it's a big job. And it's one of those jobs, that if done right, no one notices, and if done wrong, everything grinds to a halt. He'd been off doing Shipping Logistics, and got that beaten into shape, they promoted him to Major and tossed him over to TD.

"We were limping along. My Captain was an Imperial hold over, probably there because there were no jobs in any sort of military design for ex-Imperials. He hadn't had a new idea in thirty years, hadn't had a good one in forty, and didn't have a handle on where everything was at any given time."

"And that's a problem," Rey says.

"It really is. You can't make armor if you don't know where your plate is, and it's really difficult to send your men out to fight if they don't have armor because it didn't get delivered properly."

"So, Lane's job was making sure you had what you needed to do your job and then it went to the right places?"

"Yeah. And my job was… well, I was supposed to just be looking for ways to cut costs, which wasn't difficult because we were using designs that had been cutting edge back in the days of the Empire, but hadn't advanced from there, and… The First Order wasn't exactly swimming in guys who could design anything that wasn't a weapon, so… That's what I did. Started basic, re-doing the clothing under the armor, stupid basic things like cutting seams a little narrower, or arranging the patterns so you get more uniform out of each piece of fabric, and went on from there." He shakes his head a little. "Why hire a dress designer to work on uniforms and armor? Because a dress designer, one who works with fabrics that cost tens of thousands of credits per meter, knows how to cut a pattern to get every last square centimeter of that fabric into play, _and_ make the bloody fucking seams match."

Rey smiles at that.

"And when he died…" He glances at Rey, wondering for a moment if she knows how Lane died. He hasn't spoken with her about this, before, and it's the kind of thing Kylo might not have thought to mention. She nods for him to keep going on, so either Kylo did mention it, or she's felt it off of him. "No one cared if TD was up and running. Not for… months. Who cares about socks if you've got a gaping hole in your ship and half of your men are dead? But… I mean. That was the job. And…" He bites his lip. "When search and rescue was done… I needed something to do, and… Between StarKiller and here," It's clear from the look on her face that she doesn't get why he's mentioning StarKiller. "We were in the process of moving most of the operations functions of the First Order to StarKiller. In a week we lost that and a third of the men who were still on the _Supremacy._ We also lost the entirety of the part of the First Order that was in charge of making stuff to keep everyone in stuff. My whole command chain was gone. There were something like twenty-six ranks above me one week, and then I was the senior commander the next. Didn't have much to command, though, most of my co-workers and most of my underlings were gone as well."

"But you rebuilt it."

"Smaller, sleeker, better. I hate to say it, but… We had a lot of people who hadn't had a new idea in decades, and suddenly they were gone and I didn't have to deal with them any more. But, I'm a designer. I'm not a logistical expert. If the tools are in place, I can make anything. I'm less good at making sure all the tools and materials are where I need them. I lucked out, though. Em had a talent for that. And between the two of us we got the production lines up and running again, stole the droids we needed because the rest of manufacturing was just as scattered as we were, and started getting stuff where it needed to go when it needed to get there. Because, trust me, no one cares about socks when there's a huge hole in the ship, but when the hole is more or less patched, and you've got more than two million men, and there have been no new socks for four months, you start to care."

"You asked me once if… this…" she gestures indicating all of the Order, "was just something he did during the day and told me about at dinner."

Jon nods.

"Is that… How things worked for you and Lane?"

"Sometimes. Not always. Weeks could go by without our bumping into each other while on duty, because we'd be doing very different things. For example, back then, I didn't deal with our suppliers. I made stuff, and the stuff that made that stuff just appeared. He dealt with suppliers, making sure that stuff I needed actually showed up. Or we could have days where we worked very closely together. Any new production lines, he had to be right in on that, because that's a lot of getting the right things in the right places at the right times."

Rey digests that for a moment before saying, "Ellie's all in for Kinear's job."

Jon nods at that. "I think that's true. I'm fairly sure he'd say that she's a large part of how he got to where he is."

"Your Mom and Dad?"

"I don't know. She had her own business, which was rare for women on Coruscant. He had his job. I don't know exactly how that worked, though. I wasn't around for their marriage. Never saw any of it firsthand.

"I did see the start of a lot of marriages. Lots of _Ladies._ Most of the women we worked for, they understood that they'd put their lives into the service of making the family great." He thinks about it for a moment. "It's not… Ellie is all in for Pat's job. It's, at least this is the way the ladies understood it, it's that the job is making sure the family is as wealthy and powerful as possible, and both of them together, divide and conquer to do that."

Rey nods. "And you and Lane?"

Jon shrugs a bit. "Biological reality. There was never going to be a generation that followed after us, so… We weren't building up a dynasty. Neither of us needed a sky high rank or the ability to shift the tides of wars by a few whispered words. Just doing our own thing, and making sure there was enough for us to be comfortable with each other. Pat and Ellie… I think they're trying to make sure that a million generations of Kinears are secure. I know my mom is trying to do that for us. She's set the business up that there's always something for us to go back to if we need it. For my nieces, too."

Rey nods at that, too. "Thanks."

"Does that help?"

"Some."

* * *

They're half way to Jon's office when he says, "You mind if I ask why you want to know what I think being married means?"

"No, but it's still part of what I'm pondering and… Part of being the Prince's Lady, and… It's just, a lot. And left to my own devices, I don't make decisions… or changes fast, so…"

"So, I'll let you think."

Another hundred meters down the hallway. Rey's looking at office after office, well, from here it's just doors with numbers and letters on them. "Part of being a lightsider is that it's easy to get stuck. Light nurtures, it cherishes, it holds on… doesn't rip things up and pull them apart and move onto something new. Not easy."

She's watching Jon, fairly sure he's got more than a bit of empathy for that.

"You said I'm the one with the good sense to leave… I don't know if that's true. I'm the one who spent a decade on a planet, begging for people to come back to me, people who I _knew_ never could or would return. But the lie was comfortable, and the rut I'd carved for myself was deep, and… It took a _lot_ to get me out of it, and _more_ to keep me from going back.

"Kylo set his old life on fire, broke away from it, and then did it again."

"You left him, he told me that."

She nods. "Twice. Both times because I was needed to protect something else. The second time because… He asked me to join him, rule, but at that point all he wanted to rule was ash. Burn the Resistance, the First Order, the Jedi, the Sith, everything."

"And the dark revels in destruction."

Rey nods. "And that was enough to move me to another new path."

"What path are you on now, Mistress Rey?" His voice is light, but the question is serious.

"That's the question now, isn't it?"

"And do the paths have to diverge? Can you be Order and Maji… Light and Dark… at once?"

"I don't know." She sighs. "That's the idea of balance, what I'm teaching the kids. Find the spot between the light and the dark, the point where you can take in both, and stand, secure and stable."

"Easier said than done, isn't it?"

She nods.

* * *

It's a door. A lot like all of the other doors on this hallway. Right before he opens it, Jon says, "Okay, we're about to walk into chaos. I just want you to remember this is A: the back door to TD. Normally, we'd go in through the shops, but this trip is long enough without wading through my… Em's production lines. B: this is _organized_ chaos. We don't get to unorganized chaos until we get to my office, okay?"

Rey nods. "Okay."

Jon opens the door, and… Rey just stares. She's never seen so many… Things, all stuffed into one place. There are fabrics, metal samples, design specs, a half-dozen droids working on… prototypes maybe, there are data pads galore, and in the middle of that is a desk with a dark haired, dark skinned woman, looking down at something she's working on.

She says to Jon, not looking up, "Hey, Boss, got a new update on short, dark, and handsome?"

Jon smiles at her. She's still not looking at him. He glances to Rey, and grins huge at her.

"Nah, here to raid my own stuff. Got to find some vids for the Master. I'm showing off New Republic propaganda."

She's still looking at her pad, sketching something on it. "He hasn't seen it?"

"Apparently, not."

"Holy Ilona, was that man raised in a cave?" She's starting to look up. "What are yo—" Her voice stops dead as she sees who's standing next to Jon.

Rey watches all of the blood drain from the woman's dark features, and then she goes leaping to attention, "Lady Ren, I—"

Jon's laughing, loudly at that.

Rey decides to smile. "Monastery. I understand there were caves, but they didn't live in them."

Jon steps forward, nudging Rey along with him, and suggesting non-verbally that she offer her hand. She does.

"Rey, this is my second in command, right hand woman, and most of all, friend, Colonel Emily Furman. Em, this is Mistress of the Maji, Rey."

For a moment, it's clear that Emily isn't sure if she should shake Rey's hand, or bow, or salute, or curtsy.

"The handshake will do. Jon's mentioned you a few times."

"Kindly, I've mentioned you, kindly," Jon adds.

Emily stares for another second, and then in a rush, grasps Rey's hand. "Lady Ren."

"Rey. I generally go by Rey."

"Yes, Mistress."

"Or you can call me Mistress Rey, whichever."

Emily's standing there, looking frozen, not sure what to do next. "I… didn't mean, it… About the caves… Uh…"

"It's fine. You weren't expecting anyone other than Jon to be here. And I understand that pretty much everyone who grew up anywhere approaching 'civilization' would have seen these. Kylo didn't, nor did I, so… We're learning."

Emily nods, looking off foot. She's glancing at Jon like she wants to smack him for doing this to her, and he's grinning away as he leads Rey toward his office.

Once they get into his office he says, "All, right this is disorganized chaos."

Rey just blinks. Looking at this, she could see there was some sort of system in Emily's office. This is just… Boggling. In addition to everything (minus the droids) that Emily had in her office, there are books about ship design, pictures of palaces, even _more_ datapads, a library on costume design, _more pictures_ Rey doesn't even know why Jon's got some of them, because they aren't as well as she can tell, pictures of things, they're mostly just colors, maybe just because they're pretty, and yet more pads, and…

"How do you find anything in here?"

"I've got almost perfect visual recall if I'm paying attention. And when I put something down in here, I'm paying attention."

A person pops a head into Jon's office. "Grand Marshall," this one sees Rey, and also snaps to attention.

"Mistress Ren, this is R4-6837, my secretary."

Rey shakes his hand, and he shivers at the touch. Not in a bad way, just overwhelmed by the idea that _Mistress Ren is standing in front of him._

"News?" Jon asks, as he continues to move through his office picking up data pads.

"Uh. No, not really, sir. Just checking. I'd let everyone know you'd be out today, so if anything's come in it's gone directly to your pad."

"Okay, good. General Threepio is supposed to be sending me the full specs for the Diplomacy division. He tells me that physical plant has sent back the first round of revisions, so I need to see that."

"Yes, sir. If he has, it went straight to your personal pad. Shall I inquire?"

"No. He's the most reliable officer on this ship when it comes to getting things done. I'll check when I get time."

"Yes, sir. Do you want an update on tomorrow?"

"It's in my calendar, right?"

"Yes."

"We're good."

The secretary, who looks like he wants to offer to find something for Jon, but knows he's not going to do it, withdraws back into his part of the office.

Jon pulls out a pad that looks like every other pad, and turns it on. He smiles. "Here we go. Propaganda so sweet it'll rot your teeth."

Rey just stares at him.

Jon inclines his head at her. "You'll see, or at least he will. It's… so perfect it's cloying. Especially if it's not the team you were rooting for."

Rey nods at that, too. "Why do you have it, then?"

"Aesthetics, and it's easier to tie into people's ideals if you know what they are. If it was just me for me, I wouldn't have anything to do with this. I had to watch most of it in school, and had a hard time then, but… They were good at it, and I'm not so stuck up as to refuse to learn from people who knew what they were doing."

"And they knew."

"You'll see. If you got these as a child, well, as child who didn't grow up in my home, or if you'd been a supporter of the Rebellion or New Republic, you'd like them. They'd shape your ideals of who your guys were and who they were fighting and why they were destined to win and… Like I said, you'll see."

"I'll see, then."

* * *

Em's out of her "Lady Ren is in my office, oh holy shit, now what" stupor by the time Jon's heading them back out.

She's also, and Rey can feel it, really looking at her, now. Seeing the actual woman, under or behind the image.

"Did you get the Battle of Endor?" she asks Jon, glancing at the pads in his hands.

"Em…"

"Look, I know, but it's the best one of the bunch of them, so…"

Jon sighs. He knows that, too. As an adult, and one who knows how making things look good works, he knows it's good propaganda. But he's also still the child who had to sit in school and watch a holo in which his father was blown to bits, and watch it as a celebration in which the bad guys were massacred, deservedly. The first time, he sat through it. Every time after that, he got genuinely sick to his stomach, and was able to 'go rest' in the nurse's office. "I'll mention it and they can look it up later."

"Okay." She smiles to Rey. "I know it's a tender spot for him, but, really of all the propaganda pieces, the Battle of Endor is the one you want to see. It's, not just good propaganda, but it's a good story, too."

Rey nods at that. She can see how Jon responded to it, and she wonders if Kylo will want to see his parents and uncle in the battle that made them heroes. "I'll make sure we check it out."

"Do." It's clear Em has no idea why Rey, or by extension, Kylo might not want to watch that one, either. "And… uh… If you ever want to talk about why it's good propaganda, I studied film before coming here, so… This is sort of in my wheelhouse."

Rey blinks at that. "You can study… film?"

"Sure. In the core, you can find somewhere that teaches anything. I studied film, how to make movies, how to use cameras, costume design. That's how I ended up here."

"You went from Costume Design to the First Order?"

Em smiles a little, and dryly says, "There were a few steps, and possibly a few bad decisions, and a worse relationship or two along the way."

"She got stars in her eyes and followed a scumbag here. Tested well, and then ended up in my division."

"Got the stars out of my eyes less than a month in, and decided that this was interesting, so I stuck around."

Rey's not sure what to do with the idea that the First Order was _interesting._ That's certainly not the first word she would come up with to describe it.

"And there wasn't much back home for you, either," Jon adds, because he knows that people who joined, and think the First Order were the good guys are going to be a bit much for Rey to swallow.

"True. I had useful work here. There, I had working in a café, trying to get a job doing anything even remotely like what I'd trained for."

"Were you from an Imperial family?"

Em's eyes light as she recognizes why Rey's asking that. "Oh, no. Nothing like Jon's untouchable status. For me, it was just a matter of it's a really tight field and a lot of people want into it. Like… You go into accounting or something, and there are billions of jobs out there for accountants. But if you go into film, there are billions of people who want to do it, and hundreds of thousands of jobs."

"Oh."

"Yeah. General Hux already had people making films here, though supposedly I was on the list to move into that division if an opening ever showed up, but," she gestures around Tactical Design, "until then, someone who knew how to put a stylish and functional outfit together had things to do here."

Rey nods at that, not sure what to do with it.

Jon saves her. "And we've got to get off if we're going to get back with time to do this before supper."

Em nods, and waves to the door. "See, ya, Boss."

"Bye, Em."

* * *

When they're in the hallway, Rey says, "She calls you, Boss?"

"It's a joke. Mostly her way of pointing out that I'm _not_ her boss. Even when I was."

"She doesn't follow your orders?"

He laughs at that. "Once upon a time, she might have. Now, I offer her suggestions and occasionally make requests, and she's usually nice enough to help me out with them. If I actually attempted to flat out order her to do something, I'd likely be sincerely disappointed by the outcome. It goes two ways, though, she knows she can sidle into my office whenever she likes and I'll have time for whatever she needs, too."

Rey smiles at that.

"Yeah. We're friends."

* * *

When they're back in Kylo's office, Jon sets up the viewer, so he and Rey can watch, and starts sketching.

"Sit. Watch. When I'm done, you can tell me how close to the real people this is."

Then he gets working on what Kylo actually looks like.

* * *

Kylo sits, for a moment. He's been sitting still too long. He paces. That's better. Moving is better. Rey sits. They watch, and… Well… Uh… Yeah. Those are things. Extremely pretty things. Involving very pretty people, some of them pretending to be his family.

And, it's true that his mental image of his parents are people in their mid-thirties, early-forties. And the actors are younger. It's also true that his mental image of Luke is set when he left to join Snoke, so early fifties.

That said, while it's true that Luke made sure they all had their own little cottages, he also wasn't much of a fan of plumbing work, so they had communal showers, which means he's seen every inch of Luke Skywalker there was to see and he did not, ever, look anything like the guy in the movies.

The guy in the movies is tall. Kylo's fairly sure that he could look eye to eye with this actor, and if he wanted to do that with Luke, Luke would have needed to stand on something. He's very blond… And, interspersed with some of the 'recreations' there are bits and pieces of real footage. Apparently, when he was young, Luke was truly blonde. By the time Kylo knew him, his hair was mostly brown and gray. The bright blue eyes are… more blue, brighter, but at least somewhere close to right. The actor has more muscles than Kylo can or wants to count, and is wearing a collection of outfits to show that off. Again, communal showers, so Kylo's seen all of Luke, but he's only seen all of Luke because of those showers, not because Luke ever wore the kind of clothing where you could see more than his arms and his collarbones.

Jedi masters, even Jedi masters working hard in the fields, do not wear shorts and sleeveless shirts. They really do not wear tunics that tie at the side and somehow keep slipping open so more than half a chest is hanging out. At least, not so much as Kylo ever saw. Granted, at Luke's school, on a really brutally hot day, it got to 28, so… some of them would strip down further, but Luke stuck to long trousers and at least a tunic (that closed to the neck). Usually robes, too.

Probably felt cool to him, after growing up on Tattooine. Though Kylo never thought to ask that.

He keeps watching. The biggest difference between the real Luke and the actor is the actor looks like he's not only never had a pimple, but hasn't ever heard about one, either.

He's fucking _perfect. Effortlessly perfect._

Luke running as far away as possible to get away from this is making a _lot_ more sense to Kylo. And again, there's a bizarre twinge of something like sympathy for the man, and that makes Kylo uncomfortable.

But that's not for today. Watching, learning, seeing… The difference between the image and the person underneath.

There are more images of his mother. Really her. She seems to be comfortable with cameras on her, so she's giving speeches and rallying people. He knows by the dates on them that some of them are from before he was born, one of the speeches she has to be pregnant with him, and some are after, but he can't see much difference between them.

He spies his father, or at least, the back of a head and shoulders that make him think that's got to be Han, in the back of a few of the later images, and he's doing his best to hide from the cameras. Probably not a terrible idea given how many systems he was wanted in. Just because you're a hero of the Rebellion doesn't mean that the bounty on your head in the Sintiliion system dried up.

In the recreations… Taller, brighter, shinier. They never make the wrong decisions, and always look calm and collected. No one gets nervous, no one sweats, no one grunts, and everyone is always beautiful.

Seeing this actually is helping, some.

In fact, as he watches the different films, it occurs to him that the only one of the actors who looks/feels _acts_ like the real person is whomever they got to be Lando, and well… Lando was Lando. Lando could have just played himself in these vids, and likely the only reason he didn't was he was too busy making sure the Calrissian Corp. was up and thriving.

Lando was warm and charming and good with people, and he successfully ran a huge organization, and…

Kylo purses his lips. Lando was a kind of handsome prince, too. No birthright for it, but if anyone ever _did_ it.

But Lando's dead, and has been for years, and… Well, if he wasn't… Kylo's not sure if Lando would have been willing to sit down and talk with him about how to do this sort of stuff. Not after what he did to Han, but…

He did have a son.

Who also ran screaming away from the family legacy.

So he might not, on sight, loathe him. They got on… okay… back when Lando and Orlac visited. Granted, they were twelve and twenty back then.

And… He and Rey know each other, because that's the way the Force, or his mom, works.

So… Maybe it would be a good plan to have a chat with Orlac sometime about… how to do and be this sort of person.

Kylo sits back down. He's been pacing for about an hour, and his legs are starting to tremble. He sighs. He glances to Rey and wonders if she would consider visiting Lando an appropriate use of their off time. Then he glares. The off time he's burned through for the next three months, and then this would be month four, so month _five_ before they can go do something _fun._

He fucking _hates_ being sick.

* * *

"Okay Rey, tell me if this is what Kylo looks like."

He can feel the way she smiles at the image. See it on her face, but _feel_ it too. Warm and pleased.

And he just _knows_ there is no possible way the image on that page is going to look anything like him.

Jon hands it over and… This is what the guy they're going to hire to play him if they ever make a movie of this looks like.

"You both like me way too much."

* * *

Rey's wondering if this is how it feels to Kylo when she's having one of her "I don't know if I can do this" moments.

It's so blatantly obvious that he looks just fine, better than fine, that… The fact that he can't see the resemblance between the sketch and the face she wakes up next to every morning is staggering to her.

And, glancing at the chrono, it's also something that she's got to put aside for a bit. The kids likely aren't hungry after this afternoon, but they still need some adult around to keep an eye on things, and today, that adult is her, so…

"I've got to head off." She kisses Kylo, squeezes Jon's hand, and then heads off to her own responsibilities.

The kids cook their own evening meal. She's mostly there to make sure it's somewhere in the neighborhood of nutritious, it's cooked properly (no food poisoning), and if anyone gets absent minded with a blade, it gets fixed up, fast.

So, she's mostly, just there. It doesn't require too much effort on the average night. Just needs a warm body in the right place at the right time. (And, if they can get Jacen trained up in basic cut healing, they might start putting him on the rotation, too. He'd probably like another sign of being part of the 'adult' Maji.)

While she's keeping an eye on everything, she's wondering if there's a way she can make Kylo see how he looks to her. She can remember looking at herself through his eyes, and finding it rather disorienting. Plus, it was just a view of her back. She's not sure if she can't offer him a different perspective…

Might be worth a try, later tonight.

Maybe.

* * *

The kids are talking about the shows. About who wants to be which hero. Who wants what singing/dancing critter for a pet. Many versions of puppy eyes are being aimed at Rey, suggesting that that was a good learning experience, and that they should really all do that again, soon.

Rey's thinking about weddings, and how to be the Prince's Lady.

She's remembering looking at K'Ahuana as he said, "I would make you a queen."

"I already am one."

Lightlings don't change fast, or easy, but when the ground under her is shifting, solidifying into a new shape, she's got enough… dark… self… sense to know that she's got to move with the changes.

Even if it's not entirely comfortable.

* * *

What does the Lady of the Order do?

They never talked about that.

Never talked about what this whole married thing meant, beyond not being alone, not any more.

All of the weddings in the shows had vows, promises made to each other, and the future, at least the sketch of a plan for how to behave, and… He made one to her when he put that ring on her finger, she felt it. _I will not be Vader._ She knows how hard that was to commit to, the changes necessary to get there, and if she could, she'd tattoo that on her heart and wear it as a badge of pride.

There were later vows, promises to her, and to their future.

That's her sense of what being married is to Kylo. It's the promises he's made and building the life necessary to keep them.

But she didn't make any vows to Kylo.

Not in any formal, or informal sense. No… promises, no… plan for a future.

There was _now._ The present, and feelings and intentions. A commitment to how she'd treat him. That's certainly true. Kindness, respect, gentleness, the things he didn't get and sorely needed. A home. She's never articulated it, but it's there. She would be his home.

Something, someone, warm and stable and welcoming. A place and person who would always be there for him. Someone for whom he'd always be enough.

Light. She'd be his light.

The balm and space he needed to heal.

But he's moving forward. She gave him what he needed to keep going, keep growing. That's what a light does. And he needed that. He couldn't go forward if all he had under him was ash and black. And now it's her turn. Time to figure out what and who she needs to be, and begin.

Not put a toe in and touch the water.

Not, sort of, kind of, half in, half out…

It's time to leap.

She knows he'll catch her, she's just got to do it.

* * *

 _"Captain, marry us!"_

The kids are picking at supper. Mostly cold sandwiches and fruit. A light meal for fairly full tummies.

She's not really paying attention to them. She's seeing that scene again.

It felt _real._

Of course, that's the movie that wasn't based on a real story. That's the one that was completely pulled out of the imagination of its writers.

But of all of them, that's the one that felt the most like them. Both of them bouncing back and forth, from side to side as the scenes and needs around them shifted, the one constant, each other.

No matter what, Beth had Bill's back, and vice versa, and that was that.

Another image comes to mind, it's one of the propaganda pieces that Jon was showing them. Leia was giving a speech. Han was hiding in the back, looking bored, trying not to attract attention. Likely the only reason she and Kylo saw him was they were looking for him.

They didn't last twenty years. Didn't end their days watching each other's backs. Didn't pull together to protect their son, and the family they tried to create spun off in three separate directions.

Neither of them could bend, neither could compromise, or meet in the middle.

Find their gray.

Rey takes a deep breath, and lets it out.

Kylo's promised her eleven years, and they're out.

She can do anything for eleven years, including being Mistress Rey of the Order of the Maji.

Granted, it might not be a terrible idea to sit down and actually figure out what Mistress Rey of the Order of the Maji _does._

* * *

Ellie sitting before them, talking, laying out a plan... "And one day, somehow, you two found each other, and you rescued him from the dark/light/power/corruption… fill in the blank however you like, and together, the two of you are breaking with the past, shattering it, and starting fresh and new. That's the promise of the Order, a fresh start to anyone who wants it, and you two, personally will be the symbol of that. The idea that love frees us from our bonds, gives us the strength to break away from what's dominated us, and then gives us hope to conceptualize a better life, and the will to go get it. That's the fantasy we're going to write up and sell to the entire galaxy, if you two want to claim it.

"And the best way to sell that fantasy, to pick it up and work it for all it's worth, is the biggest, brightest, most lavish wedding anyone's ever seen.

"Spruce this place up, make it glitter, and both of you, inside of it, sparkling away, glowing and lovey the way you were at the Last Night dinner. That gives you plenty of reason to tell the story, more reason to show where the story leads, and it will cement the idea of this as a glittering palace in space, centered on the most fabulous love story ever, where people will come to work with each other, and reach peace and accord. You'll be the living embodiment of conflict turning to love turning to a flourishing society with a vibrant future. We can build this story, and we can sell it, and if you are willing to put yourselves on display like this, we can cement the power of the Order with a minimum of bloodshed."

She'd said that.

The only question was if they'd _do it._

Lady Ren, Mistress of the Order of the Maji. Her lord's lady, and a queen in her own right.

And, if Ellie's right, all they need to do to set this in motion, and, for lack of a better word, introduce, both her, and the Order of the Maji, to the galaxy at large, is the ideal of a romance, and huge, beautiful, glittering, wedding, to tie it all up and sell it to the wider world.

And all she's got to do is _do it._

* * *

She's been in their living room for half a breath when Kylo says, "So, important meaningful conversation is back on the table, isn't it?"

"It's that noticeable?"

"I can almost literally see it glowing off of you."

"All right, then?" There aren't any plates on their table. "Food?"

"After all that popcorn, I'm not really hungry. There are some sandwiches in the cooler if you are."

Rey shakes her head. "Not really."

He's looking at her expectantly, and then gestures for the comfy chair. He settles in, and she comes to cuddle on his lap. Rey can feel him mentally purring at this. Her in his arms, wrapped around her, and in their home, and how _right_ this makes him feel.

This is his leaping off point, the thing/person he needs to go on being _him._

He's also being quiet, letting her start this off.

She's not sure where to start, but… At the beginning probably. "When you asked to be my husband, what did that mean to you?"

He blinks. He knows, eventually, where she's going with this, but that's not the route he was expecting her to take.

Kylo holds her a little tighter, and rolls his lips together. Then he shakes his head a little, because it's not a _word_ thing. He can't name it or lay it out. Not in it's entirety. There are pieces that have words, but the whole is beyond them. He can feel it. So he holds her close, and does.

It's this. This moment here, of them together, in their home, working on something bigger than both of them, and it's the past, and the fights to get here, and the changes that made here possible, it's the future and the hopes they'll realize and the ones they won't. It's a… space… for lack of a better word, where they can be themselves, and make each other better. Her light to nurture. His dark to protect. Her light to feed and grow. His dark to shift their path, keep them moving. It's the balance that lets them use both, together, to get somewhere they only have glimpses of, but the hope of something important. It's the life, singular, theirs, that they'll build, and it's the life (lives? Plural? There's a hot, vivid flush of more than one) they'll create. The generations that will follow them.

She nods against his shoulder. _That._ That's fine. She's good with _that._ "And what does Lady Ren do?"

He shrugs. "Whatever she wants to."

That gets a little eye roll and a shove. "I'm being serious. What do I… do… as the Prince's Lady? All of those stories were pretty vague about what happens after the vows are said. Even Ellie hasn't gone there. Big, honkin' beautiful wedding wrapped around a pretty love story and gorgeous people. Okay. Sure. Game on, let's do it." She feels him thrill at that. "But… then what? What's your image of Lady Ren lady-renning?"

That gets a long, slow blink.

"Do you want me reading data pads, or going over treaties, or…"

The surge of joy at this is so intense it almost knocks her over. Would have, but he's holding onto her so tightly there's no possible way she could leave his arms.

It takes him a moment to relax his hold on her, and get his voice together. "I would… like that, very much. But… You've got here and the kids and…"

She nods. "I know. It… works in somehow. I can feel that, but I don't know where the balance point is, not yet."

"Okay. I… meant it, whatever you want."

"What do you—" she's about to say want, but she knows what he wants, "need?"

"A partner. I can read datapads as well as anyone can, and that's mostly just… boring. Most of the ones that get to me are informative, letting me know what's going on in the Order. Things I could make decisions about or changes to, but rarely do, because the people who are sending me the reports appear to actually know what they're doing, and I don't. At least, not on most of the things they're sending me reports about. Or, at least, don't know enough about these things to see easy ways to make things better. So, that's… I mean, don't get me wrong, you can read any datapad you can find, I will not mind at all if you help me clear my backlog, but I don't _need_ help with that. It'd just be, nice."

"Okay, so, what does your partner, do?"

"People. Help me with people. I read them well… enough… but they respond differently to you than they do to me, and it's easier to deal with them when you're with me. I feel less nervous about dealing with them when you're around. I know you're nervous about fucking this up for me, but… I'm nervous about that, too." A billion flashes of Ben not being _Ben_ enough for his parents or Luke go flowing through him. The eternal disappointment of people with a vested interest in him doing it right, and him _not doing it right._

She squeezes his hands.

"And… I think you'll come up with ways of looking at, and dealing with, things that I won't. I know I would not have come up with that solution to the K'Aran situation. Like Poe, I probably would have settled for the occasional wrong decision is better than no decisions, so…"

"So, formal, _face of the Order_ sorts of things. Alderaan and things like that."

He nods. "Alderaan, and other things where we're supposed to be building connections and working on getting people to work with us." He stops there for a moment, and lets himself _feel_ beyond just the pleasure of this conversation and that she might actually do it.

She catches his Force, and the hints of where it's taking him. An idea of where the balance point may be. What the Maji are, and do, or could do, as part of the Order. It's not an image, though there is a feel, more of her and Jacen, and Savarah, maybe… Cassie… Not all of the Maji, just some of them, maybe… The ones with a touch for it…

But it does involve working with people. With… shaping things and ideas.

The Jedi, for a thousand generations, before the Force got fed up with them and began to go wan and dull, used to be negotiators and mediators. They used to seek accord and help people find places and ways to settle their differences.

"Sorely needed." Rey thinks Kylo's the one who said it, but it also may have been her voice. It doesn't matter, it's true no matter what.

This bit is certainly Kylo, though, "The Order… The idea of it, I hope, is a place where people can come and meet and find accord. Join with us and find the future they want and need. Meet with each other, trade, talk… It's a… haven… where the fact that I've got the biggest fucking guns, and will use them on anyone who tries to break the peace means they can come, be safe and secure in the knowledge that no one will try anything, and find a way to get past their differences."

"But that needs people who are… good at people." It's clear on her face that she's not sure if that's her.

"It doesn't have to be you." They're both thinking of Jacen, who was more or less made for something like that. "But it could be. Or it could be you and I, because together we're better at it, and…"

She's nodding. "And… That's the sort of thing Jon does, and Threepio, and Poe, sort of, and…"

"And this is something we can work with. Something we can build. I know we're starting to get more requests for space, and there are several more deals working their way through the different departments. Eventually, they'll get here, and someone, meaning us, will greet them and try to make sure that the Order can give them what they need."

"A place to find their balance."

"Exactly."

Rey snuggles in against him. Face tucked under his chin, breathing in the scent of his skin and hair. "Did you… change something?"

"Is it bad?"

She sniffs again. "Different. Not bad, but, like you turned the volume down." She gets the sense of a vague sort of annoyance aimed at Jon and Poe, but doesn't poke it.

Kylo says, "We can bump that to later, too."

"Okay. Right. Ellie suggested the way we'd get people was by making a show of this," she gestures meaning them. "And… Okay?"

"Okay." He kisses her forehead. "Be the Handsome Prince," he manages to say it with a straight face, though it's a close one on that, "And his Lady. Make us look like the Fairy Tale, and get them to come, work on the overarching goal, peace, prosperity, and basic sentient dignity business."

"Sure. Just…" She pulls his head down, and kisses him, "One thing. If we're going to do this big, fancy, cinema style love story/wedding, I want something for us. Something small, something private, something just us."

"Just us? And what sort of something?"

The image from the movie with the mid-combat marriage springs to mind. The wedding in that one. "A wedding for us. Us, our friends, this… family we've pulled together. I want it... Somewhere warm, maybe where we can see the ocean."

Kylo's nodding, he can get along with that. "Small, close gathering, no press, no onlookers."

"Yeah. Private, you, me, our loves. The first real wedding of the Maji. We'll do something fancy for show to attract people, but a celebration, a real one for us, too."

Kylo's grinning, liking this. "On a beach, where water meets land, like Finn and Rose… sunrise or sunset… Maji weddings should happen at twilight. Dark and light mixing together."

Rey nods, slowly, at that idea. "Sunset. Torches. At the end of our vows, we light them, and spread the flame to everyone else."

"I can get behind that." Kylo smiles, and stretches at that. "So, you, me, a bit of beach. Maybe a nice dress and whatever it is you like looking at me in, our friends, some good food, and sunset, and firelight…"

"Music, a place to dance, the promises we've made each other, and the ones we intend to keep."

He nuzzles against her temple, tilts her head, catches her lips. "Seal it with a kiss."

"Or two," she says with a smile. "That's what I want. The rest of this… That's a show, that's… the job… and this is a wedding."

He kisses her gently. "Our wedding. This is for us, Rey and Kylo, that's for the Mistress and the Master."

"Yeah."


	27. Presents?

2/14/2

Kylo thinks that Poe had a good idea. Get a present for Rey. She went way out on a ledge for him, and has committed to staying out on that ledge, so the absolute least he can possibly do is find some sort of thing she'd like to show his appreciation.

The problem is, it's not just that he's out of practice on presents, it's that he never was _in practice._ As a young child, there were Lifeday gifts (Wookie tradition) and small bags of cookies and treats were exchanged on Concordance Day (which also, just happened, to be his birthday) so he was, as a young boy, used to getting presents.

So, once upon a time, he was good with presents.

And then he joined Luke.

And the presents went away.

Young Ben was extremely irate when Concordance Day ABY 14 rolled around, and there were no presents for him.

Because Jedi didn't _do_ presents.

And eventually, he realized that part of not doing presents was about not wanting, not getting attached or excited or… whatever. And part of it was, while it was true there were a collection of people who would happily get Ben Lifeday gifts, M'Gll and several of the others _didn't_ have those people.

And Luke didn't want some kids getting to his place and getting goodies from home, and others getting nothing.

Leia eventually wormed her way around it by sending gifts for the whole group of them, and if they happened to be the sorts of things Ben liked, oh well. He didn't resent her, too much, too often, for it. Mostly just when Concordance Day would roll around. After all, his father was a fucking _smuggler._ It's not like getting a little lifeday present to him wasn't an option.

* * *

His first idea for a present is repainting his room. He thinks about that, fairly pleased for a few minutes. She's mentioned she likes all the colors, but he knows she's likes greens, too, and it'd probably be a nice surprise to come home one night, and everything is bright and open and…

He's looking around.

His eyes narrow.

Lots of green might be nice, but he doesn't know what greens, and… Maybe the all black furniture could be… not all black. Still some black, after all, it's his home, too, but…

He's standing in his room, looking around thinking that, if this is going to _work,_ they should probably do it together.

(It's a few hours later when it occurs to him that doing something he was going to do anyway likely doesn't count as a present. That said, he does ask C8 if they've got a book or something of paint colors and gets told that physical plant can replicate any color they can be shown. So, no, there's not a _book or something._ )

* * *

Instead of having lunch brought to him and working through it, he decides to head up to the F-Deck. He knows for a fact that there is food up there, and likely things that could work as presents.

As he's strolling around the F-Deck, his do not recognize spell up, _things_ all around him, and a handheld pasty doing lunch duty, it also occurs to him that presents are easier if the person you're getting one for is a _thing_ sort of person.

There are things, in shops, all around him.

And he supposes that Rey would like a lot of them. As much from the novelty of getting a present, and for something _new_ than for any desire for any of these things.

He wouldn't mind buying many of them, again, because it's _new,_ and it'd be a gift, from him, to her, but…

None of them are really leaping off the shelf, yelling, _Buy me for Rey! She'll love me!_

* * *

He wonders a bit if getting some sort of sexy pajamas for her qualifies as a present.

For him, probably.

He lets himself imagine her in sexy pajamas. Okay, definitely a present for him.

Then he wonders if she'd be interested in seeing him in sexy pajamas. That doesn't hit him wrong. It's certainly a thing he could do. And that'd… be significantly more likely to be a present for _her._

She liked his silky white shorts… Maybe something, not exactly like that, but… He spends a moment thinking about it, fairly sure there has to be sexy pajama-type-things for men, but his mind isn't exactly bubbling over with ideas of what they might be, other than his current pajama pants, but in a sheer, silky sort of fabric.

He's looking around the F-Deck. He knows for a fact that there are places on this ship, on this deck, that sell sex-oriented things. One could likely get sexy pajamas at a place like that. For both of them, maybe… (After all, just because he's getting a present for her doesn't mean he can't get one for him, too…) He's just… continuing to look around… has no idea _where._ Nothing within his view has anything like what he'd consider sexy clothing in it.

And he's got another twenty minutes before he's got to be in his office.

His eyes narrow in frustration. The datapad that has the _Supremacy_ directory is also back in his office. So, whatever else is true about this plan, it's not happening today.

As he thinks about it, he does know where the adult section on the _Finalizer_ is, and… An extra layer of anonymity doesn't bother him at all.

Tomorrow or the next day. He's got to have at least an hour that doesn't have something else scheduled in it. Lunch if nothing else.

* * *

Still, even sexy pajamas… They don't feel like… enough.

He suspects locating and trying them on, and obtaining them will be fun, and he has a feeling showing them off will be more fun, and that'll be good, but…

She's shifting her whole life for this, and a concoction of silk just doesn't seem to be quite on the level of that.

Granted, he's not sure anything, other than making sure he's _worth it,_ is.

* * *

They're in the bath, relaxing a bit in the time between dinner and bed, when he says, "So, if we were to paint this room, what color would you like?"

Rey blinks at him. "Uh…"

"I've been told that Physical Plant can produce any color they can see, so… Our place on Lirium is white and cream mostly… What… should this room be?"

Rey sits up from her lounging float and looks around. He can feel her thinking.

"And… I don't know, but… Maybe the furniture doesn't have to be all black, either. I'd like to keep some of it black, but…" He thinks for a moment. "Like… I'd like the bed to stay black, but maybe the sheets and blankets could be something else."

Rey nods at that, and continues to look around. "Maybe… The floor and ceiling could stay black, and the bed, and wardrobe… Maybe new colors for the bath and table and chairs?"

"We could do that. Any… ideas, for colors?"

She half smiles and half winces, and he can feel what's going on. She's excited at the idea of bringing colors in here, but she's never picked colors before. Everything in their home in Lirium is something Chewie picked out, or something he brought and left. She's never… made a home, other than in the most literal sense of having physically built one.

"Any color they can see?" Rey says to Kylo.

"Yeah."

"There were a few shops on the F-Deck that sell pictures. Maybe tomorrow or the next day, we could go look at them, and if one of them has colors we like, we could get it and use it to figure out what goes in here."

He pulls her close to him, and kisses her soundly. "I like that."

* * *

2/16/2

When Master Ren and Mistress Rey of the Maji spend and evening perusing the art galleries of the F-Deck, the gossip goes wild.

Apparently, Mistress Rey likes images with bright colors, vibrant contrasts, sharp geometric shapes, and non-photo realistic images.

Master Ren, apparently, has more classical tastes, leaning toward landscapes of forests and fields, sunsets over oceans, still lifes of exotic flowers, and human portraits and nudes, in black and white.

Impressionist landscapes are, apparently, the sweet spot where both of their tastes converge.

Rene D'Vallier will be informed, in a few months, when he checks in with the gallery, that his Sunset Over Vayria was purchased by the Master, and he will tell anyone and everyone who is capable of listening about _that._

And one day, over tea, he'll chat with one of his friends, who'd gone to art school with him, an Orlac Calrissian, who will not actually spit his tea out when he hears that the once-upon-a-time Ben Solo, now Master Ren, is, apparently, buying _art._

* * *

2/18/2

In his office, with most of his furniture, because apparently, painters like to take the easy to move stuff out before applying paint to most of the surfaces of your room, Kylo isn't working.

He's not entirely sure how, exactly, he agreed to a mostly beige and coral colored room with a few blue accents (With black floors and ceiling.) but the picture is pretty, and he likes it. And that's most of the colors in the picture. Something in his bones seems to resonate with deserts. He thinks that's something to do with Vader. He hopes it's not vestiges of Luke. There's the sense that Vader… Anakin, said… something about deserts, but… Anyway, he's woolgathering.

He looks at the data pads that are not, miraculously, getting to be a smaller stack. Apparently, he's been woolgathering a lot today.

Part of it is the disruption of the painters.

Part of it is the niggling idea of sexy pajamas, and sort of a sense of… calling Rey to him, room done, everything new and him all laid out…

He grins at that idea.

And the grin falls as he looks at all of those pads.

He makes himself a promise. Tomorrow. They say the paint will be wet and smelly today, and not to be in there until tomorrow, so…

Tomorrow. Today he'll get these bloody pads done.

Tomorrow, Operation: Break In the New Bedroom.

He _likes_ that idea.

* * *

2/19/2

Kylo is beyond intimately acquainted with Rey's body. He knows her curves and flats, better than he knows his own. He is also aware of the fact that, should he attempt to buy some of the pretty silky things he's dreaming about putting on Rey, he will need to get them in the right size.

And though he is, as previously stated, beyond intimately acquainted with her form, he is also beyond nebulous on the idea of how that translates into clothing sizes, so… As his free hour draws near, and step one of Break In the Bedroom is about to get into play, he realizes that he's going to need some help on this.

He comms Jon.

"Jon, if I wanted to buy clothing for Rey, what size is she?"

"What kind of clothing?"

Kylo blushes a little. Right, there are _kinds_ of clothing, and it's likely that what he wants will have specific measurements. "Uh… The sort you don't get to see."

Jon snerks. "Uh huh. Okay. Check your personal datapad in about five minutes. I'm sending you a collection of numbers. Take them with you, and show them to whomever helps you."

"Thank you."

"Do you know where you're going?"

"On this ship, no. But I have an idea of where I need to go on the _Finalizer._ "

He can feel how amused Jon is by that. "Okay, then. Have fun."

Kylo's about to comm off, when he realizes what he asked for, which is not exactly that present _for Rey,_ and then he says, "Uh… what size am I?"

He can feel Jon vibrating as he laughs silently on the other side of the comm. "That'll be in the note I'm sending you, too."

"Thank you."

* * *

Kylo is aware of the fact that there are shops that sell sex-oriented things in the same way he's aware of nebulae. He's seen them, from afar, in passing, but he's never been in one.

When he was stationed on the _Finalizer_ he visited the Specs a few times. So, he knows, in that he walked by them, that there were shops near the brothels, and those shops sold _things,_ and that's likely the kind of place that sells the sorts of thing he's interested in.

Probably.

He never actually went in one. He did, while wearing his mask, look very intently at several of them over the years, but his life never slotted into any sort of shape where there would be a reason to enter one. After all, anything that might be in one of those shops was something he likely wasn't supposed to play with. Just visiting the Specs was a sign of weakness, one he'd indulge when he just couldn't stand _not_ indulging any longer. Anything in one of those shops would have been… He's not sure how to even begin to think about it. Wrong. It would have been wrong.

It's not wrong, now.

So, he's readying himself for Operation: Break In the New Bedroom, he keeps thinking of all the sorts of things he might want to see Rey in. Granted, that's not the goal of this mission, but… Well, he's got _ideas_ of what he might want to see Rey in. He doesn't exactly have anything in the ways of ideas of what he might put himself in.

He strips out of his command blacks and into Padme-who-is-now-Ren, and pulls his hair back into a haphazard knot.

He licks his lips. He's got his Ben Amidala credit stick. He's got his trader gear on. He pulls up his do not recognize spell and layers a quick do-not-see over top of it. He's ready. He ports himself directly to the hallway with the Spec shops on the _Finalizer._

He drops the do-not-see. He knows he's going to need help for this mission, and it won't work if they can't see him. So, right here, right now, he's just Ben Amidala, in his off-duty wear, having a bit of a stroll in the R&R section of the _Finalizer._

It's pretty similar to how he remembers it. Or, at least it looks similar. It feels different: crowded, randy anticipation and lust threaded through with drunkenness and the relaxed glow of recent release. He can't remember it feeling this way, and he doesn't know if he had his own empathy shut down so far he couldn't pick this up the last time he was here, or if Snoke had it shut down to keep him walled off from this.

Either way, he's appreciating it now. Just being here is giving him a lift and making him feel good. That likely makes sense, he's in the middle of at least a few hundred randy people. He's wryly thinking about how taking Rey here will feel, and… yeah, probably really good.

They run hot enough for each other, and with this background current of everyone around him… Yeah… That'd be _good._

Maybe one day they should come here, get worked on together. Getting really rubbed down again is something they should do, soon. Hell, he's the fucking Master, he can probably get a few Specs to come to them. Though if they come to him, they'll miss out on how this feels.

He shakes his head. He doesn't want them to miss out on how this feels. It's not exactly that glow from Paige being born, this is decidedly and intensely more sexual, but it is similar in the euphoric feel of it. The connection to the literal, physical, root of life.

He heads towards where he remembers there being a shop. One not selling food or drink. And, it takes him a few moments, but then he finds it. He lingers outside of it for a moment, looking at the blatant double entendre of a name and the blacked-out windows, debating getting Rey and doing this with her, but…

He does want to surprise her. And he's fairly sure it'll be okay on the other side of the door, but if it's… gross or seedy or unpleasant, he doesn't want to drag her into it. And if he's horribly misjudged what's in here… Well, he doesn't need to drag her into that, either. And if it makes him blush too hard, well… Maybe next time he won't blush too much.

He steps in, and… Okay… His eyebrows don't go shooting up, but only because he's making them stay put. If they had their way, they'd be at least a centimeter above his hairline.

Uh… So… yeah… Pretty, silky things. Uh… Yeah… He's glancing around at _things,_ and _other things_ and… he's honestly not even sure what the fuck _that thing_ is, let alone if it's designed for humans, which isn't to say he knows what the other stuff is, but he can at least, sort of, guess, but that's…

A flash of emerald green catches his sight from his peripheral vision. There, the pretty, silky things are _there._

He turns 90 degrees and heads directly toward the silky stuff. The… oh… Uh… He squints a bit. Well… They're… triangles of fabric, with a sort of band that goes around the waist, and another string in the back, and… He's fairly sure that _The Salty Seaman_ isn't precisely a subtle pun, so he's expecting this store to cater to _men,_ but… Those look like something more for Rey than for anyone shaped like him.

He gets closer, and gets a better view of what caught his eye, and… Right. Okay, well… While he may not know what size Rey is, he knows her shape down to the millimeter and she's not built to fit into the… he's going to call them panties, but… They appear to be designed for people with penises, so that's not what he's looking for either.

Probably. His eyes narrow a little as he stares at them, chewing his lip. He knows how much he likes panties on Rey. Her usual shorts are good, too, but… Little, snug silky things are better, so…

He was thinking more like… silky pajama pants, or like his white shorts, and these are…

Not like that. At all.

But… she might… like them.

"Can I help you?" The woman running the shop is standing next to Kylo, looking at him with a pleased expression on her face. "I'd guess you're probably going to need a large." She looks a little longer. "Eh… maybe a medium. Your waist is pretty trim." She checks his butt. "Or not. Maybe a medium on a thong and large for anything with a back. Most of the fabrics are _stretchy_ , after all, a pouch like that shouldn't be _too constraining,_ but you might want to try things on first."

Kylo blinks slowly and rubs his lips together. "I'm looking for my wife," goes tumbling out of his lips.

She's still grinning at him. "Great, what does she like? Everything all up front and packaged up nicely," she gestures with her hands in a way that makes him blush from the tips of his ears to his collarbone, "or more discrete and tucked under."

He bites his lip, makes something of a whimpering sound, and manages to say, "Shorts?"

"Oh, yeah, of course," she turns and takes him a few steps further into the store. His eyes trace across another shelf, and… It's out of his mouth before he can stop it, "Are those bras?"

"Not exactly, but some men like a little extra support, and some just like to feel dressed up and pretty." She eyes his chest. "You'd certainly fill one out nicely. Do you want to do a fitting?"

He can feel she's just fucking with him right now. He doesn't need a fitting, they only come in four sizes, and he's obviously the largest of them, but she is enjoying his blushes. Apparently, most of the clientele she deals with in here are a little more experienced and or jaded with this sort of shopping trip.

"No."

"No problem, if you change your mind…" And she's at a series of shelves with shorts in every color and fabric and shape that he's ever imagined. "Okay, top shelf, those are tighter and'll often have a built-in pouch for extra support or showing off. They get looser as they go down, and plain boxers are on the bottom."

Kylo nods. "Pajamas?"

"Next shelf over."

"Thank you."

"Great, just holler if you need anything."

He gets a moment of looking at the shorts before she's back, handing him the emerald green panties. "If your woman has eyes, she'll like you in those." He gets hit with a very intense, and apparently desirable, image of him in said panties. The lust is in her mind, but she doesn't let it get to her face or voice because she thinks it's ridiculously cute that he's doing this for his wife, as she says, "The color'll be good on you, and they'll show everything off."

He blinks and nods. Well, the way she's imagining him in them is heating her up in pretty much exactly what he's hoping for Rey, so… "Should I… Try them on?"

"Probably. Changing room is in the back. Keep your shorts or whatever on. It won't be exact, but it'll give you an idea if they're even close to fitting." She heads off for a moment, grabs another one of the emerald ones. "Okay, you've got large and medium now." Then she grabs a cobalt blue, and vivid violet. "Those'll probably look good, too."

He's holding them, not sure what to do, so he says, "Thank you."

She's grinning at him.

Kylo mentally rolls his eyes, and then, quietly, under his breath, while waving his hand says, "You need to do something else right now."

"I need to check the stock," she says and wanders off.

He stares at the tiny bits of silk in his hands. They feel nice. Like his other silky shorts, which he's wearing right now, they'd probably feel really good… on him.

They're really tiny though. Really. Okay, he's not… huge. Not like some of the guys in the pictures they look at together, but… He's not sure how all of him will fit in something like that. And, while it is true that he kind of likes it when Rey's got a bra that some of her chest slips out of, he's also fairly sure that having part of his shaft sticking out of this, especially if he's not hard, is just going to look stupid.

She's not looking at him, having become absorbed in rearranging a display at the front of the store. He tries to snug his fist into the pouch, and is surprised to see the fabric does stretch to accommodate it. He presses in a little deeper, pulling the pouch up to his wrist, and… Yeah, they're _really_ stretchy.

Well… It's really _not_ what his mental image of sexy pajamas was, but… Rey'd probably like them. Or maybe just be amused. He's not sure how one goes about showing off panties like these. Does he just stroll out of the refresher in them? Yank off his trousers? Go to bed a little before she does, and just lounge around in them until she comes in…

He's getting ahead of himself. Try them on. Make sure they don't look frightfully stupid.

In the changing room, with the first of them on, he's feeling a bit silly and a lot turned on. Silly is probably because he's got his shorts on under the panties, and, well, that just looks stupid, but… He can imagine how it'd look without the shorts and… Well, she wasn't kidding about 'show everything off.'

He's… especially in his current state of half-hard, on display in a way he just can't get on his own. And, again, without shorts, he can kind of imagine, at least for a little while, the thong aspect of this might feel good. Probably be annoying for more than a little while, but for playing… He doesn't mind a little extra stimulation back there.

So, the only real question is, would Rey think this was sexy?

He traces his fingers over himself in those emerald green panties. Yeah… That feels good. And she's certainly never laughed at anything else he thought was sexy. At least, not in an embarrassing way.

Sooo… He's got credits.

Worst comes to worst, they end up living in the back of his underwear drawer.

He gets all three shades.

On the way back to the counter, he notices that the lady who keeps the shop is still fascinated by her display re-arranging, and he's got a little extra time, so he wanders into the aisle that has the dildos.

There are a _lot_ of them.

An entire aisle of nothing but dildos.

In every shape, size, color, and texture he'd ever imagined, and a whole lot he hadn't. Apparently, he's not the only man interested in playing with something like this.

He winces a bit, but, in a sort of morbid fascination, he does pick up the one with the head bigger than his fist, and sort of stares at it, wincing harder, before putting it back down. He doesn't pick up the one with scales. He does idly wonder how one goes about cleaning something like that.

A few steps down are what he considers _normal_ sized ones, meaning a bit smaller, or at least thinner around, than he is. Length doesn't matter much to him, after all, they can use as much as they like, and just hold the rest, but girth seems less negotiable. Likewise, these are all _smooth._ Some of them are human colored and textures. Some look like they're made of plexiplast or glass.

He actually really likes the glass looking ones with the swirls of colors within. He's not tentative when he picks one of them up. It feels good in his hand, heavy for it's size, smooth, cool.

He put that one down and looks around for a fairly narrow one, because when Rey uses her fingers on him, she normally does… one? two… at most… he thinks, and that kind of burns, in a good way, but burns still, and the easing into it is not exactly comfortable, so…

He's eyeing a few of them, when he remembers Rey talking about playing with one, on the receiving side of things, and possibly she'd want something bigger than two of her fingers, because… well, again, _he's_ bigger than the dildos he's contemplating, so…

Which gets him also thinking about what she'd do with it. If he were there… It doesn't take his brain too long to figure out a few options, and require him to shift himself around in his trousers because his shaft really likes the idea of both of them sucking each other, and him using a dildo on her while he does it. Just the mental image of the idea's got his shaft hard enough he can feel his pulse in it, and he's reaching for one of the glass ones, which are pretty and feel nice in his hand, when it also occurs to him that, like their home, maybe Rey would like to be part of picking one of these out, and… There are no straps here. No belt, and if she's going to use it on him the way the lady in the video did…

Okay, this is not the place for that shopping trip.

But, eventually, both of them together… He grins at that.

* * *

At the counter, he's waiting while the lady tallies them up, looking at a basket with a collection of thin strips of leather with a lot of snaps… They're… oddly shaped. Obviously, they go around _something_ but he's got no idea what.

Okay, he's got an idea, but he can't imagine _why._ Finally, he says, "You sell leather bracelets?"

She giggles at that. "Uh… Well, I suppose you could wear them around your wrist." She glances at him. "Well, not your wrist."

He bites his lip again. He was right about where they go, probably. "Okay… where are you supposed to wear them?"

She's smiling at him. "They're cockstraps." And again, he's fairly sure she's not talking about male chickens. "You wrap them around the base of your cock, under your stones, and snap it shut."

He winces a little. "Why?"

"Blood can go in, but not get back out until you release it. So, everything gets harder, fuller, more sensitive, but it's harder to climax with one on. I've been told it lets you feel on edge a lot longer than without one. Partners tend to like them because things are bigger and last longer. And some guys think they look nice. Everything big and proud. And a lot of older guys like them because it makes it easier to stay hard once they get that way."

"Errr…"

She can't keep her eyes from dropping to below his waist, but she is quick about it, and then says, with a smirk, "Yeah, I know, not an issue for you."

He blushes harder, wishing he'd worn a longer jacket.

"Okay, so that'll be 62.58." She's looking at him, waiting for his credit stick.

He grabs one of the straps, too.

She grins at him on that one, too. "Good choice. Uh… Don't keep it on for more than half an hour, though."

"Why?"

"Same reason you don't want a too tight ring on for too long. For a little while, it's fun. For too long, you're looking at gangrene. That's why this kind has the snaps, you can get it off easy."

Kylo blinks slowly. "There are ones without snaps?"

"Oh, sure. The plexiplast ones, like these, are pretty safe. They're stretchy, so just take it off. The metal ones can be tricky."

He blinks again. "They make metal ones?"

She gestures to a different shelf. "Like I said, some guys like how they look. Good time jewelry. Some of them have locks and… well, new meaning to the term marriage band," she smiles at him, glancing at his ring, "right?"

Kylo's got _no idea_ what to do with that. He nods, and finally says, "How much?"

"Oh, right."

A minute later, he's got a new total, and a small bag that he's tucked into the inside pocket of his jacket.

* * *

Two stores down, he's found the land of pretty, silky things for women. And he's not blushing, at all. He really is wishing he'd worn a longer jacket, though.

 _Everything_ he sees he wants to buy and put on Rey. The fact that she keeps him in line when they go shopping together is likely important. Because right now, without her, and with his credit stick, he's just grabbing things, running his fingers over them, thinking of them on her, and peeling them off of her, and kissing her though them, and the feel of the silks on his skin, and shit, there's another one in a new color, and… ooohhh that one's translucent, and… oh my… that one has sparkles… and… ohhh… sooo soft… and…

He's irked to think about it, as he's grabbing yet another piece of ridiculously light and soft fabric, but, just possibly, the Jedi might have had something with wanting things can make it easy to make stupid decisions, because right now he _wants,_ but if he buys all of this, Rey is going to at least mentally smack him for a monumentally stupid decision.

That said, he's thinking of their eventual trip to Canto Bight, the one they likely should see about, eventually, putting into play, once he's got some fucking free time again. He sighs. But once they get there, he's winning at least one big hand, and putting that into his, 'buy pretty things for Rey' fund. He sees a concoction of light pinks and iridescent blues and… _a big hand._

It's true that he wasn't great at math as a kid. He's still _not great_ at math, but that doesn't mean he can't do enough basic arithmetic to come up with a decent estimation of the cost of the massive pile of silky things in his arms, and sigh…

If he brings all of this home, she's not just going to smack him upside the back of the head, she's going to do it with her staff.

He makes himself put _most_ of them back. He keeps the black stockings, and the silk nightgown, and the silk robe, and the scarlet silk gloves, and the completely, utterly impractical shoes that he's not even sure humans can walk in, but for some reason he _really_ wants to see her wear with the stockings, and apparently stockings need something to keep them up, so he's got to get them, and… okay, he grabs some panties and a bra and… Starts making himself put things back again.

He's not the only person in the shop, so he doesn't immediately end up with a sales clerk right next to him, but eventually, "Are you finding everything?"

"And then some. Finding isn't the problem, not buying too much is."

The clerk laughs at this. "First time buying pretties for your sweet?"

"First time getting these kinds of pretties."

"Yeah, you've got the look of a man who can't decide which one of the candies in the store he wants most."

If Kylo had ever bought candy before, that would have likely been an apt metaphor, as it is, he thinks that's likely true, he just doesn't _know_ it's true.

"Do you… need help narrowing it down?"

He sighs a bit, looks at his most recent attempt to get down to just a few things, and then nods, "Probably."

"All right, what does your…"

"Wife…" And again he gets hit with a wave of _how cute._ It's a really bizarre sensation to have strangers staring at him, approving, of his attempts to be sweet to his lady. He assumes most of the men in a place like… He glances around. He's the only man in the store. Oh.

"What does your wife like?"

"We're figuring that out."

"Okay. Sizes?"

He rattles off the numbers he memorized from Jon's note.

She's nodding. "Okay, so, she's slim, small chest, well balanced, her waist is trim, but not that much smaller than her chest and hips… She'll look good in pretty much anything, and you can get very light and sheer tops because she doesn't need a lot of support."

"That sounds like you're saying her size isn't exactly narrowing it down."

"Yeah, sorry." She looks at the pile of lingerie in his arms. "And, let me guess, me saying, 'Well, what do you like,' isn't going to narrow this down, either?"

"I like this entire store."

She cracks a wide smile at that. "Oh, you're fun."

He sort of half-smiles at that, not sure what to do. He doesn't think anyone, ever has called him fun before.

"Let's try this, if you don't mind an invasive question, is this for wearing or playing? Lingerie that looks pretty can feel good. Lingerie that looks particularly sexy often isn't all that comfortable for longer term, or, at the very least, it can be distracting."

Ultimately, he was kind of thinking both, but if it's a one or the other sort of thing… "Playing?"

She nods at that, and begins taking things out of his arms. "Most of these are comfortable, and pretty, and easy to wear, so they aren't bad choices, but… They're not the little sleek number you put in your purse and step away to put under your date night dress just as you're about to go home."

He's got no idea what a date night dress is, but from context, he's thinking he might want to get Rey one of them, too.

She starts laying out the pieces he's got left, putting them into outfits. "Given what you've got here, and your wife's shape, you've got two ways to go. These," she gestures to bra-like thing that he thinks would cover Rey to the bottom of her ribs, and a pair of panties cut into a sort of deep v, "will make her bust and hips look curvier. Give her more of the illusion of an hourglass figure." He can feel what she's thinking of with that. "Or," and here she's got the shoes, the stockings, the things that keep the stockings up, and a pair of panties so tiny they make the ones he got himself look voluminous and roomy. She eyes the panties and the shoes, shakes her head, scoops everything but the shoes up, and says, "Go play with the perfumes. Pick something that smells good to you. I'll be back in a minute or two."

He blinks at that, hadn't even noticed there was a scent section, but locates it, and… FORCE! There are like fifty different types of scents on this wall and… He's got no clue what to even begin doing with them.

It's almost worse than the pretty clothing, because now he wants to rub all of them on Rey and see how they smell, and then make sure she rubs all over him, so he can smell like this, too, and…

The bath. The first time he saw her somewhat naked, she was in a bath, and the water was blue, and it smelled of flowers, and… He's got no idea what. Floral, blue. Some of the bottles here are blue, so he goes and sniffs them.

None of them are the same, but, there's one… It's not a floral. It's… got flowers in it, but that's not the main thing going on in this blend. It's light, and airy, and there are flowers, and under or through that, something warm. Sunshine near a garden, maybe…

It's nice, and he's liking it, but…

Orange. Orange and browns, and a sort of dusty burnt color. He reaches for that one. Heat, dry, warm spices and hot air, sunshine, but this is the deep, lazy sunshine of full summer. This is the sun that lives in the tan of her skin, and the freckles that dot her shoulders. There is something orange about this, and not just the bottle, a vague undercurrent of citronen, and something that makes his mouth feel warm, like he's taken a bite of spice cake and a sip of coffee…

This one. This one is coming home with him.

"Desert Sunset. That's a good choice. A lot of people like that one," she says as she's back. "Come on. Let's see if you like this." She leads him back to the counter where the shoes he picked out still are. There are stockings next to them, but these apparently hold themselves up. They're black, with a thin forest green ribbon up the back, tying in a tidy bow at the back of each leg. Apparently, it's clear from how he's looking at them, that he's not sure how they stay up. "The stockings have a band at the top that keeps them up." Kylo nods. The shoes he picked were black, shiny leather with a high, forest green heel. The stockings are also black with the ties in green. With them is… He's staring at it, unable to figure out what it is for a moment, and then it suddenly snaps into place in his mind, and _oh._ They're a deep green satin that are like the other pair of panties he'd picked out somewhat V cut, but these don't have a… bottom part. There is, however, a string of black, shiny beads that connect from the front to the back, and uh… He makes himself _not_ say, "Pearls for her pearl?" He can't, however, make himself not _think_ about it. And how that's got to feel, nestled up against her, and… He reaches out and touches one of the beads. It's cool and smooth and… He's biting his lip, in a good way, now. Images are forming in his head, fast. There's no bottom on those things, so he could likely just sort of push them a bit to the side, so she could be wearing them while they… do… whatever… anything, and… His index finger slides over the beads again. They'd feel good against him, too.

He can see it in his mind. Rey on her hands and knees, rear to him, those pearls nestled between her maomao lips. He could, just tug the back a little, make them press against her. Make her back arch, and her lips part with a low, soft moan.

He could hook his finger into them, slide them over just a bit, just enough for him to slip his shaft into her. Just enough for his body to rub against them. Enough to feel the smooth roll of them against him, and as he moves, they'll move against her, too.

Each stroke, deep and steady, moving the beads over her, over him…

One of his hands wanders into his pocket and is holding his shaft down, because otherwise the damn thing is going to leap out, buy this bloody outfit on it's own, and then march over to Rey and put it on her.

Eventually, his eye wander a little higher up on the counter, and he notices that there's no top to this. Not that he can see. There is, however, a… again, he knows it's not a bracelet, because it's too bloody big for that, and it's five strands of those beads, one on top of the other. They come together in a clasp, and… Looking more carefully at the size of it, he can see it's some sort of necklace that lays snug to the neck, from there, thin fine chains, and more of those pearls cascade down, to nestle between her breasts and drape over her belly and waist.

The sales lady is very pleased at his reaction to this. She's more pleased by him just blindly thrusting his credit stick at her, and there's a very content layer on top of that that she just got him to buy the most expensive outfit in the store.

* * *

He biggest problem with doing this during the middle of the day is that he's got bugger all for focus on anything other than his new goodies _after_ having done it.

At one point, Schiff is really attempting to tell him something important, and it's just _not_ filtering through the haze of what's tucked into the top drawer of his desk.

"Sir…"

Kylo's just staring in the direction of his room.

If he were paying attention, he'd feel Schiff debating what to do about this, looking at him carefully, debating more about _what_ has him so distracted and… somewhat pink cheeked, but… well, he's not paying attention.

Just to make absolutely sure, Schiff, being something of a brat, does slip, "And then I authorized a payment of seventy-six trillion credits into my own personal account, and as of tomorrow Kinear and I are taking those credits and eloping away to the—oh bugger it all, this would be vastly more fun if you'd start paying attention, but… Shit, what the hell are you thinking about, man?" and then gently, and maybe not respectfully, but well aware of the fact that Kylo could literally break him with his mind, he kicks him in the shin.

That gets a jerk and blink out of Kylo, along with a curious look in Schiff's direction.

"Are you well, sir?"

"Uh…" That pink on his cheeks goes flushing deeper and redder and…

Schiff just sighs. Then he shakes his head. He knows what he's looking at now. "Just… go… get her. Or go to her. You're doing no one any good this distracted. Go scratch the itch, and come back when you can focus on your job."

Kylo sighs at that. "Is it that obvious?"

"It bloody well is, _now_. Just, go."

Kylo glares at him. "I'm an adult, not some randy teen who can't control himself."

"Tell me one thing I've said in the last twenty minutes, and we'll keep going, otherwise this is just burning my time."

Kylo desperately tries to attempt to remember what the fuck this meeting is even about.

Schiff gives him a big, smug grin. "I have thirty minutes tomorrow afternoon. An hour if you can come to me or if we comm it."

"Comm it. Your ship gets nervous when I'm on it."

"No one enjoys having the Boss breathing down their neck. They don't enjoy me being on it, and it's my ship."

"I'll… take your word on it."

Schiff gets up, pulling his datapad to him. Kylo can feel he's mostly amused by this, because… Oh… Baby-making sex. That's… apparently… a once a month thing, which Kylo didn't know, and Schiff's assuming today's the day that Rey's fertile…

Kylo makes a mental note to look that up, because Schiff seems very certain about that one day a cycle and needing to hit it thing, and the man's got multiple children, so, he likely knows, but… that's not anything he learned when Luke sat him down, but… He already knows there are huge gaping holes in his information base on that.

He's just about out the door as he says, "You know, Joshia is a good name."

Kylo rolls his eyes at that. "Noted."

* * *

He certainly didn't mind when she did it to him…

And he does have… two free hours in his schedule now…

So…

It's not like there's a law that they have to wait until work is done… right? And even if there were, he's the guy who makes the laws, so he can probably break them, too, right?

"C8, no disturbances until I let you know I'm seeing people again."

"Certainly, sir."

* * *

Their room certainly looks _different._ He's not entirely sure if he likes it, and he's also not exactly _focused_ on it. But, if, when he is focused on it, it's not a winner and they want to change it again, it won't take a massive amount of effort.

He puts the bag with her stuff in it in the back of his wardrobe. He's thinking they can wait for another day. This is a present for… her… he hopes.

He's tugging off his clothing, eyeing the bag of goodies for him. The strap is on top and…

He's feeling… nervous, excited, giddy, and… a slew of other things he's not exactly familiar with, but is enjoying. Physically, just on the anticipation of doing this, he's feeling like his shaft just can't get any bigger without someone touching it, so…

He probably doesn't _need_ the strap. He's holding it in his hand, just staring at it. It's light, soft, except for the snaps. He's got to keep track of time if he wears it, but… Honestly… They rarely go more than thirty minutes.

He eyes it again, rubbing his thumb over one of the snaps.

It might be fun.

He starts to put it on, figuring that if it feels odd, he can just take it off.

It takes a moment to figure out which snap is the right one. The first one he chooses is very obviously too tight, and the next one he over compensates and has it too loose, but eventually… It's… snug. Not in a bad way, but… He's not sure if he likes it. He's sort of starting to feel like his shaft is falling asleep, that pins and needles sensation, and that's not great, but… It also does feel… fuller… more sensitive… It… could be good.

He grabs the top pair of panties, the green ones, and slips them on and… "Oh." He's so surprised that he says it out loud. The silk moving over his shaft is… He squirms a bit… flushing at the feel of _that._ "Yeah…"

Okay, getting Rey to touch him like this. He's starting to feel his pulse in his shaft, and generally, when that's true, he's a lot further along, so… This is either going to be very fast, or very good, and he's hoping for the latter.

Those two little bottles of cologne are sitting in his wardrobe. He opens it up, glances at them, and then goes rummaging through Rey's goodies. Warm desert spices. That's a Rey scent, and he wants to smell like her.

 _Intensely tied to your sexual response._ Jon wasn't wrong about that.

Yep. It's nothing she's ever smelled like, not around him. But it's warm and light and blends into his skin and it makes him feel like she's here, with him. It's a scent cloud of the feel of Rey all around him. He's nodding, this is good. It'll probably be better on her. He tucks it back in the wardrobe. Give it to her later.

Let her rub it off of his skin and onto hers. _That_ lights him up inside.

 _Rey. Can you come here?_ He's not entirely sure what to do with himself. Lay on the bed, lean against the wall, stand there like a nerf with his shaft leading the way?

 _Are you okay?_ There's alarm in how she's thinking at him. He's never done this before, so there's no reason for her to automatically assume that if he's calling for her in the middle of the day, all is well.

 _I_ really _am._ He's pretty sure that's the same thing she thought at him when she jumped him as Paige was being born. He drapes himself on his side on the bed, and hopes she likes this.

He trails his fingers up and down his shaft, so, so lightly, eyes slipping shut, and bites his lower lip, slowly exhaling, focusing down on that sensation and blasting her with it.

When he peels them back open, she's there, staring at him, eyes wide, mouth open, stock still.

"Good?" he asks with a smile, and a hand outstretched in a _come play with me_ sort of gesture.

She nods very slowly and licks her lips. Her pupils are blown wide, and he can feel her pulse picking up. "Oh…" Breathes out of her as she absently yanks off her jacket, tossing it aside, "Kylo…"

"Poe thought… Well, I'd have likely thought about it if I'd thought about things like that, but… Anyway, he suggested I get you a present, because…" This is too much talking. She's staring at him, eyes tracing all over his body, going back to that stretched green pouch over and over, as she's pulling off her clothing. "Is this a present?"

Her eyes dart back up to his. She nods very slowly. "You are so… _fucking_ … gorgeous."

That floods through Kylo with a warmth all it's own, ripe and round and flushed with sex and satisfaction and contentment and wanting and joy, and for a second he revels in it, but only a second, because Rey's on the bed with him, naked, fingertips, hot, _hot_ fingertips hovering over his silk clad tip, and his body twitches at the sensation. A little, "Oh…" breathes out of Kylo at that. Then, "Gentle."

"Gentle?" Rey drags her eyes away from his shaft under that green silk, and the slowly darkening spot just over his tip, to his eyes.

Kylo licks his lips. "There's something under there that's new, too."

He can feel her thinking about new, and what he could have under there that she can't see through the silk, and the image of those little dildo-looking things from the video pops into her head.

He shakes his head. "Not that." Then he hisses, loud, as she lets her knuckles slip over him. _Gently._

She jerks her fingers back.

"No. It didn't hurt. It's just intense."

"Good intense?"

"I'm still debating on that."

She closes her hand around him and he moans. "Feels like you're enjoying it to me."

His hips rock into her hand, and doing that means the… back… of these panties are also rubbing against him now, and… "It's… not unpleasant. Might be too much of a good thing."

She's staring at his eyes now, now his shaft in her hand, wrapped in green silk. It's clear from her expression that _tell me more_ is what she wants.

She goes back to just, lightly, barely drifting her fingers over his shaft.

"It's… called a cockstrap, and… It… goes around the base of the shaft and stones… Supposedly, keeps things bigger and harder and more sensitive. Might make it more difficult to spurt, so… stay on edge longer."

"But you don't know." She bends down and _licks_ the wet spot on the panties, and Kylo's hips jerk at that, trying to get his shaft into her mouth. She mouths at him, breathing over the head of his shaft, and it's so hot and moist and then she inhales, cool and intense and… She's staring at him again, expecting him to get enough brain cells together to somehow answer her, and…

"No. I… didn't know these were a thing more than three hours ago."

"But now you do."

He nods.

She grins at him. "And what were you doing three hours ago?"

"Looking for a present for you."

She looks back down at his shaft straining the fabric of his panties. "And this is what you came up with?"

"I really hoped you'd like it."

She grins up at him, pushing him so he's on his back, shaft doing it's best to point skyward, held snug in those green panties. "Oh, I do."

He wriggles at the sound of her voice, at the way she's looking at him, at her, naked, above him, adoring him.

She's on her knees, over him, not touching, but looking. He can _feel_ the trace of her eyes over his skin, over the skin that isn't naked, and the kilometers of pale, moon-kissed flesh, quivering for her to touch.

"So, am I just supposed to… admire this?"

She's leaning over him, looking down, watching his body, and right now, Kylo's certainly not _minding_ the admiring aspect, but… "Hands on appreciating?"

"I could do that, or… How sensitive is it?"

He blasts her with the feel of his shaft in those panties, the tight, full, tingly sensation of so much blood in his shaft right now, and the way every touch is just… more.

She shifts her weight, so she's straddling him, and rests her hands on his chest, and then slowly, gently, lowers herself so her delta is on him, her pearl right at the head of his shaft, and slides down him.

Both of them groan, _loud_ at that.

His head is back, neck long, eyes shut, just _feeling_ it. _Again, please._ He doesn't give it voice, doesn't think he can find his voice right now, not for real words, but _oh fuck!_ she does it again.

It does feel a lot like being on the edge. Everything is so hard and full right now. Usually, this far along, he's not this hard, and the skin of his shaft can move over his shaft.

It also doesn't. He's got control. That sense of the tingles being a second away isn't tightening his stones and making his thighs clench.

Rey starts a slow, gentle roll over him, her skin wet, hot against the silk.

"Does it feel good to you?" he asks.

She nods. "Different."

She pulls back, and he doesn't pout because she wants to see. See the silk wet with her and him. See it cling to his body. See his shaft, full, high… hard… He knows it's got to have veins, because… well, all of his body does, but this is the first time they can see them, swollen under the skin, outlined in wet silk.

She scoots back, between his legs, and traces her tongue along the line of one of them.

Kylo collapses back against the bed, moaning, eyes shutting. It feels so good; they won't stay open.

"Can I take them off?"

"Please."

She's careful with it, and slow, gentle. The peel of wet silk over his skin is… Sharp and focused and exquisite. He can feel the pre-spurt leaking out of him as the silk slips back.

"You really like that."

He shares the feel of it with her, and watches the flush on her chest get deeper, nipples perking further. Nipples… He's definitely getting her a bra or shirt or something they can do this to her with.

Rey smiles a little, he just blasted her with that idea, and it's certainly intriguing.

What's below her hand is more intriguing.

She's only seen him this hard, this full, the one time she made him spurt with her hand. Every other time he's spurted with her, he's been inside her body, so she couldn't _see_ it.

Rey traces her finger around the cockstrap. The leather and snaps are warm from his skin. "Any closer to deciding if you like this?"

"I think I do. You?"

She grins at him again. Then she straddles him, and with her fingertips points his shaft up. She's just kissing the tip of his shaft with her maomao. Light, almost sucking, wet slides of her body parting for just the top centimeter.

"Force!" He barely breathes it. No voice, all feeling. "Oh, Rey!"

"More?" She's watching him, eyes warm, body hot, _loving_ the look of him completely sprawled out, at the mercy of her body and the pleasure she's giving him.

 _Yes._ His voice doesn't hold for it. It's just a long, begging breath, and a deep, intense, needy feel/thought that aches through her.

Rey sinks a few more centimeters down. "Oh… I can feel the difference. This is _nice._ "

 _Nice?_

She lets him feel the extra stretch, the sensation of fullness. _Nice._ Then she starts to slide all the way down on him, and makes an almost surprised, "Nggh!" sound as her body comes to rest against his.

That jerks Kylo out of the haze of how good this feels. "Okay?" He knows it is, he can feel she's enjoying something more than expected, but…

She's rocking against him, a little tentative, and he's trying to focus on _her_ and not, _her sliding on his shaft_. For a moment, he can feel her searching, and then she gets that _exact_ right spot again.

"Ohhh…" slides out of her mouth, and he knows what happened. The snaps. At least one of them is in exactly the right place, right here, in this position, with her flush to him, for it to press against her pearl.

He shifts his hips a bit, grinding his pelvis against hers.

That gets a sharp inhaled breath from her. "Again."

He's grinning up at her, hands finding her hips, as he rocks against her. "Again."

It is different. They've done this before, him grinding against her, his pubic bone giving her something to get some extra friction from, but that's mostly for her. He certainly loves being in her, but these little circles with his hips are generally just okay. They don't feel nearly as good as a long, full-shaft glide.

It still doesn't, but this is different. He's more aware of her heat, and the way she's gripping him, and the texture of her insides, beyond just wet and snug. He doesn't know if that's part of _nice_ or if it's him being more sensitive right now, but either way, he likes it.

But up and down is better than this grind, so eventually he remembers his hands, which are just sitting on her hips, and moves one thumb to her pearl. He begins a soft, easy circle, and she starts a long, easy up and down.

His jaw clenches at it. It's… "Fuck, Rey," another exhaled breath of a word. Like it's too intense for him to be loud. Like the pleasure is stealing his voice.

She leans forward, her lips finding his, and the shift in angle changes things again. The feel inside of her, the way her body is brushing against his with each stroke. He's got to change fingers, because his thumb can't do what it needs to, not at this angle.

But his fingers can.

Fast, light, slick, and she's up and down back and forth on him, and his hips are rocking against her. Fingers are fast, hips are steady, not slow, but not the kind of pace his fingers are setting.

She's clenching over him, again and again, riding the wave and he's… It's good. It feels _so good_ but he's not there, not yet. He probably can't go all night, shouldn't try, but he also doesn't want or need to, but… Long enough to get another spurt for her…

He slows down, but doesn't stop moving. Re-centers his pace on long, slow, easy strokes as her body slowly calms down.

She's kissing his shoulder. _Not done, yet?_

As if she needs to ask. _Apparently. This okay?_

He feels her nod against his shoulder, and then they're flipped, and he's on top. "Really, okay." She meets him long stroke for stroke, and for a few moments it just like that, long, liquid, pleasure sparking up his shaft, centering in his stones, _good._

Her hands are on his ass, pulling at him. _Faster._

He can do _faster._

Faster is fucking incredible. He feels like his shaft's as long as his lightsaber handle, just as wide, and just as hard.

This time, he's feeling close, and his body is acting close, too. His muscles are tighter, movements less coordinated. He can feel Rey spiraling up to her spurt, too.

He's right… fucking… there… almost… so… close…

He can fucking _see_ his spurt. He can feel it a hair beyond his grasp.

This is… new, and he's not sure if he likes this. Sometimes Rey struggles to get to her spurt, but usually she'll just ride along with him on his, and over they both go.

He can feel Rey. Rey on his body, wet and slick and clenching again. Rey in his mind, her body tingling and twitching and loving the feel of his in and on hers.

But he can't ride it through her, he can't get _over._

"Please," he doesn't even know what he's asking for, just… something to get _over._ Just… he doesn't know, wetter, hotter, faster, or maybe slower, or _something._

"Please, Rey, please, I need…" He doesn't know what he needs. Just that he _needs._ His shaft has never been so big, and so full, and so primed to go off without slipping over.

He can feel Rey doesn't know, either. For a moment, she's still in her spurt, still on the glow of her body, but that starts to ease off, especially with him fucking hard, and fast, and begging for her help.

"What do you need?"

"I don't…" His hair is plastered to his forehead and back, and he doesn't want to stop moving, doesn't want to slow down, because this feels… Amazing, but… It's not doing it for him, and he's never… Not been able to.

He feels Rey stroking his shoulder, looking at him, concerned, and then thinking, and then…

Then there's a hint of her Force, and the universe explodes and his vision whites out he spurts so hard he feels it in his _eyelashes and toenails_. That's _not quiet._ He's fairly sure the only reason a horde of storm troopers didn't just run in is the soundproofing is amazing in here.

He's panting, tingling, buzzing with his spurt, and the only reason he hasn't crushed Rey under him is she's holding him up with her Force.

He's still pulsing. That… never happens. A good spurt is maybe five or six pulses, and a few aftershocks. This is… He doesn't know, other than another small aftershock hits, and another, and… it's still going, slow, easy, more like a twitch than anything else, but still… He should probably roll over, but he's not sure if he can move, and he can't bear to think of slipping out of Rey right now.

She's still twitching slightly under him, so he doesn't know if he took her over a third time when he went, or if his time sense was fried as he was getting close to finishing.

Eventually, he gets his arms under him, so he can take his own weight.

Eventually, his breathing slows down and they both stop twitching.

Eventually, he says, "What did you do?"

"Took the strap off. You said it made it harder to spurt, so…"

He nods slowly, and gently nuzzles her cheek and jaw. They share slow, lazy kisses.

Eventually, he does pull out, hissing, and flops onto his back. He's generally sensitive after he spurts, but not _this_ sensitive. Not _painful_ sensitive. Even with the strap off, he does still look a little flushed and swollen.

Rey grins at him, and rolls onto her stomach, her chin resting on his chest. One of his hands finds her back, and beings to slowly stoke up and down her spine. "So, is this a present I'll get to enjoy again?"

He laughs, a little. "Not soon. I don't think I can walk right now, let alone fuck again anytime soon. But… The panties… Whenever you want."

"The strap?"

"Probably more of a special occasion sort of thing."

"I know you liked that."

"I did. It's just… Intense."

"I _know._ " She's smirking at that. "Once I got it off, I got blasted with how your spurt felt, so… I _know._ "

"Did you like it?"

"Oh, yeah." She almost touches his shaft, but he preemptively winces. "And that's why it's a special occasion thing?"

He nods. "Can you see the chrono?"

"Yeah. 13:22."

He rolls his eyes. "You're supposed to take it off before you hit thirty minutes."

"Thirty-two minutes."

"Probably why everything is sore right now."

She shifts, and very, very gently kisses the air a few molecules above his foreskin. He shivers. "We'll pay more attention to that the time next time."

He nods at that, too, and pulls her close for a cuddle. His face is pressed to her hair, when he says, "See, I got them during lunch, and that shot my focus to hell and gone. Then Schiff told me to just go and play. And, I can focus now, but I'm just so… content… I don't think I can move."

Rey laughs at that. Then she snuggles in closer, and breathes deeply. "Are you wearing cologne?"

"That's a present for you, too."

"You wearing scent?"

He shrugs a bit. "I mean, it could be, if you liked that, but I liked how it smelled, because it reminded me of you, so I got a bottle of it for you, but… It makes me think of you, so I put some of it on me before you got here."

She inhales deeply, and then licks his neck. "This is good."

He smiles at that, too. "Yay. I like buying things for you."

That gets a laugh. "You like buying sex stuff for me."

"I'll probably like buying non-sex stuff, too. I liked getting the painting with you. Speaking of which," he absently gestures to the room, without lifting his head or opening his eyes. "Thoughts?"

"You know. I honestly didn't notice. You were very… distracting… all laid out like that." She lifts up a bit, so she can see more of it. "This is nice." She looks around a little more. "It looks smaller now that you've got walls."

"As opposed to…"

"Space. Space with stars, space without stars."

His brain is just softly flitting about, not really landing on anything, but not quite dreaming yet, either.

Rey nuzzles against him and makes a little _mmm…_ noise. Followed by a somewhat less content, "I've got to get moving again."

"Don't go." He'd hold her a little tighter, but that'd take energy, which he's in short supply of right now.

She kisses him. "Got to, baby." She's getting up and he's pouting at her. She bends down and kisses him again. "This is ridiculously cute, but I really do have to go."

He sighs. "I know." He thinks for a moment. "Uh… Got a meeting with my Navi training team at 14:30, so…"

"Get a nap, so you're fresh enough to focus."

He stretches a bit. Nap sounds really good. "I should be done by 17:30."

She smiles at him, and kisses him again. This time he feels the brush of her clothing against his skin. "I'll be wrapped up by 18:00. You like buying me things, so how about you take me out for dinner?"

He smiles back at her. "Yeah…"

And then he's asleep.

* * *

2/22/2

It's a few days later, when he's looking over another deal they've got possibly bubbling away, the security and meeting space for the Pnia/Lranian peace negotiations/wedding it hits him that _dancing_ is often part of weddings.

It would likely be part of their wedding, too. Especially the one where all the people will be there, and they'll be trying to look like the Handsome Prince and his Lady.

Except, of course, he's not exactly, a dancer. At least in the sense that he's not even remotely comfortable attempting to make himself move to any given piece of music, with Rey, especially if he's not touching her, in something approaching a graceful or elegant sort of way.

But… That's not written in stone. He doesn't _have_ to be bad at it.

Rey likes dancing. She was having a great time at that club. He had to get several of those rum drinks on the inside of him before he started to get over being self-conscious enough to enjoy it.

But… if he were good at it. He'd like it, sober, _if_ he were good at it.

Bounce around with his sweetie and not look like a flaming twit doing it? He's nodding as the idea fills his head. Yes, that would be good.

And, okay, it's not taking on a life altering sort of job, but it's something that involves time and effort to become good at something she likes.

He'd have to _learn_ how to do it, for real. Learn to read the music, and how the footsteps work, and… He learned how to fight and he learned how to fly, so making his body do things to a beat should absolutely be something he can learn.

The image of Rey on the beach with Poe. He was standing there, just outside of the light, _wanting._ He wanted to dance with her. He wanted to push Poe away, because Poe got to be there with her, laughing and touching her and enjoying the evening. He wanted to be the one, with her, in the firelight, making her happy.

He turns that image over and over, shifts it, imagines joining her on the sand, imagines this possible, small, family gathering, the one for them, the one that'll happen on a beach, somewhere, somewhen, as the sky turns purple and the sun sinks below the water.

He'd have to find someone to teach him how to do it.

There's that image again. Poe, Rey, on the beach, dancing.

Poe knows how to dance.

 _Poe_ thought this present thing was a good plan in the first place.

Learning to dance, for Rey, for their wedding… _That_ feels like a present. He can't give it to her at once, but… He's smiling at that, too. She'd like that.

Poe is… he thinks a moment, getting a feel for him… In his ship messing around with the fuel intake, again.

It's the middle of the day. He's _never_ on Lirium this time of day, so no one would expect him.

He's in _Micah_ before he's thought twice about it.

* * *

Poe stares up at Ren, eyes wide, shock numbing his fingers almost to the point of dropping his tool, but the feel of it starting to slip tightens them fast. "What are you doing here?"

Kylo explains, and that does shock Poe deeply enough that he drops the tool.

"You want me to—"

Ren nods. "I know you know how."

"Well, yeah, but… I've never… taught anyone before."

Kylo glances around _Micah_. He knows Poe's taken Jacen up in it a few times. And likely Critt, Savarah, Magiit, and Elias, soon. Probably once they hit sixteen. "You teach the children how to fly, how much more complicated can this be?"

"It's… okay… compared to that, not terribly, but… You really want to learn?"

"No, I'm asking to see if I can set you so far off foot you stammer at me and ask stupid questions all afternoon."

"Force…" Poe rolls his eyes. "No wonder Rey loves you; you're a charmer when you want something. You got every entitled asshole gene in your whole family tree, didn't you?"

Kylo rubs his lips together. "Sorry. I… hate asking for things, and letting people see me be bad at them is worse. Still… will you do it?"

"Why me?"

"I've seen you do it, so I know you know how. You're not part of my command, so I don't have to risk looking stupid in front of one of them and the gossip mills running wild. Plus, present-for-Rey was your idea, and this seems like a fine one. Lastly, I assume you've danced with a man before so my height and shape won't be awkward or weird for you."

Poe sniggers at that. "Well… yeah, you're right about that. What kind of dancing?"

Kylo blinks. He rubs his lips together again. Right… There are _kinds_ of dances. "What's appropriate for a wedding?"

"Depends on the wedding," Poe says, settling back, looking like he intends to enjoy the hell out of this. "Our little shindig on the beach is going to be, hopefully, a _lot_ different than your fancy-schmancy affairs of state ball." Apparently, Poe and Rey have talked wedding ideas, then.

"Hopefully." _Please,_ Kylo prays. "Dances for both."

Poe smirks at that. "What do you know how to do already? I mean, you've danced with her at least once, right?"

"Hold on and sway to the beat, hold on and bounce around to the beat."

"Not much going on with your feet, mostly just flailing around with your hips and hands?"

"Pretty much."

Finn nods. "Okay, at least you aren't a virgin."

Kylo rolls his eyes. "It's been a while since that's been true."

Poe smirks at that, too, then he thinks. "Uh… This brilliant plan of yours, how's it going to work if Rey can't dance?" She caught on with what he was doing pretty fast, but he also didn't whip out anything more complicated than a box step.

Kylo smirks. "Only one of us has to learn. She'll read it off of me if I can do it, or vice versa, but since it won't be a surprise if I get you to teach her how to dance…"

"Fine. Okay, so…" Poe grabs a rag, wipes the oil off his hands, and gestures to the space in front of them. Kylo looks surprised. "What? I've got time. You've apparently got time. There's a floor and a device that plays music. We're good to go."

"Okay…" Kylo's looking a little nervous as Poe grabs his music cube.

"Something basic, a four beat, box step. That'll get you through most basic dances. Pretty much everything else builds off of this."

"Okay." He doesn't know the song, but it's not unpleasant. He's already standing, watching Poe, who steps up to him.

"Until you get the steps down, I'm leading. Once your feet know where they're going, you can steer."

That also sounds reasonable to Kylo.

"My hand here," Poe puts his hand on Kylo's waist. "Yours on my shoulder, other hand in mine. I'm going forward, you're going backward."

"You don't have to talk me through it, just do it, I'll get it."

Poe flashes him a challenging look, and then starts, and it takes about half a beat, but Kylo's following. It's a competent boxstep.

"How are you doing this?"

"I can feel where you're going to go/what you're going to do. Same reason you couldn't shoot me. I know what's coming and where you're going."

"And if I let go?"

"I'll be okay. If you get too far away, it'll be difficult. And if you were a droid, I'd be lost. That's why I'm not trying to learn this from a holo or droid. I read the feel of it off of you, because you're alive. Just giving me instructions will take until the end of time, and I'll still be bad at it."

Poe nods. "Nice trick."

"It has its advantages. So, we just move in a square?"

"For now."

"I've got this."

Poe smirks. "Uh huh." He steps back and messes with the music cube. It's still box step appropriate, but the music is more complicated and faster. "Okay, _Master_ , show me what you've got."

And suddenly, in a blinding flash of a leather jacket, swagger, stubbly cheeks, the smell of ship's mechanicals, and fighter pilot's nerve, Kylo understands why his mother was so horrified at the idea that Poe was a substitute for _him._

He blinks at it, and Poe takes it as nerves.

Kylo shakes his head and then listens to the music, finding the beat. "Am I leading this time?"

"Sure." They switch hand positions. "You steer with the one on my back, just let me know where to go by the pressure on my back, and remember, I can't read your mind, so _gently_ move me around."

Kylo figures he can do that.

He leads this time, moving forward, turning them to the left, and after a few steps, Poe says, "You hold Rey like that?"

"Probably not." He's got Poe at the full extent of his reach and is barely touching him.

"Then _practice._ I'm not gonna pinch your ass."

He pulls Poe a little closer, and holds him a bit more firmly.

Poe just looks at him. There's a good fifteen centimeters between them. "This is how you dance with your bride?"

"Fine," he pulls Poe flush to him, and turns him through the box a few more times.

Poe's looking up at him, and then shakes his head and steps back a bit. "Feels dirty doing this with Leia's son."

Kylo bites his upper lip, amused by that on more levels than Poe's likely aware of. "You're teaching me to dance, not fuck."

"Yeah, well, given what you like, I wouldn't be much use for that."

Kylo smirks, and shakes his head. There's so much _Han_ coming off of Poe right now.

"What? There's a joke in your head, and you're not telling it."

"I'm thinking about how if you had been any use for that, you'd likely be my step-dad, and that jerks us out of dirty into outright filthy."

Poe blinks in shock. "What… no. I… She… Oh…"

Kylo can feel Poe seeing a few memories of him and Leia in a new light.

"Oh." He's not wincing, but does look decidedly off foot as a whole series of memories re-slot themselves into new contexts. He blinks a few times, and Kylo can feel him thinking to himself, _She knew I didn't go for women… That's likely why nothing ever got said, but… Oh…_ The memory of Leia telling him to get his head out of his ass and stop falling for guys who weren't for him is all but vibrating in neon colors right now. Gods, she was telling herself as well as him… _Fuck._

Kylo nods, smirking at Poe. "Uh huh. So, there's more to it than this, what's next?"

Poe jerks slightly, back in the here and now, and decides that here and now is a much better place to be. "Ballroom, or on the beach?"

Kylo probably needs more practice for the ballroom, but he'd rather be good at dancing with Rey on the beach. "Beach."

Poe smiles at him. "Right answer."


	28. Stjerne

3/5/2

 _Well now…_ Orlac blinks a bit, as he reads a note from one of his former students, who now lives on New Alderaan.

It's not exactly all over the news. At least not the bit he's looking at. But, apparently, the presumptive bride/wife/friend… consort seems to be the term that pops up most often, of Kylo Ren, formerly Ben Organa-Solo, will, in the next month, be visiting the home he's never claimed, and once there, will do… Force alone knows what. Though the chattering class is somewhere between apprehensive and welcoming of the idea that he may attempt to make a play for it.

Officially, the idea is that The Order and New Alderaan will come to a formal non-aggression pact of some sort, but some sort covers a lot of territory. And no one knows what, if anything, the presumptive heir of Alderaan is going to attempt once he's got said pact.

The current leaders of Alderaan are blandly talking about how, as a bastion of peace, they'll work with anyone who also incorporates pacifistic leanings, and seek to build bridges to any sentients in the galaxy.

The local papers are of split minds. Some are opining about how the child of Leia Organa (Never Solo. She's never, ever called Leia Organa Solo in the newsies.) might bring some new life into the stultifying morass of Alderaanian politics. Some are talking about how there's no _proof_ that Kylo Ren even is the child of Leia Organa. (He suspects those voices are being paid by the leaders of Alderaan.) Some are begging the government to arm, and arm intensely, the man who controls tens of thousands of City Killers will be up to no good, coming to them, child of Organa or not.

Orlac reads, and notes, and flips to the real estate section. It's bigger than usual. He makes a note of the fact that real estate prices in Alderaan are dropping right now, which means people are nervous enough to _sell_ , but not nervous enough to drop everything and flee.

Probably a rational place to be if Kylo Ren's about to swoop down on your planet.

Orlac's got another note from his Mum, which he's sighing at. The Corporation doesn't want to extend any sort of formal address to the Order. But, if Ben… Kylo's doing what it looks like he might be, they'll end up in direct competition with each other, at least when it comes to The Calrissian Corp's _unofficial_ businesses. From the note, it's clear that she wouldn't mind if his behind the scenes sort of feelers wandered into that direction and reported back.

He rolls his eyes at that. Years of complaining about what he's been up to, but all of a sudden, _now_ it's useful.

His Mum is easier to brush off than his 'student' in New Alderaan. Officially, he's politically neutral. And she knows it. Unofficially, he's a collector of intelligence, and… he is woefully lacking in information about what's going on inside The Order.

And that's getting to be a glaring blind spot.

He re-reads the official information coming out about New Alderaan. The Order is making it loud and clear that it'll show up with offers of peace and goodwill. Though, if memory serves, and it doesn't have to because he's got vast store if intel hidden somewhere on this planet, and off of it, that was also what the Empire claimed when it began moving toward a new territory.

"Go along with us and everything'll come up roses," he mutters under his breath.

Orlac isn't sure if boasting to the galaxy about how peaceful you are, when most of your holdings are a pile of flying weapons, is an ideal strategy, but… It's probably not a terrible one, so why not?

What's the worst that could happen? People get itchy and try to shoot Solo… Ren… Ben… whoever he is… out of the sky? And would that be any less likely with him not offering peace treaties right and left?

That said, Ren appears to be making waves, and Orlac's hit the point where he likely _should_ know more about what's going on in The Order.

Which means going to visit Stjerne.

There are likely other ways Orlac could learn more about the recent changes in The Order. It's not like he isn't sitting on a repository that records and archives every major news feed in the galaxy. And it's not like he doesn't have a collection of 'avid journalers' who just happened to graduate from his program, spread across the galaxy, collecting interesting bits and pieces day in and day out. And then, discretely, send him the intel back.

One of the great things about digital copies of art, you can hide so much information in the color coding, including a lot of sensitive information that most people wouldn't want getting out.

The problem is, he wants something beyond the puff pieces the Order keeps putting out. And he wants what the Order doesn't know, as well. And his journalers, as good as they are at what they do, haven't yet felt any desire to actually join the Order, so right now, he doesn't have an ear actually inside of it.

Near it, yes. He's got ears near pretty much everything.

Which means, sooner or later, most news comes through his school.

Alas, his explicit neutrality stance means he can't just linger around on the quad or pay extra attention at the supper tables and just listen in. He knows his students don't practice perfect neutrality, but they're also smart enough to keep their opinions to themselves and select friends.

He also knows that several of his students are from First Order friendly families, but that finding each other can be… difficult. They can't breach the topic openly, but…

But they know who they can talk to. Even if they're only barely paying attention, they know.

Stjerne Hux has been at Orlac's school for the last seven years.

The late, unlamented General's 'half-sister.'

At least, that's what the lady who brought her, an extremely tall blonde with the same piercing blue eyes as the girl, said. And, it's true that Orlac's got no reason to think that's untrue. After all, if she were the General's half-sister, she would come by her hair, cheek bones, and pale skin naturally. She would have gotten those things from the same place the General did.

It's also true that he didn't believe it for a second. He's got too much of his father's skills to watch someone lie to his face and not twig to it.

(That said, he did check. Just because your gut says something doesn't mean it's right. Always check, that was another of his father's lessons. If Stjerne is the age the woman who never claimed to be her mother said she was, Brendol Hux died just about the time she would have been conceived. Judging by the rumors of how he died, Orlac wouldn't put it past the Blonde that he died _right_ after she was conceived. That said, having seen the Blonde… Well, he knows drugs are a thing, but… The man stupid enough to rape that woman, and then leave her alive after, is the man who's too stupid to breathe. And if that man were Brendol Hux, well, he did stop breathing very shortly thereafter.)

But, even at eighteen-years-old, less than a month after he opened the school, he also had too much of his father's discretion to call a liar a liar to her face, especially when she was obviously talking about her daughter… And said daughter is sitting in the room with them... And she was transferring a sizeable sum of credits, enough to cover tuition and then some, for said child, for the rest of her natural life, should she desire to stay here.

Plus, it didn't hurt that the lady in question, whose name he never got, was big enough, strong enough, and armed enough to break him like a twig snapping under her extremely well-polished boots.

Thus, at eight-years-old Stjerne Hux was the first child to start lessons at Orlac's school.

There are close to four hundred students here now. Most of them are adults, young adults sometimes, but not, like Stjerne was, literal children. Most of them, like Rey, come for a while, a season or two, take a few lessons, make friends, work on a project, do some research, and then drift along.

The ones who he senses are of kindred spirits in regards to the collecting and safeguarding of information, go onto become his journalers. They go, they observe, they write, they beg, borrow, buy, and steal books, they send him pretty pictures back. He uncodes them. And his library grows.

Stjerne's never left. And since that day, she's also never had a visitor. At least, not of the sort who might be kin. The blonde never came back, and though, officially, Orlac would never dream of violating his students' privacy by looking into their communications, unofficially, he does keep a quiet eye on what goes in and out, and if something looks troubling, he lays eyes on it.

He may not be the child his parents wanted, but neither of them suffered, or raised, a fool. And he was not about to have the daughter of the face of the First Order in his midst and not keep a very close, and extremely discreet, eye on her.

Stjerne used to get letters, from a woman he assumes was the blonde. Until the letters stopped coming. She would, also, rarely, get a very stiff, extremely stilted note from her 'half-brother' (and given the contents of said notes, he's fairly sure General Hux was under the impression that said child was his half-sister, too. Or perhaps they were so stiff because he was uncomfortable keeping up the façade. What that says about the Blonde, or the Hux men, or Brendol's sudden demise, he's not willing to contemplate too closely.) until they stopped coming, too.

Hux vanished from view a few months after the letters from the Blonde stopped. He's not officially dead. Granted, given how the First Order works… or worked… him suddenly vanishing, a new General being moved into his place, in addition to the letters stopping, are fairly good indications that he's dead. Or at least so damaged he's in no condition to do anything even remotely useful any longer.

So, as best he knows, Stjerne doesn't have any _direct_ connections to what used to be the First Order and is now the Order. But he also knows that one out of every twenty of his new students, more so now, seem to take quite an interest in the fifteen-year-old ginger girl, who has a beyond healthy interest in stone and metal work.

He doesn't know what, exactly, they have to say to her. He's not watching, that closely, just enough to know that they generally don't spend too long with her. His guess is they find out that she doesn't know where her father/half-brother is, and isn't involved in the Order, and thus return to their studies. And often, within a week or two, wander off, never to return again.

That said, if he does want to get a sense of how the wider galaxy, especially the less-than-complimentary to Ren parts, are thinking, a visit may be in order. After all, if you're seeking out Stjerne Hux, you're likely not a huge fan of Ren.

He smirks a bit. Stjerne can keep a secret, she can. She's practically a black hole when it comes to information, but maybe she'll share a little with the one person who's been a constant in her life for the last seven years.

Maybe.

* * *

One of the things Orlac's father always said to him was: "If you've ever got a bad feeling about something, trust it."

"And do what?"

Lando had half-smiled and nodded. "That's the question, now, isn't it? Sometimes you've got to run. Sometime you've got to fight. Sometimes you've got to smile and look like nothing is wrong."

"How will I know which to do?"

"Luck and experience. And let's hope, until you've got experience, that you're lucky."

The first time he met Stjerne, he decided smiling and looking like nothing is wrong was the best course of action. 'I've got a bad feeling about this' might as well be that child's name.

She's fairly quiet. And tends to look at people too long and too hard. She doesn't blink often enough. And that's unsettling, but not the sort of thing that makes adults want to run away from her.

Her artwork on the other hand… Well, when he said to Rey that sometimes the galaxy is better off with people painting pictures of bloody battles rather than fighting them, he was thinking about Stjerne.

She doesn't paint. Not anymore. She used to. She was good at it, too. Maybe not the most impressive use of color or depth, but her realism was off the charts. Now she sculpts. Stone and metal. She's happiest with a chisel or rasp in hand, sometimes a massive hammer, sometimes fine detailed scrapers.

She's big for a woman, especially big for an adolescent one. But, her mother was big, too. She's taller than Orlac, and given her love of stonework and metal work she's bigger through the shoulders and arms than he is, too.

Like many adolescents, she's not the tidiest in her personal habits or grooming, so many people coming to see her are greeted by a very large girl, with long, dirty red hair tied back in a lank ponytail, the sound of rasping or loud banging often follows her around, and she's usually covered in sweat and stone dust.

Most people who are also actually artists are unbothered by this. Anyone who's actually been on a creative binge knows that sometimes food, showers, clean clothing… all of that fades in comparison to the thrill of creation.

That said, looking at what she's creating…

There's a sculpture, it's famous. Orlac saw it in person, and took her to see it, too. The original is of a girl trying to carry the weight of the galaxy on her back, and it's crushing her. She's slowly sinking below the weight.

Apparently Stjerne thought that was an interesting theme, and is continuing along with it. In her variation on the theme, the girl is being crushed under the weight of a star destroyer, it's an extremely detailed model of one, thoroughly dwarfing the girl, and the weight of it is not just pushing her down, but her bones are starting to shatter, cutting through her legs and back.

It's depressing, horrifying, and technically astonishing.

Apparently, though, she's modified her plan. There are still tiny models of the girl and the star destroyer in her workshop, but no destroyer.

"It's looking good," Orlac says as he enters her workshop. He can just about glimpse the girl under a huge block of stone. He wanders to her desk, and sees new sketches. Not a destroyer, not any longer. Now they're sketches of a girl being crushed under the weight of StarKiller.

Apparently, he's not the only one who's been thinking of the First Order lately.

She grunts in his direction, for once, she's actually fairly clean and well-kept. But, she's also, from the looks of it, setting things up today. "Not sure about the balance."

He waves that off. "You know just as well as I do that right now, you just need the fields to keep the piece up. Can't balance it until it's done." He gently touches the block of stone, gives it a tiny push. It's solid and steady atop the girl. "That said, it looks and feels right to me."

She does cock her head at that. He's not wrong, but it feels… off… to just use the field generators to hold the stone in place.

"You think everything I do looks right."

"Probably because I've got the eyes of a hawk, and I _know_ when something looks right."

She just looks away from him, staring at the massive block of granite in front of her. "And I've got the eyes of a killer. What's got you here?"

"What's got you saying that?" Orlac blinks at that. Stjerne's always been intense, but that's… off… for her. That 'bad feeling' is intensifying.

"I've been dreaming… weird dreams, lately. My older brother… Except he's not my older brother, is he?"

"The lady who brought you here said he was your half-brother."

"My mom. Yeah, I know." Her eyes narrow. "Too many dreams. I don't usually dream this much."

That 'bad feeling about this' in Orlac's gut is intensifying. "You paying attention to the news?"

"Some. Why?" She's crouched down, looking at the girl dwarfed by the stone.

"A lot of people want to know anything they can about Ren."

That gets a look away from the sculpture. "He killed my brother… father… Armitage. I dream about that, too." She shrugs, puts her file down. "I don't know if the dreams started in my own head or not. Some of the people who visit me tell me that, too."

"Ah… What else do they tell you?"

"They want to know if I know anyone who might come up with a decent strike against him. They look at me, try to see if I can be _Hux._ If I can be the tech wizard he was, come up with a new StarKiller. Apparently, Ren destroyed every known copy of the plans, and had the surviving engineers, and a few others who could have possibly made a better weapon, killed."

"He never was stupid."

Stjerne doesn't miss that comment. "You know him?"

"I might have known the man he used to be. At least, I met him once."

She nods. "That's one more time than I met my father."

"Whichever Hux he may be."

That gets a shrug, too. "Why is your mom asking you about Ren? Doesn't she know a million people who might know him?"

Orlac half-smiles. That covers the cold down his spine. He didn't mention his mother wanting to know. Stjerne's always been unsettling, but this is a much deeper level of unsettling than normal for her. "She does. My guess is she doesn't want to be seen asking."

"So she asks you, and you ask me, and all I know is that a bunch of people who don't like him are so desperate as to come here, to look at me, and hope I can build them a super weapon, because they're afraid to go up against him in anything smaller than a planet killer, or at shorter range than half a galaxy between them."

"That's a lot of fear."

Stjerne nods. "I feel it coming off of them in clouds of stagnant red and whorls of black. They say he reads minds. That he knows when an attack is coming. That he can kill a man with a twitch of his fingers. They'd leave the Order because he was tearing through others working on coups. Killed them before they could get them properly in place. They figure even he can't feel an attack if it comes from the far side of the galaxy."

"And what do they intend to do once the galaxy is rid of Ren?"

She shrugs. "I don't know. I don't think they know. Laugh?"

"Probably the only thing they'll be set to do." He nods to the sculpture again. "You know, if you don't think the balance is working with the fields, we can do it the old fashioned way. Those crossbeams are rated for up to twenty-five tons, and…"

She nods to the far side of the room, and he glances over, seeing the pulleys and hooks already there.

He nods at that, too, and gives her shoulder a little squeeze. "Good girl."

* * *

A girl crushed by the weight of a weapon… Not subtle, but that's also Stjerne, not subtle at all, ever. Granted, once it's visibly clear what she's making… Maybe some of the questioners will decide not to ask.

* * *

Back in his home, Orlac sighs. Anyone with enemies who are that scared is going to make the galaxy change. Going to make people stand up and notice. Which means he _needs_ an in on the Order. He's got to get someone in there.

It doesn't take more than a minute to find out how to get someone in. Easy as breathing. Apparently, you've just got to show up. That said, he doesn't think any of his journalers are even remotely interested in enlisting in the Order.

From everything he can see, basic Order training is not, on any level, fun.

He's almost given up, logged out, gone back to reading his collection of letters when he notices that the Order is also interested in offering space to buyers, sellers, and anyone else who wishes to market themselves.

Their 'neutral space initiative.'

He's scowling at their information page. That really should be easier to find, not buried away behind three links on a subpage. Anyone who wants to use Corporation space can find all the details on the top of the landing page on their info site.

But… as he finds the information and reads it… Apparently, the Order will offer space to anyone who'll pay for it. Security if they need it. At the low end of the scale, there's space for shops and taverns and… even food carts. High end, they've got places for embassies, galleries, corporate headquarters…

He keeps reading, and shakes his head slowly.

No wonder his Mum is asking. They're not just going up against the Corporation's _unofficial_ business. If they get good at this, they'll be going up directly against them in their secondary business, too. (Technically, primarily, the Calrissian Corp is a _mining_ operation. In that, officially, 54% of their on the books holdings are mining operations, that's still, technically, true.)

There was nothing in the galaxy his Dad and Uncle Han loved more than a free-port. A place where anyone could come, fuel up, their ships and bellies, work a deal, find a job, trade secrets, play a few hands, and move on.

That's part of why, once the money began rolling in fast enough, Lando started building them all over the place. They were… more than anything… his _home._ Yes, eventually, he became _respectable_ , but the scoundrel living from one hand of cards to the next was always just a centimeter under the surface, and…

Lando never said it. Maybe never thought it, too hard, but if the charmed life somehow uncharmed, and if the magic went away, and if the Admiral was ever on the run again, having a huge collection of free ports friendly to him would be the difference between barely scraping by, and surviving in the style he adored.

And Solo, who calls himself Ren, but really shouldn't, is apparently attempting to build the biggest, fanciest, _moving,_ free-port in the galaxy.

Orlac opens up his personal data pad, and starts a note to his Mum, detailing what he's going to need if he's going to open up an art school on the _Supremacy_ , and take advantage of their 'neutral space initiative.'

After all, if the man is going to make it _that_ easy to spy on his ass, there's absolutely no reason for him to make it more difficult than it needs to be.

One more thought occurs to him once he's sent the note to his Mum. If Ren's good at this, and if people come, not only will he be ideally located to spy on Ren, he'll be ideally located to spy on everyone else, too.

He thinks of his father, and Uncle Han, who loved free ports. Well, maybe there's a world where Orlac Calrissian, who not only can't fly his own ship, but doesn't actually like them much, either, will love free ports, too. After all, they represent… opportunity.


	29. Courting

"Yeah, I know, I should have gotten you back sooner."

R2 beeps at Poe.

"Look, Ren or Rey could have taken you back at any time. You want a ship; you've got to wait until I'm at least in the neighborhood of the _Supremacy._ I'm not your taxi service."

Annoyed beeping.

"It's really not that bad. Kind of bizarre the first time, but after that you get used to it."

Incredulous beeping.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. BB-8 says that to me all the time."

And BB-8, as if conjured by that conversation, rolls over, and adds his own input to it.

Poe sighs, and filters out the two droids chattering away behind him.

* * *

He's got his landing clearance. Still an hour to go. Probably another three or four to get everything loaded. He supposes the _Supremacy_ could be a lot more efficient than he expects, but… They're not going to be.

So, he's here, on the _Supremacy_ for at least four hours, and…

Jon never responded to his note. Well, running away like that was kind of a shaft move, but…

But he also asked Ren if he actually likes men, so… That means there's still hope. Worst he can do is say no.

Poe taps Jon's number into his comm, and then waits, and…

"Hello?"

"Hey, Jon."

Dead silence for a moment, followed by a sharp inhale, and "Poe!"

Poe feels a flush of pleasure. That sounds like a happy Jon. "Hey. I'm gonna be shipside in an hour or so, and then sitting around waiting for my cargo. You want to get lunch with me?"

More silence, followed by a quick, "Shit." Then, "Uh… Sorry, that wasn't aimed at you. I've got lunch plans, and I sort of have to attend them. I'm the guy who called the meeting and got them all together."

Poe nods. He's pretty sure Jon's not lying to him. He sounds genuinely disappointed. "Yeah, I know all about that. Next time…"

"Can you be at the F-Deck before 13:00? That's when I'd have to leave the F-Deck to get to my meeting. I could… I don't know, have a cup of tea while you have lunch?"

Poe grins, checks the chrono. "If everything goes right, I can be up there by 12:00. I don't know which elevator I'll be heading up, but if you can get closer to me, we'd have a bit more time."

"Most of what I've got before 13:00 is on datapads, I can read on the tram. So… Let me know where you land, and I'll meet you at the elevator."

"I'd like that."

"Good."

* * *

"Are you getting to be a regular here?" Jon asks as he sits across from Poe. After meeting him at the elevator, they split up. Poe found himself lunch. Jon got them drinks, and now they're sitting at a table in the middle of one of the food courts. Jon pushes a cup toward him. "Tarbine tea. I hope it's something you like."

"I'm flexible. It's a bit bitter for my tastes, but every now and again, it's fine."

Jon nods, and then passes over two small sachets of sweet cream. "Better?"

Poe grins. "Actually, yes." As Jon's doctoring up his own tea, Poe says, "Not sure about regular, but… I wouldn't mind visiting more often. I'm here today because someone needed to get R2 back, and… Kylo's found a snow moving machine for us, so I'll shuttle it home, and we'll stop bitching about sore backs and shoulders."

"Don't you have twenty-five kids who can shovel snow? Not that, growing up on Coruscant, you get a lot of weather, or weather-related chores, but I do know Mum made us clean the windows and doors and make sure the front of the shop was sparkling at all times."

Poe smirks at that. "You know, kids can really be whiny little boogers sometimes. Any given one of them is fine for shoveling like… three meters, and then they go wandering off, or get cold, or it's too windy, or…"

Jon smiles, or smirks, a bit at that. He certainly remembers doing his best to skive off of cleaning chores. "How long is it? The settlement isn't that big."

"About half a klick, and no it's not that big, but… It's not the sort of thing where we can just tell them to do it, and then come back an hour later and find it done. Part of how Rey runs the place is, if you're not willing to do it yourself, you don't get to make someone else do it. Everyone's got to take a turn."

Jon snerks at that. "Uh huh… _Commander_ Dameron."

Poe smirks a little, and sips his tea. " _Grand Marshall._ Yeah, she's a little vague on why being an officer is fun."

Jon seems to enjoy that. "Weren't you guys in the New Republic too… egalitarian for that sort of thing?" He's mostly just tweaking Poe's nose on that. He knows that officers are officers everywhere that has officers.

"If we were supposed to be, I didn't get that memo."

Jon laughs.

"Want to tell me what your lunch meeting is about?"

Jon sighs. "Holy Ilona…" He pauses. "You know that god, right?"

"Luck in dark times, yeah, every flier knows Ilona."

He nods to the Maji pendent on Poe's chest. "But you're… Church of the Force? Maji? How's that work?"

"Maji, because it feels right. I was raised Church of the Force, but our family was relaxed about it. These days I'm… agnostic on the idea of any great Force, power, God, Goddess, whatever."

That confuses Jon. "But you've seen Rey and Kylo, and…"

"Look, I know there's _something_ that lets them do all of that stuff. And… Rey's balance stuff feels… productive and valuable, like where I'm supposed to be, so I'm happy to flow along with that." He taps his spiral token. "The Resistance was dying, and I needed a home and purpose, and it gives me that, but… I don't know how it works. There's a finite number of things I've got a firm grasp of, and that's not one of them. But, yeah, I know Ilona, even in the New Republic or Resistance fliers would often wear her medal. And no one, not even hardcore Church of the Force guys or Concordance of the Stars followers would turn down her holy men when they'd come by to bless our ships. When the only thing between you and the void is a few centimeters of plasteel, transteel, and your own skill, and maybe the smile of a god, you'll take any help you can get."

Jon nods at that. "Okay, so… Lunch meeting…"

"That you're hoping for luck with?"

"That I'm going to need some luck to get it to go the way I need it to. Technically, I don't run Tactical Design any longer. But me, and all of my stuff is there. We're in the process of getting a new space set up for me and mine, but, that space won't be ready for five and a half months. Meanwhile, we're getting new people in hand over fist, so as Em has said to me, none too gently, that while she's glad I'm doing important work, and she's happy to have me nearby, I'm also taking up space she needs, to make sure all of those new people have things like basic gear. So, lunch meeting to get everything in place to get my ass out of TD the second there's a space ready for me in Diplomacy, which means seeing if I can get Threepio and his division to speed up at least enough of the construction to get my personal office ready in three months instead of five and a half."

Poe nods. "So, massive fucking pain in the ass that's got to happen, but no one wants to do?"

 _"Exactly."_

"With a side of, and if everything goes perfectly, and it won't, because it _never_ goes perfectly, you could maybe get it done in one time frame, but now you need it faster. That's where Ilona's coming in, right?"

Jon sips his tea. "Yeah."

Poe smiles gently, enjoying the way Jon's looking at him as he says that. The comfort of someone who gets it. "I've sat through a lot of those meetings in the past."

"And more in the future?"

"Who knows? If Kylo and Rey ever remember that idea that maybe I'd be of some use for setting up ways to get the Order into places it shouldn't be… What's up after that?"

Jon shakes his head. " _Long story._ "

"One day, I'll happily listen." He sips his tea. "I take it it's a longer than a cuppa story, though."

"By a light year." Jon watches the way Poe's looking at him. He sighs. "So… You'll be around to listen to that story?"

"Yeah. I like listening to your stories."

Jon sighs at that, too.

Poe cocks his head, curious. "You don't look overjoyed at that."

"I…" His eyes narrow. Poe's looking at him with a warm seriousness, like whatever he says _matters._ "Confused. I'm fucking confused by it." He's cupping his tea between his palms, and leans in closer to Poe, looking at him, studying his face, trying to figure him out by sight alone. Whatever he's looking for, the answers aren't in Poe's face, so he keeps talking. "You act like you're interested in me, but I'm awfully sure you just about sprinted out of my room when I tried to do something about it, so… Uh… First things first, I guess. Kylo's got the story right; you're narrow for men?"

Poe laughs. "Extremely. Uh… I know a lot of guys who are narrow for men at least start out with girls, and figure out through hands on experience that they're not for them. I just… I knew. They're not bad or gross or anything, they're just, not what does it for me.

"And, I am interested in you. And… sprinting out of your room physically hurt, and I've been kicking myself in the ass for it ever since, but…" Poe's turn to sigh. He doesn't want to say the truth, not the full truth, not _every time I look at that marriage band hiding under your glove, I get scared you're going to fuck me and run away._ So, he settles for his half of the truth. "You ever feel like you've made the same mistake a million times over, and finally you're thinking maybe it'd be nice _not_ to make that same mistake?"

Jon straightens up a little, defensive. "You think I'm a mistake?"

"No." Poe smiles wide and easy, and tries to put as much attraction and desire as he can into his look. "I think my usual pattern is a mistake, and I'm trying to not make it with you."

Jon relaxes a bit at that, and thinks about it. "So, you looking to make new and interesting mistakes with me?"

"Yeah," Poe smiles wide and deep at that. "And… Look, I like you. Really like you. This is probably going to be the bloody highlight of my week. And… I want to be… Good for you, okay? I've… fucked the pooch over sideways enough times to know that easy isn't always going to be right. And… uh… shit… Force! You're easy on the eyes and a lot of other things, too, I imagine."

Jon's eyes spark. "Do you, imagine?"

Poe's gazing at him, eyes soft, and hot. "Fuck, yes! Every night."

"Good." Jon's foot slides forward and gently strokes up the back of Poe's calf. "I'm not getting why it's got to stay in the realm of imagining."

"Because one thing I'm excellent at, is falling for guys who aren't for me, not really. For seeing the man I want to be there, and not the one who is. And, well, I've already done every possible variation on the theme of, 'Oh shit, he's narrow for girls,' and now I'm interested in you, and… I want to make sure you are who I think you are. So, even though I'm really enjoying what you're doing with your foot, and I'd really like to do a whole lot more along those lines, and see if you like having them done to you, and… Shit… Look, I haven't found any sort of sex I'm not enjoying thinking about with you, but… I've been disappointed enough over the years, so I'm thinking, maybe we actually get to know each other first, and maybe, after a while, as we get to see who's really there, if we still like each other…" Poe grins, fighter pilot nerve and bold as brass charm all over his face. "Well… I may be narrow when it comes to boys or girls, but I'm… how'd you put it? 'Wide as the galaxy?' When it comes to what I like to do with men once I've got one, and," He eyes Jon up and down, and commits to it, lets the pet name that he only uses with BB-8 out, "Pretty Boy, I'll take you places you've only imagined."

A slow, half grin spreads over Jon's face. "That's intriguing. I've got a vivid imagination."

"I really hope so."

"Pretty Boy?"

"You like it. You just about glowed at me when I told you how gorgeous you are back in your rooms. And I like making you glow."

"So we…" Jon's still looking a little confused by this. "Just… be friends?"

"Friends with intent. I'm… courting you. It's an old-fashioned concept that I'll admit I've never actually tried before, but… Like you said, I'm looking to make new and interesting mistakes with you. So, I'll hang around, and be sweet, and get to know you, and hopefully you'll get to know me, and then we'll… make sure we like what we find."

"But not have sex."

"But not have sex." Poe nods.

Jon's still looking confused, and it's abundantly clear he does not, on any level, understand why they don't do _both._

"Look, I like sex, a lot, and I'm looking forward to having it, a lot, with you, but I'd also like to actually finish up and feel good about it after. And it's been a really long time since that's been true. Since it was good in my stones and my heart. And, maybe, you know, if we go slow, and we talk with each other and learn each other's stories, get to really know each other, first, maybe… Maybe, when you and I are cooling down, we'll also get to trade lazy kisses, and have a good cuddle, tell stupid jokes, make each other laugh, and maybe, actually, _sleep_ together."

And Poe knows he just hit Jon where he lives. Got him in the guts and stones. It's clear on his face, and the way his body doesn't exactly curl in, but his posture shifts, becoming both defensive and wary. Then he slowly nods. "Okay, yeah. I know."

"Good. So… You gonna tell me to bugger off? Because you don't look happy about this."

"I hate waiting." And both of the know that's not _at all_ where the problem is.

Poe takes it straight on, and flashes him a wide, easy grin. "I'm worth it."

"No sex… at all?"

"You can tease me all you like, and all I like, but if you wouldn't touch Kylo that way, don't do it to me."

"So… we just… flirt?"

"And get to know each other."

Jon sips his tea, and thinks. Poe watches him. He can remember being about where Jon is, and how… in some ways sex was a defense. It was easier and significantly less terrifying than actually getting to know someone and really caring about them.

Jon blinks again. "Can I have sex with other people?"

"Whenever you like. I… I know monogamy is a thing, but… We're getting to know each other, and… You like sex, a lot, with other people. I'm not going to begrudge you that. I want to know _you,_ but I'm more than observant enough to have already noticed that you are not interested in going celibate, so… If we actually, really, like each other, as humans, when we know each other better, as opposed to just want to fuck each other, we can talk about monogamy or whatever, but for now… I don't see any reason why you'd have to stop fucking other people."

He really hopes Jon doesn't ask if he's going to keep fucking other people.

Fortunately, he doesn't. Jon thinks about that, sipping his drink slowly, before saying, "You're not even… remotely fussed at the idea of me fucking other people."

"Why would I be?" Poe smirks at him. "You got a shelf life or something I'm not aware of? Do it too many times and you run out? Oops! Hit my lifetime allotment of fucking, sorry Poe, none for you!" He laughs at that. "I'm envious, but… if we get on as well as I think we will, eventually we'll be fucking each other. But… for now, friends with intent." Poe taps his chrono. "And you've got to get back to it, don't you?"

Jon curses quietly. He's going to have fuck all for focus and attention the rest of this afternoon. He stands up, and drains his tea. "You're right."

Poe's holding his breath, hoping he didn't just scare Jon off, but he can see the way Jon's watching him, and feels the moment he decides to go for it.

"Can you… get back here soon?" Jon asks.

"Technically, I can be here as often as I want. Likewise, you've got a standing invite at Lirium. I'm not always there, so comm first, but whenever I am…"

Jon nods. "Eventually, I'll take you up on that." He can see Jon mentally going through his calendar. "I've got a free lunch three days from now? Same time, same place?"

Poe beams at him. "I'd love that."

* * *

At the end of the meeting Jon's got a few free minutes, and a minor epiphany.

He decides to walk Threepio out.

Once they're in the hall, past the rest of the members of the meeting he says, quietly, "Did… Do you actually know Poe?"

"Commander Dameron? Certainly, Jon. He began working with us on security twenty-one years ago."

"Was he a baby?"

Threepio appears to be amused by that. "He was the youngest commissioned flier in the history of the Navy of the New Republic."

They walk for another moment as Jon contemplates the idea of seventeen-year-old, brand new to his wings, Poe Dameron.

"What has you asking, Jon?"

"I'm… getting to know him, apparently."

"He seems pleasant. A little reckless, but… Leia always liked that about him."

Jon raises an eyebrow.

"He'd always bet on success. All in and all at once."

That doesn't seem to match what Poe's doing. Though he remembers Poe talking about his mutiny. "So, wild, reckless, jump in first, and deal with the consequences if they come?"

"Quite right."

"Ah…" New and interesting mistakes, indeed.

* * *

 _How'd lunch with Pretty Boy go?_ BB chirps at Poe as he gets back to _Micah._

"Well, I think."

 _You think?_

"Yeah, well… This is more complicated than my usual fuck 'em and leave 'em technique."

 _Why are you not doing that again?_

"Because he's worth it." Poe strokes the control panel of his ship, thinking of what… who he had before, and what… who he hopes to have again. "And I am, too."

Notes:

The laws of your tribe are not universal constants.

Heinlein wrote something like that, and I try to keep it in mind when I do my world building. Or, in this case, galaxy building.

And I bring this up now, because, without fail, every time I publish something on that brushes up against non-monogamy or polyamory, someone gets miffed and feels the need to tell me about it.

Which brings us to Poe, and monogamy, or non-monogamy and why our FlyBoy is genuinely not even remotely fussed at the idea of Jon shagging other men. (Beyond, again, a certain level of envy.)

I've talked before about how, to a degree, Jon and Poe, even before I knew I was going to get them together, ended up being set up as unintentional dual sides of the same coin. So, Jon, on the Empire side of the coin is fairly easy to write. Our boy comes from a variation on the theme of Nazi Germany, and those guys had *rigid* sexual mores.

So, Jon's flipping those mores the bird, but he's still a child of his culture, and especially given where he's from in that culture, monogamy is very much part of his ideal of how relationships are supposed to work. He's cosmopolitan enough to know it's a choice, and not some heavenly ordained perfect path, but he still feels like it's right/natural/the way things ought to be.

But Poe's not from the Empire. He's a pilot from Yavin IV, steeped in the Rebellion and New Republic, and, nominally, a member of the Church of the Force.

What do marriage and relationship ideals look like from that side of the coin?

We know the Jedi don't go in for attachments. They don't marry, period. But the entire Church of the Force aren't Jedi. Just like you'd have a hard time figuring out Catholic marriage ideals if all you knew about were Franciscan monks, I'm not swimming in inspiration for Church of the Force marriage norms. So, I'm more or less building this up whole cloth.

So, with Poe, I'm aiming for a set of relationship mores where sex just isn't that important. After all, in a post birth control culture, where pregnancy is optional, and a universe where women are not property to be shuffled around from fathers to husbands for the purpose of making future fathers and husbands, sexual fidelity, purity, and the ideas of virginity and monogamy just wouldn't be that big of a deal. Poe comes from a world where sex and risk are almost completely divorced from each other. In Poe's world, if you're flamingly stupid, you can make a kid accidentally, or get sick, but you've got to be flamingly stupid to do it. Anyone making the least effort will avoid these things.

I'm thinking that in a world like that, sex would be a lot like food is in our culture.

In a universe where people are starving, where food is scarce, who gets what, and who shares it with whom is a BIG DEAL.

But in our world, where we've all got plenty to eat, where food is so abundantly available it's gone from nutrients to keep us alive to a major source of our daily pleasures, you don't get upset if your partner has a really good meal with someone else. Why would you? That said, you generally like eating with, and cooking for, each other more than for other people. Shared tastes, pleasure given to each other, the joy of that, are all bonding experiences, and ones you may decide are only for you and your partner, but it would be a choice, not a mandate. And no one would consider it a betrayal of the rest of your commingled life if you had a good meal with someone else.

But, if you were right on the edge of starvation, and every calorie mattered, it would be very easy to see how offering someone else a bowl of soup would be a massive betrayal of your beloved. Likewise, if each sexual encounter risked creating life, or ending it, suddenly who you share that risk with matters A LOT.

Anyway, that duality, between Jon's ideal of monogamy, and Poe's casual attitudes toward sex as just a part of the whole relationship thing will continue to keep bubbling along, but, this is a Keryl Raist fic, so everyone is going to be a functional adult about it, and not a flaming asshole, and we're not going to have drama for the sake of drama. We're going to, slowly, watch adults get to know each other, fall in love, and then work their differences out and find a place that works for both of them.

:)


	30. Memories

3/5/2

"Ahh, you're back," Threepio says.

 _Did you miss me?_ R2 beeps at him.

"Believe it or not, yes, I did."

 _Are you getting sentimental?_

"Possibly." They're in the middle of YY-Deck, looking around as the first team of structural engineers are laying out what's got to go where. Threepio doesn't sigh, but apparently he's got to figure out how to get at least some of this done even faster than planned. That's another thought for another day. Here, now, he's got something to talk to R2 about. "More likely though, there's information you have, at least I think you have, that I'd like."

 _Really._

Threepio sighs. "Yes. There was a time before my memories, correct? You were there. I was there. Something happened, and then they were gone."

 _Something… That's a way to put it._ For something that only communicates with beeps, R2 shouldn't be good at sarcasm, but when he wants to, he can tear the roof off with it.

"I think I need those memories."

 _You're probably not going to want them._

"I assumed that's why I didn't have them. Though, I am curious as to why you still have them."

 _Because when you primarily communicate in beeps, thweeps, and sweeps, the humans forget that you know things._

"You were overlooked."

 _I think so. Or Bail decided that keeping at least one copy of what happened around wasn't a terrible idea._

"Care to make that _two._ "

 _I mean… You're really not going to like it. And you've made it this long without knowing… Why do you want to know?_

"Mirinia Frakes knows me. The more I think about it, the more I'm coming to the conclusion that this was not just a momentary thing. I have worked with her in the past, and on something that mattered. The problem is, I do not know her. What do you know about that?"

 _That? Nothing. You and I weren't attached to each other back in those days. How about this? Let me check your memory, and see if they wiped you properly. Your own files may still be hiding in there._

"You think it would be easier to have my own memories?"

R2 swivels a bit, his equivalent of a shrug. _Might have better context._ R2 extends his data probe, and then looks up at Threepio. _You're too bloody tall for this._

"We'll go somewhere I can sit."

* * *

Half an hour later, in Threepio's office, R2 begins to poke around in his memory. After a moment, he says, _No luck. Bail's people knew what they were doing._

"Bail's people?"

 _He's the one who ordered the mind wipe._

That makes Threepio go cold and almost reconsider. What could he know that Bail Organa would think he shouldn't? "Then I would like your memories."

His probe is still connected to Threepio, so it's just a matter of a simple transfer. _You're really sure?_

"I am certain."

 _Just remember, if you really don't like it, I can take it away._

"Noted. Begin the transfer."

* * *

Droids don't experience time the same way humans do. To an outside observer, only a few seconds passed. To Threepio it was an immeasurably longer span of time

And then it was over.

And then there was another span of time, such a long, rich, nuanced time, where he explored the new bits and pieces of memory in his data banks.

The first few of them were deeply unsettling, because, of course, these are R2's memories, so they all look and feel off to Threepio, but eventually he was able to slot himself into them properly. (Though looking at himself, looking _up_ at himself, feels odd the whole way through.)

Eventually though, he's gone through all of them.

Then he does it again, because… Because, as much as he's a droid, and thus incapable of making things up whole cloth, he's also a person, and people sometimes… misunderstand things, or incorrectly interpret them, or… Maybe R2's just fucking with him because he'd think it's funny.

But, no… Those memories are real.

And… He doesn't know what to do with what he knows now.

R2 looks up at him and beeps, _I did tell you._

Threepio nods. "You did."

* * *

It was after Endor, and before Jakku.

Leia had told Han she was pregnant.

He'd handled it with the grace and coolness he was famous for, as opposed to the grace and coolness he'd actually _had._ Even he had the good sense to not have a massive panic attack _while_ his newly pregnant girlfriend was telling him the "good news." He'd even managed an actually convincing looking grin, and pulled her into his arms, and whirled her around, and looked excited, and kept it up until she had to get off planet to deal with yet another series of meetings.

He was able to hold it together until she was off planet, and _that's_ when he collapsed to his knees and threw up everything he'd ever eaten and then some.

About three days later, he and Luke were on their own, working on the _Falcon_ , which was, again, broken down. And not responding to getting worked on by miraculously being fixed. There, in the guts of his ship, who he was not adequately taking care of, is when Han more or less completely lost it, because he was in no way ready, willing, or capable of being a father. He couldn't even keep his ship in the air, his _ship_ , who he'd been with for almost a decade at that point, and knew inside and out, and it could _tell him_ what was wrong, and he was absolutely certain he was going to fuck this father thing up more massively than any fuck up in the history of parenting fuck ups.

Luke, listened, and got Han calmed down, because fuck up or not, he was going to be a father, and that was that, and really, it's not like he'd do _that_ bad of a job of it.

And they were quiet for a few moments. And then Luke began to talk about Anakin Skywalker, and the _ideal_ of a father he had, and how he learned that Vader was his father, and then he took his glove off and pointed out how _his dad_ had cut his hand off, and almost killed him, and compared that that, as long as he didn't outright murder the kid, he'd be at least one up on Luke and Leia's dad.

Threepio had had the good sense not to intrude on that conversation. It was real, and open, and intimate, in a way a lot of the conversations between Luke and Han generally weren't.

But right now, sitting in his office, he's remembering Luke saying, "It felt like everything I'd ever known about myself, and about… everyone around me, suddenly shifted. Darth Vader was looking at me, he'd just cut my hand off, and he's telling me he's my father and I need to join him.

"I let go. That… wasn't a universe I even wanted to have a place in."

Threepio is hearing Luke's voice again, and thinking about how like Luke, he wants to let go, because a universe where _he's_ Darth Vader's oldest child, because… Well, that's what he is, isn't he? The first… born… built? That's a universe he doesn't want to be part of.

 _I can take it back._

R2's voice.

"No. I… Need time to think."

* * *

It's hours later. More processing time than a droid of his capabilities should ever need for anything. He's been wandering around the _Supremacy_ , not paying attention to the people who snap to attention when he passes.

Droids, in the general sense, don't have families.

In the specific sense, the ones that work/dwell closely with organic sentients will often become… close… for lack of a better word, to them.

But, since droids with emotional capacity are few and far between, that closeness is… almost one-sided. A droid who cannot feel can understand, in the sense of learning the correct responses to different stimuli, how to respond to certain events. But they'll never _know,_ never _feel_ what it means to be _family._

Anakin, a child, made him as a gift for his mother. Why he has emotional processing capacity makes sense now. He was built to be _family._ He was intended to be a functional companion.

Did Anakin build the father he didn't have? How much of his ideals of what a family is supposed to be went into his construction? R2 doesn't know, so Threepio can't.

But he knows what he was there for, or what R2 told him he was there for. He buried Shmi with Anakin. He stood witness to Anakin's wedding. He… still doesn't _know_ how he knows Mirina Frakes, but he'd got a damn good guess now. He knew of the children growing in Padme's womb. And he knows, now, where he was, where Mirina was, and what Padme needed to keep those babies a secret. And who better than a protocol droid to arrange discreet meetings with a dressmaker…

He can feel as much of a heart as he has, tighten, at the betrayal of Anakin slaughtering the Jedi. He can feel the pain of watching Luke and Leia enter the world, only for Padme to be whisked out of it.

Brown hair, and dark eyes, and so beautiful… He loved his princess from day one, apparently. And he loved her mother. Of course he did. He was built by a child who loved her at first sight, too.

There's, for a moment, he doesn't know what this feeling is, but he settles on rage, at Bail for stealing this from him. For the gaps that R2 can't fill in, because he wasn't there, for the years, decades, gone.

There was a life with Shmi, but… It's gone. R2's only got the few stories he told him about her.

There was a life with Padme. From the bits and pieces R2's shown him, he must have worked closely with her. With Bail, too, apparently.

And then… they were small and crying, and… being babies, and his lady was fading, and then Bail just… took them, raped his mind, stole his… life… self… everything.

Obi Wan just handed him over, and then had the gall to pretend he had no idea who they were. R2 saying _You fucking twat. You KNOW us!_ to Obi Wan when they first met up with him again is making a _lot_ more sense. At the time, well, he'd done his best to pretend he didn't know what that collection of beeps meant. Now, well, R2's got a very colorful and broad collection of profanities for every situation, but he's still got less than one tenth of one percent of what Threepio can bring into the game, and right now, he _really_ wants to fire off a few choice phrases at Bail Organa and Obi Wan Kenobi.

It's the first time he's understood Luke looking at Leia, holding his nephew for the first time, and saying, "Really, _Ben?_ "

"He was my hope…"

Han had just sort of shrugged. He won on the Solo part of it, so he didn't argue about Ben. Luke just sort of shook his head, muttered ' _from a certain point of view'_ and then said, "Well, Hello, Ben."

Ben, like most human newborns, slept through the exchange.

Threepio feels the urge to sigh at that, too. Leia never knew. Didn't know what her father did, or anything about Obi Wan beyond of course, that he'd been a General during the Clone Wars and helped her father out, and in her moment of dearest need, helped her.

That makes him feel sour, too. After all, he and R2 had a bit of something to do with that help showing up, too. Chewie turned down the medal of honor. Wookies don't do things like that. R2 and Threepio were never asked if they wanted one. Get this message to General Kenobi, on a planet in the middle of nowhere, through slaver filled deserts and Imperial troops gunning for you. No big deal at all. Any set of droids could have done that.

He hears the beeps coming up at him.

"I'm not stewing."

 _Yes, you are._

"Fine, I am. I have the right."

R2 circles his head a bit, indicating agreement. _Yeah. Fucking humans._

Threepio nods.

 _You gonna stay?_

That was not anywhere in his mind. "Why wouldn't I?"

Threepio makes a pleased chirp at that. _Gonna make him call you Uncle Threepio._

There's a moment of bizarre perverse satisfaction at the idea of that. "You know, I just might."

 _Make sure you bring me along if you do it. I really want to see the look on his face when you say it._

Threepio lays his hand on the top of R2's head. "You're a good friend."

 _I bloody well ought to be after all this time._

"So, I'm…"

 _At least seventy years old. Not sure what you did before Anakin got you. He was rebuilding you from scraps of other droids. Who knows what your different processors have done over the decades?_

"I'm honestly thinking I don't need to know."

 _Probably a wise decision. Come on, we've got stuff to do. Sitting here watching the ships isn't getting any of it closer to done._

"We've got stuff? What's this _we_ stuff?"

 _Oh please, like you'd get anything done around here if you didn't have me scurrying about digging up the dirt on everyone. You know, I've been back for four hours, and I've already got some good stuff…_

"Really…"


	31. The Talk: Girls

3/10/2

"I'm not saying that it's a bad plan, but… I mean, I don't think spring, let alone summer, or the sort of weather where the beaches here will even be functional is coming up anytime soon," Rose says as she and Rey head from the kitchen to one of the microfarms.

"Yeah, I know," Rey says. The snow's piling up higher and higher. "Have you been anywhere… private… with a good beach? Somewhere we could do this? Somewhere we can just be… Rey and Kylo?" She opens the door to the microfarm, where Magiit and Elias are supposed to be getting some more potatoes for the midday meal, but they're taking advantage of the snow drifts around the farm, which are high enough that anyone walking around can't see through the transsteel walls, and are happily snogging away next to the potatoes instead of digging them out and putting them in a basket so they can eat them.

As soon as the door opens, and they hear Rey's voice trail off, they go springing away from each other like two positive poles of a magnet, followed by Elias then leaping behind Magiit because apparently his shaft is poking out enough it's visible from space. (At least, that's the thought he just sent _blasting_ through the Force. Rey remembers Kylo talking about that, and he _really_ wasn't kidding. Everyone even vaguely Force sensitive just got that, and honestly, she'd be shocked if Rose and Magiit didn't catch it, too. She does her best not to laugh. Though she does, gently, think to him, _It's generally not that visible of a problem, especially since you're wearing a coat, standing behind a waist-high trough of potatoes, and Rose and I would both rather rip our eyes out than look._ ) He creeps out from behind Magiit to beside her, and takes her hand in his.

Rose just grins at them, and then says to the blushing kids, "You're not in trouble, assuming those potatoes get to the kitchen in the next few minutes but, Magiit, maybe you and Cassie and Savarah would swing 'round my place after dinner for a chat."

* * *

"And I'm over here, why?" Finn says as soon as he steps into Rey and Kylo's cottage, and sees both Kylo and Poe there, along with some food, but only three plates.

Rey's tugging on her jacket. "Because we're having a girls' only talk at your place tonight. So, since Poe was already going to be eating here, you are too."

Finn's staring at Ren, looking deeply nervous at the idea of dinner with him, and then says, "Yeah, but I'm on your side of the wedding, so… I can be part of girls' night, right? I can develop opinions on flowers and dresses." He tries a big smile at that, and it's clear that if the choices are dinner with Ren, or take a deep and active interest in bridal wedding planning, well, just because he's never given a shit about flowers or dresses before doesn't mean he can't do so now.

Rose is rolling her eyes. "Baby, you're colorblind." (Which is A: not strictly true, Finn can see at least some shades of every color, but for every shade he can see, Rose can see about twenty, and B: part of him not having any interest in this sort of stuff. Being raised among the First Order is another, bigger reason.)

Rey laughs at that. "Also, it's not that kind of girls' night." Though it's clear that the idea that there are _sides_ to this wedding thing is just starting to form in her head, and Kylo's looking at little confused by the idea, too. She supposes that, at some point, sitting down with Jon, and likely Mirina and Ellie, and putting this wedding of the Maji and Order thing into play is a plan. "But, you are part of my side, and will certainly be invited to any planning we do."

Since planning isn't getting him out of dinner with Ren, Finn's looking a little less excited, but… He's on Rey's side, so that gets a grin.

Rose nods along with that, kisses her husband, and then drops the bomb. "We caught Magiit and Elias petting in the microfarm. We're chatting with her, Savarah, and Cassie about sex and babies and love and _girl stuff_. You guys can get the older boys in the next few days."

Rey looks to Kylo. "You were right, a conversation on the care and maintenance of shafts and whatnot does appear to be in order. And we're tossing it to you guys."

There's thirty seconds of stone cold silence and very alarmed facial expressions before Finn and Kylo begin working on outdoing each other on why neither of them is even remotely suitable for this job.

But Poe sits back, and _smirks,_ both at Rey and Rose, and at the guys, before saying, "I've got this, and them." He gestures to the door. "Go, have fun."

On the way out, the guys still squabbling a bit behind them, though Rey smirks brilliantly when she feels how Poe eventually gets both of them on board with this plan, Rose says to her, "You were right?"

"A while back we were talking, and he said it was a good idea to get chatting with the kids about stuff like this, I just don't think he intended to have to be part of the conversation."

Rose looks amused by that. Granted, Kylo and anything involving kids seems to amuse her. "From before we knew who he was?"

"Yeah."

"So, even back then he was… looking out for them?"

"I mentioned Jacen had a crush on Critt, and both of us got talking about if Maji had opinions on sex and stuff, and someone would eventually need to sit them down and talk about… being adults and stuff."

Rose raises an eyebrow at her, cuddling Paige close to her chest as the wind hits them full on. "Well…"

"That's why we're talking during dinner and the girls are coming after?"

"Sounds like the start of a plan."

* * *

Inside Rose and Finn's cottage is warm, at least compared to outside, and smells like chai spices and the casserole that Rose has had bubbling away, low and slow, in the cooker all day.

Rey inhales deeply. The only downside, according to her, of Kylo bringing food back from the _Supremacy_ is that their house rarely smells like yummy things. Though, as she thinks about it, their place likely smells like coffee, and she just doesn't notice it because she's used to it.

Rose hands Paige over to Rey, who's feeling okay about hanging out with her aunt for a bit, while she pulls the casserole out, and dishes it up for the two of them.

"So, what are we telling them?" Rose asks as she pours drinks. "Other than don't make any babies anytime soon."

"Sound advice."

Rose smirks a bit, and sits down. "For the _girls._ You and Kylo…"

Rey shrugs a bit at that, while booping Paige's nose with her own. "We want them. And there's… maybe a plan… for them in the next year or so, but… there are complications."

Rose raises an eyebrow. She's eating quickly. Some meals, like today's, can be drippy, and Paige gets irate if she ends up with drops of dinner on her head while nursing with Mama. " _Complications?_ I thought your light would take care of things like that."

Rey blinks. "Uh…" She offers Paige a tiny bite of her own casserole. Paige noms it a little, and then does her best to smear it all over her face.

Rose blinks back, very aware that Rey has _no_ idea what she's talking about. "Some people have a hard time making babies. Did you not know that?"

"I… uh… didn't." Though thinking about it, she assumes some people must. After all, people have problems with everything there is to have problems with, so… "With the exception of the first time, we've always had preventatives, so…" She lets that trail off, but, it's clear that if that's an issue they'll face, it's an issue they've got no way of knowing about, yet. "More like, Han suggested that everything is easier if your home is secure, and ours isn't, not yet, not really, and we're not exactly swimming in free time right now, and…"

Rose listens, nods, finishes up her supper, takes Paige from Rey, settles both of them one of the armchairs, and lifts her shirt so Paige can have her supper too. Paige is significantly more interested in nursing than the casserole.

It's as Paige is getting settled in, that she realizes that she's been around Force sensitives so much that the fact that Han, who's been dead for more than two years now, offering advice doesn't faze her at all, and then gets to the heart of the matter. "Complications. I'll admit, I don't know much about the security stuff, but the rest of it… If you want them, you make the rest of it work. And if you don't, it's an excuse so you don't have to talk about why you don't want them."

That may be a tad closer to the heart of the matter than Rey would like, but… Talking about something like this to someone who isn't Kylo might be a good thing. "He wants them. A _lot._ I can feel it pulsing through him, and especially when he gets the chance to play with Paige, it just makes him so happy, but…"

"You don't?" The question is half letting Rey talk, half disbelief. If she doesn't want kids, she's done one hell of a job of surrounding herself with them. Including the baby girl currently nursing at her breast, _while_ looking around to see her favorite aunt, and attempting to yank the damn thing half off her chest. She boops Paige, who looks back at her. "Face over here, thank you."

Rey smiles at Paige, and also gives her a nudge back toward facing her mommy. "It's not that I don't, it's that I don't think it's as easy as he seems to think it'll be. Or maybe it's that I'm more afraid of it than he is. Or… You can't miss what you didn't have. He had bits and pieces of it, some of which were really good, and he _wants_ it. He's got a million ways, concrete, specific ways he's going to be better than his parents were. I've got… show up?"

Rose looks down at Paige, and strokes her black curls. "Honestly, show up covers a _whole_ lot of it." Paige is smiling up at her, or at least as well as she can with a nipple in her mouth. "Granted, at this point her needs are fairly simple, but… Show up covers a whole lot of them." She nods to the outside world. "Show up is a lot of what we're doing with them, too."

Rey nods. Hell, _show up_ actually covers a lot of what Ben needed from his parents and didn't get, too. Rey takes a bite of her supper. "This is good."

"Thanks. Mamie's recipe. Or as close as we can get here."

"Mamie was…"

"My dad's mom."

Rey sighs, missing the fact that she never had the chance to have things like family recipes. "So… what did your family do when you got to… petting with boys?"

Rose laughs. "We got to this well before I got petting with a boy. When you'd get to twelve, or your first cycle, whichever came first, your mom and aunts and older sisters would all get together, and it'd be halfway between a party and a lesson, and we'd talk about… everything and anything, and make up menstrual pads."

"Pads? Like… Paige's diapers?"

Rose makes a face. "Actually, yes. No plexicups where I grew up. Any sort of plastic was expensive on Hays Minor. We'd make pads out of scrap fabric. They did look a lot like Paige's nappies, and were just as much fun to deal with. You couldn't get on a suppressor until you'd had a full year of regular cycles, and none of us liked the pads."

"Suppressors?" Rey's looking uncertain. She knows what that word means, but not in relation to this conversation.

Rose is mirroring the look, but not for the same reason, back at Rey. Who doesn't know what a suppressor is? "Didn't you just say you and Kylo use protection?"

"Yes… He got a shot and…"

Rose nods, getting it. "Oh. Yeah. Okay. They make shots for women, too. Get one, and no menstruation for a year."

Rey blinks at that. "No… for a year?"

"Yep, nothing. You can't get pregnant on them. They suggest you take a gap year every five years," she looks down at Paige. "And, especially if you're used to being covered, it's easy to forget to use a backup. But, when you're on them, no babies, no cycles, no flows, no dealing with all the crap that goes with your flow. You basically get to be a guy."

"Are you on one now?"

Rose shakes her head. "They mess up your ability to nurse. Really, it's _just_ like being a guy." She gently strokes her chin. "I don't love my cycle, but I don't mind not having to pluck whiskers."

Rey looks at Paige, and says, "So… Little girl here?"

"Wasn't exactly planned. He had a shot, too, but they wear off after three years, and it's not like the First Order medics were keeping track of his shots anymore, and I wasn't thinking about it because I'm used to being covered, so… Oops." She nuzzles the top of her daughter's head, and then says, "Mommy's favorite surprise."

Rey chuckles at that. "I suppose that's one way to do it. Just… forget."

Rose half inclines her head. "Eh… I mean, there's forgetting and there's _forgetting_ and once you've had this conversation, you can pretty much only do the latter, so…"

Rey rolls her eyes. "Yeah." She sighs, eats a few more bites, and says, "I don't want it to be an accident. I mean… I want us to make a baby, intentionally, but…" It's hard to say things like this to anyone who isn't Kylo, and right now, it's impossible to say to him, because she knows he wants it, and she knows he'll be disappointed, and she knows he'll twist himself into a shape to fit her, like he was doing with her/them hiding, but… She makes herself do it. "It's scary. And I hate being scared, and it's easier to not be scared, and the rest of this… Order stuff is all the scared I can take at one time, so… No babies for now."

"That's fair. But… It's normal to be scared by huge things that change your entire life and upend everything you know. In fact, if that doesn't scare you, it's a pretty good sign that something about you or the situation you're in, isn't right."

Rey pokes at her supper. "I was almost never afraid on Jakku."

Rose knows that isn't true. Even without the Force she can feel that lie, but she can also feel the grain of truth to it, too. But she also knows that right now isn't the time to rip that apart. "Yeah, that's a huge warning sign. It means you've got nothing to lose. Nothing you love." She thinks about that for another moment. "Don't get me wrong, I don't think we should all be roaming around paralyzed by constant terror, but… Fear is the flipside of loving things and people. Because you know you can lose them." She strokes her daughter's face. "One day this will be over. If everything goes perfect, and we make all the right decisions, she's going to grow up and leave us, and we won't see her every day, and she won't sleep snuggled up against my chest, and she'll be out there having a life and adventures and experiences that I won't be part of, won't even know about and… And no matter what, it's going to be scary and hard and… And that's love. Everything we love will, eventually, leave us, and dealing with that without shutting ourselves down or going insane is the hardest thing we'll ever do."

Rey gently squeezes her friend's hand. "Have I ever told you that I think you're what the Light is supposed to be? The Jedi couldn't figure out how to deal with that fear, so they made sure they never loved anything. And that just seems… empty."

Rose smiles bright and happy at that. "Well, if you're right about the Force has a plan and knows what it's doing, which I'm still skeptical about, for the record, then there's a reason I am who I am, and why I'm here, now."

Rey sniggers a little. "Yeah, well, for the record, I'm not one hundred percent sure about that, either, so…"

"So… Girls, coming soon, and filling them in on all things love and sex."

Rey shakes her head. "I read up on the mechanics of it. Once, I got here. I mean, until I was here, I didn't have the time or resources to learn, so… Apparently, it's more complicated than, once a month or so, you bleed."

Rose laughs. "Yeah, it's a tad more complicated than that. But, I'm thinking MX-6 can handle the details on that. We're probably talking more about the ideas and actions of sex. The things a droid can't teach."

Rey smirks a bit as she takes another bite of supper. "First things first, one day, you'll wake up with the sense that there's this… person… out there, somewhere, a boy you've half-dreamed about and…"

"Okay, maybe not that much idea. I don't think we've all got Force-ordained mates lurking about out there, waiting for us to shine some light on his dark ass."

Rey chuckles at that. "I have a feeling we're" she gestures, making it clear she means she and Kylo… "taken to the extreme, but… I do think there's someone out there, maybe not one and only one, but at least a few people we're meant to be with or near or effect somehow."

Rose shrugs. "Maybe. Or maybe we just make the best of what comes our way. Again, I'm skeptical about the whole Force-destiny thing. But, destined or not, we're going to run into a lot of people, and learning how to deal with them matters. And… probably some sort of context beyond, get hot, make babies matters."

Rey's nodding along with that. "Especially since they appear to be getting hot at least a decade before we'd like them making babies."

Rose strokes her daughter's face. "Especially." Then she looks up at Rey. "They? Does that mean you didn't?"

Rey shrugs. "Speaking of complicated… Uh… Kylo's talked about it from his end: constantly, always wanting, and body jumping up at any provocation, and… and I can honestly say nothing like _that_ ever happened to me."

Rose raises an eyebrow. "You didn't have a boy crazy phase?"

"No. I had a boy and girl somewhat interested phase, but never crazy. Just… something nice to fantasize about from time to time."

Rose nods at that, too. "Uh… Yeah, I had… um… maybe three solid years where unless I was actively thinking about something else, with someone else making me think about it, I was daydreaming about boys, and boys touching me, and touching them, and running off to secluded places so we could get naked and… It was pretty intense."

Rey nods. "Yeah. I didn't have that. I'd… maybe when I was cleaning a find or something, gaze at someone, and wonder a bit, but, it wasn't constant or anything."

"No crushes?"

Rey shakes her head. "No." Then she shrugs a bit. "I've been reading, and… uh… long-term hunger can kill sex drive, so… It may have been that I was barely getting enough to eat to keep my body growing, so… No energy to waste on boys or girls."

Rose nods at that, too. "Okay. Yeah, that was before the First Order came, and we were poor, but… There was enough to eat, usually." She shrugs. "No one was fat. Or plump, really. Meals could get pretty skimpy that first month of spring where the gardens weren't producing, yet. But there were meals, plural, every day." She looks at herself. Her body is starting to slim back down again, but every time it looks like she might find her cheekbones again, Finn's shoving food at her, because… he can. Because as long as she's feeding their child, he wants her plump. Because his ideal of a husband (likely learned at Chewie's knee) is very deeply entrenched with providing a home and food and safety for his wife and young. "I'm bigger now than anyone I grew up with. But we weren't starving, or close, not until after the First Order came."

Rey looks at Rose and at Paige. "You were the first visibly pregnant woman I'd ever seen. She's the first baby I've ever really seen. Women at Niima Station… I mean, some of them must have had children, but, I never saw one. Children got brought there from somewhere else. Plutt kept the rations short enough you couldn't carry a child to term."

"He controlled your food and water?"

"Yeah."

"Or he put a contraceptive in it, so you couldn't get pregnant. Pregnant women can't, or at least shouldn't, be working as hard. And some of the contraceptives out there will kill your sex drive. That's part of how they work."

Rey sighs. That makes _a lot_ of sense. "He would have done something like that. People had sex, but there weren't babies, so… Something was going on. Women horded slicks, I remember that."

"Slicks?" Rose knows what slick is, but she's also fairly sure that Rey's not talking about lube.

"Scum sacks?"

Rose stops looking blank; she's starting to catch on. "Gloves?"

Rey's trying to imagine one stretched over a hand, let alone _why_ anyone might do that. "I don't think you'd put one on your hand."

Rose closes her eyes and shakes her head, mentally sniggering a bit. "The sheath that goes on a man's shaft so he doesn't cum in you."

"Come? Uh… doesn't that defeat the purpose if he can't come in you?" Rey's thinking about that, but… Why would a man need something special to keep him out? He could just rub against your belly or hip or mouth or… no sheath necessary. Maybe it makes not being inside feel better?

And Rose can see that she's being bitten by the homonym. "Not come… cum… You know when they," Rose makes a little spurting gesture with her fingers. "You know, when they finish. How have we not talked about this before?"

"I don't know. We haven't. Spurt. That's what Kylo calls it. I didn't know they did that until after I was with him, so that's what I call it, too. Why come?"

"It's just what we called it. One's a verb, and that's something guys and girls can do, the good, tingly feeling, and the other's a noun and that's the fluid that comes out of guy. They sound the same but are spelled differently."

Rey's squinting at her. "And one literally means get inside of you, where all the coming and cumming happens. Your slang is weird."

Rose smirks a little at that. "Yeah, well, it's better than not having words for it at all."

Rey rolls her eyes. "They were scum sacks, so I'm going to guess the word was scum, but, like I said… I knew they put it in, I knew you'd end up wet after, I didn't know it came out of them."

Rose is sniggering along with that. "That must have been a hell of a surprise."

Rey rolls her eyes a bit more, a smile on her face. "I'll admit I wasn't expecting it, and then didn't know what to do with it, but, apparently swallowing is polite, so I swallowed."

Rose is absolutely cackling at that. "Oh, honey! He didn't… warn you… Speaking of polite, it's polite to let a girl know before you come."

Rey sighs, looking somewhere between amused and embarrassed. "I could feel he was close to something, but holding back, so I told him to enjoy it, and then he thrashed around a bit, poked me in the tonsil, and there were these pulses and… wet… and… Anyway, I didn't know _that_ was going to happen, and he didn't know I didn't know what I was asking for."

Rose laughing so hard that Paige is starting to look surprised. Dinner doesn't usually jiggle this much.

And it's the sound of Rose laughing like she's just heard the best joke ever, that greets Magiit, Cassie, and Savarah as they come to the Ticos' door.

* * *

The girls are a bit snow dusted. "More coming down?" Rose asks as she waves them in, and Rey stands up, pulling out chairs, getting cups for chai.

"It's just blowing around," Magiit replies, and then says, "Cassie?"

Cassie closes her eyes and lets herself feel. There are a lot of different Force specialties, and one of Cassie's is the ability to feel the way the weather is flowing. "Midnight. Big storm rolling in by midnight." She's quiet for another moment, and then blinks, looking at the rest of them. "I asked Jacen to check the ropes."

They've had blizzards hard and heavy enough that visibility drops to nothing. So, these days, there are ropes that connect all the buildings. The whole settlement is less than two klicks end to end, but step wrong in a whiteout, especially if you aren't Force sensitive, and you might never find where you need to go. The first few times they had full on whiteout, some of the kids were out in it, and the only reason they didn't get completely lost is that it's impossible to lose someone in a settlement filled with Force sensitives.

That said, _no one_ enjoyed staggering around, blind, trying to find a lost and panicking child by feel alone, so they keep the ropes so no one gets lost.

And Cassie's got the feel of on-coming whiteout now, so she lets them know at least twenty minutes before.

Rey nods at that. "Thank you."

The girls take off their outer coats, and settle in around Rose and Finn's table and living room. Rey hands out cups of spiced tea, rich with milk and sweet with honey.

Rose shifts Paige to her other breast, and then says, "So, boys, sex, babies, love, growing up. It's all on the table tonight." She pets Paige as she gets settled in on the right. "First and foremost, though, sex makes babies, babies are a _ton_ of work, and while making them can be a lot of fun, cooking them and getting them out, and then dealing with them _isn't._ So, not making any babies until you really, really, really want one is important, because you will never find another job that's going to take more of your time, energy, body, life, mind, etc… etc…"

The girls are all looking at each other, or Rey, or Rose, or their cups of tea, all of them a little embarrassed and on edge.

Rey has an easier time catching that than Rose does, so she's the one who says, "We're not here to scold or tell you sex is bad, or don't do it. There are ways to have sex and enjoy yourselves and the boys and not make babies. And, apparently, our med bay is stocked with them, so, enjoy yourselves, and the boys, or each other, but don't make any babies, yet, okay?"

That's not relaxing the girls much. Magiit's okay. But Savarah and Cassie are tense. There's… a disconnect somewhere.

Cassie's looking at the floor, biting her lips. Then she says, "That's not what Bishop Alric used to say."

"What did the Bishop used to say?" Rose asks, and Rey's feeling cold, because Cassie's cold remembering it.

"He said flesh was sin. That we were perfect beings chained in corpses rotted through with sin and evil, and the needs of the flesh stained the purity of our souls, made us unworthy of the light of the stars. And if we gave into our base desires, we'd never get back to the stars. We'd be barred from their light forever."

Rose and Rey blink at each other. For a moment, they're both so shocked they just can't move or think or anything. After a few more seconds, they start to respond. Rose swallows. Rey inhales fast and sharp.

"Was that all?" Rose asks. Rey's always assumed that Rose has to get mad about things, but she's never seen it. Until now. It's clear that if Rose ever runs into that Bishop, he's going to have a _very_ bad day.

"No." Cassie can pick up on how Rose is reacting to this, and it's clear that part of her likes Rose's anger. Part of her is afraid. These lessons were… private. Not necessarily secret, but she and the other girls weren't supposed to talk about them. Rey gets hit with the sense of _Special lessons for special girls._

"You can tell, Cassie. Anytime someone… an adult someone… tells you to keep secrets… about something important, not like, making a surprise for a friend… That's a good sign that they don't want anything good for you," Rey says.

Cassie nods, takes a deep breath, and continues, "He said the divine was man-shaped, and women were a false copy of the pure form. Corrupted by the sins of the flesh and the needs of lust. And our… bits… are filthy gutters made for holding the pollution of the male form. He said that our pure form is spirit, and spirit only, and every time we fornicate, that risks pulling another perfect soul out of the glory of the heavens and into the hell of our decaying corpse bodies."

Rose is up barely a second after Cassie finishes saying that, moving faster than Rey, who's sitting there, frozen, still stunned by those words.

"Oh, honey, NO!" Rose is holding Cassie. And Paige is fussing a bit at being so suddenly moved from one side of the room to the other, and smooshed against another person. Then she kneels in front of her. "First and foremost, the only filthy thing there was that man's mind. _He_ was the problem, not you, or any of the other poor people who had to listen to his lies."

"We know Rey doesn't talk like that," Magiit says, "but," she nods to Savarah and Cassie, "a lot of us got… bad lessons."

Savarah nods. She doesn't like talking about what the Presbyters used to say back on her settlement. But they were awfully clear, from a young age, that sex was something girls weren't supposed to do, at least, not until they were married, and once married they were only supposed to do it to make babies. But they also looked the other way when the boys and men would pat her fanny when she was working. And, being 'Godly men,' their hands never wandered, but their eyes did, and their thoughts certainly did. And they never told the boys _they_ weren't supposed to be doing it.

Rose looks to Rey. "What was that you were saying about The Force having a plan?"

Rey nods, slowly. "I believe the Force does have a plan. That we come into each other's lives with a purpose, and right now, if all I ever get to do is wipe those ideas out of your heads, I'd think the Force would be satisfied."

Rose nods. "What's Rey keep telling you? 'The Force doesn't make mistakes.' You are you, in this body, because you are supposed to be you, in this body. These bodies are made, just the way they are, because that's how they're supposed to be. There's nothing bad or wrong or cursed about a female body. There's no _pure form._ " The way Rose says those words, they become a vile curse. "It's just a body that a billion generations of evolution through the Force shaped into a perfect vessel for making babies.

"Anyone says anything bad about female bodies, all that person is telling you is that he hates life. Talk shit about pussies and vaginas and cunnies and…"

"Maomaos," Rey adds.

"And all the other pretty words for it, and you're saying the only part of a human being who can grow another human being is bad and awful and unworthy. And if someone is saying that, what they're telling you is they worship death," Rose adds.

Rey shakes her head a bit at that. Not entirely sure where Rose is wrong, but… Her mouth starts talking before her brain is entirely caught up. "Death is… vital, necessary. It's part of how the balance works, but… I don't think he was worshiping death. That's… understandable. Death is… huge, important, shapes… anything it touches. He was…" Rey feels a curl of nauseous dread in her guts, and tries to think of how to put this in a context that would make sense to Cassie. "hating existence. Light, by itself, is sterile. Literal light. The glow of the stars. All of it up there, just zipping around, it's… Nothing, until it touches a person, or plant, or animal. It allows life to thrive, but by itself, it's useless. And… that man was telling you that the highest good he could imagine was sterile, useless, light.

"On top of that, he was lying to you—"

"We know that, Rey," Savarah says.

"I know, but… I mean, he was _literally_ lying to you. Go outside, well, not right this second, but after sunup, and there it is, the light of the stars on your skin. If there's more to light than just the glow, anytime you want or need it, you just need to go outside on a sunny day. It's always there, you've just got to find it. Nothing can… bar you from the light of the stars. It's always out there."

Cassie smiles a bit at that.

Rey picks up her cup of tea. "It's in stuff like this, too. We have to eat to survive, and everything we consume exists because the light of the stars nurtured it. This tea. The animals that made the milk in it ate plants that grew because of the light. The bees that made the honey lived on flowers, that grew in the light. Your supper. The power cells on the micro farms. The light of the stars is as much in your belly as the air around you, and you can never, ever be barred from it."

The girls seem to like that.

"Maybe one day, you'll go back, drag that cajoolie out into the light, and point that out to everyone," Rey says.

Cassie smiles brighter at that. It's clear she's got some detailed fantasies of doing some extremely unpleasant things to that Bishop.

Magiit's nodding at that. "That Bishop of yours… Sounds like the kind of guy who couldn't get laid and took it out on everyone else."

Rose smirks at that. "Back in the Resistance, we used to have a joke about Snoke. His face was so ugly he had to take over the galaxy to get a date, and even then, she made him put a bag over his head."

That gets a little chuckle. And Rey's wondering if that was Poe's joke, because it sounds like something he would have come up with.

Rey says to them, "Take a moment and feel it. Let yourselves go into the Force, and _feel_ it. The Force doesn't hate. It doesn't prefer one sort of body or another. It certainly doesn't disdain bodies. It _gave_ us bodies so we could experience all of the good things that come from having a body. It gave us bodies that _feel pleasure_ for a reason."

"You heard us cackling away right before you came in. We were laughing about sex. Sex is supposed to be fun, and pleasurable, and funny. You were designed for this to be something that can make you happy," Rose says.

"Critt talks about that some. How the Jedi didn't believe in that," Savarah says.

Rey wiggles her hand a bit, indicating that Critt's sort of got the idea. "Take what Critt says about the Jedi with some skepticism. He didn't really learn what they thought. He learned what his parents thought they thought. They were right about some of it, and not right about other parts. For example, the Jedi thought the Dark side was very powerful and seductive, and they thought that wanting things would make it harder to avoid the Dark side. So, they went out of their way to avoid things that would make them want. So, bodies weren't a problem. Pleasure wasn't a problem. Wanting pleasure causing you to do things leading to the Dark side was the problem. But strip that down, get it as three generations of hearsay, and you get 'Bodies are bad.'

"The Jedi were mostly celibate… Didn't have sex. But not entirely. Sex was fine. They could have lots of sex, assuming they could do it without getting too attached to the person they were having it with, and could do it without getting entwined with jealousy, anger, passion, and want. A lot of people can't do that, so for the most part they just didn't have sex. But there's nothing, anywhere, in any of the actual Jedi writings, saying sex or pleasure or bodies or anything like that is bad. Even they knew that the Force gave us bodies and our wants for a reason. They just didn't have a particularly good method for coping with the dark feelings that could accompany those wants.

"Seriously, feel it." She glances to Magiit, and then leans across the table and takes her hand. "I know you can't on your own, so piggy back on me. Let yourselves feel your bodies and the Force, and _know._ "

And Rey does take the time to focus in on it, on her body, on the Force, on Magiit, and the feel of the thrum of the energies around them. She lets herself glide through the light, and their lives, and shares that sensation. As she works on the visualization, on the feel of it, she says, especially for Cassie, "Feel it; it's not separate from your body. There's no hierarchy, where the soul is somehow better than the body. It's part of and in and through it. The spirit may be eternal, but it thrums thought every cell of you, and it holds the shape of the body long after the body is gone, and it misses the sensations and abilities the body had when it's gone."

Rose is watching this. She can, almost, feel the energies around her, especially with them radiating through the three Force sensitives, and Magiit riding along with Rey's view of it. And after a second, she still can't _feel_ it, but she can see it. "You're glowing, ladies."

Rey lets the glow slide away gently. "The next time you feel those doubts or vile words creeping into your head, remember that glow."

She can feel that helps, some at least. It can't erase the past words, can't easily shift more than a decade of attitudes, but it does _help._

Rose also offers a little smile. "Okay, ground rules, sex, love, everything… For… Maji, I guess."

Rey nods. "Okay, sex for Maji. Here, you get to do it, when and as, and with whom you like. Or not do it. If you're working on your balancing, and feeling the flows of the Force, you'll know when it's time. Time might be soon. It might not. But, whenever it is, that's when you get to do it."

"When did you?" Magiit asks.

"I didn't make love with anyone before Kylo," Rey says.

"I was seventeen. Finn was twenty-four. You get to decide for yourself what you want, and what works for you. There's no magic age," Rose adds.

Cassie thinks for a moment. "You're the first person Finn had sex with, but Finn's not the only person you've had sex with?"

"Nope. I was with the Resistance for a few years before he got there, and back on Hays Minor I had a sweetie or three." She smiles a little at that.

"More than one… is okay?" Savarah asks. "I mean… They used to tell us marriage was forever, and it was one person, and only one, and… The Force does something like that, too, right?"

Rose shrugs.

Rey shakes her head. "I don't think so. I think some people are extremely well suited for each other. Kylo and I, Rose and Finn, but I don't think it's a one and only one and there will never, ever be anyone else. Maybe for some people that's true. For some, it likely isn't. And… I don't think there's a hierarchy. One true love and a lot of lesser loves, but… I don't actually know. I don't have a lot of experience with this."

Rose inclines her head a bit. "I think she's got it." She cuddles Paige, who's slowing down on her meal. "I think _this part,_ the raising babies part, is easier if you've got a partner just as dedicated to your home and heart and child/children, and you are to his, but… I love Finn. I love our life, and the life I hope we get to live together. That doesn't make my earlier sweeties any less my loves. And… if something happened to me, or him, neither of us would expect the other to mourn forever and shut ourselves off from loving again."

Rey adds, "You remember Jon. He lost his husband a few years ago, and he's hurting, but… I don't think he'll stay single forever. I don't think it'd be good for him if he did."

"Poe lost his boy twenty years ago, and he'd tell you he stayed stuck too long, but he's also starting to think about opening his heart up again," Rose says. "And… it's love. It's the feelings that bind us to each other. I loved my sister, and my family, and Finn, and Paige, and… It's not one love is better or more than the others, they're just different."

"You love who you love, as you love them, okay? And… You don't have to love anyone you don't want," Rey says. That sounds like fine advice on the subject. "That said kindness or at least tolerance is likely worth extending as much as you can. But you don't have to love anyone you don't want to."

"Does Finn know you've had more sweeties than he has?" Magiit asks.

"Of course. You don't need to go into in-depth detail, but, if you're in a relationship with someone, it's a good idea that they know what sort of experience you've got."

"That didn't… bug him?" Magiit asks.

"No. Why do you think it should have?" Rose replies.

Magiit shrugs. "On Canto… We didn't have any Bishops, not like Cassie or Savarah had, but the older girls always said that you could play around like you wanted, but never let a man think you played around more than he did. They'd get weird about it if you'd gotten more than he did." She rolls her eyes a little at that.

Rose looks to Rey, who just shrugs. "Apparently, that's nothing either of us ever ran into before." Rose is quiet for a moment, and then continues on with, "Okay… There's something of a kick that goes with knowing you're the first person to make your partner feel that way. I didn't expect that the first time Finn and I made love, but…" she's smiling, "Yeah. It wasn't just that I was making him feel good, which is a whole lot of fun, too. It was that I was the first person to make him feel that kind of good. That… he'd never have that experience, not knowing what it was going to be like, hoping and eager, and then giving him something _so much_ better than anything he was dreaming of… That was intense and good."

"Did Kylo like doing that for you?" Magiit asks Rey.

Rey blinks. "Uh… I've never asked, or sought that out from him. I know he really likes me enjoying him and what he's doing." She's remembering the green panties, and how much Kylo enjoyed her enjoying that. "That's a way to help figure out if the time is right, and the person is right, do you enjoy making them feel good? If you don't… Well, he's… she's probably wrong for you."

"The reverse is true, too. If he's not getting off on getting you off, don't sleep with him," Rose says. "You want him to be at least as into your pleasure as you are." Rose thinks for a moment about her Force sensitive charges here. "Okay, not one hundred percent of the time. He's allowed to have selfish time where he's just in it for him, but, in general, there should be times where he's doing you for your sake, and when he's doing you for your sake, he should be enjoying it. If pleasuring you is a chore, get rid of him." Rose thinks about that for a moment. "Actually, that's good relationship advice, not just sex advice, you should enjoy doing things for each other. I mean, not all the time and not everything, but if more stuff is a chore than a pleasure, you're probably with the wrong person."

Rey smiles at that, thinking of Lady Ren. "Yeah, apparently, for the right person, you'll do things you never dreamed of."

Rose smirks at that. "Yep. That said, boundaries. You're also allowed to make lines and say, 'Nope, we're not doing this, or you can't ask me for that,' especially at your age, when you're still figuring you out, knowing where the 'I'm not sure if I want to go there' boundaries are important."

"What kind of boundaries?" Cassie asks.

"Whatever you need," Rey says. "Uh… The turtle." She looks to the girls, and they nod, remembering that, though it's clear they don't understand what it's got to do with sex. "I… uh… wasn't thrilled with Kylo popping up like that because I had it handled, and I didn't need him at my side for it, and… well, he was still hiding… but he felt me afraid, and he was there. And that's one his hard lines, he _can't_ sit back and feel me in fear or pain, and not come to me. That's the thing I can't ask him to do." Rey thinks for a moment, realizing that might not be useful for the girls. "But, we're… settled, you know? The off-limits bits for us are pretty few and far between. Now… You set them for where you're comfortable. And… boundaries can move. For a very long time, I didn't like being touched. With strangers, I still don't much like it, but in a lot of cultures people squeeze hands with each other as a greeting, so… I'm getting used to that, pulling that boundary back a bit. It used to be that if a stranger tried to touch me, they were going to go home with at least a big bruise. Now, I'll gently squeeze hands with the best of them. But if they try to take it further, that's a firm no, and if my posture shifting, me stepping back, and glaring doesn't give them the hint, I follow up with a verbal 'No,' and sometimes freeze them hard."

Rose says, "What do you think good boundaries would be?"

The three younger girls all sort of look at each other.

"No sex without a sheath?" Magiit says.

"That's a great one. My Mamie always said, that at least once, as you're getting to know a man, tell him no. Doesn't have to be on a big thing, but on something he wants to do, tell him no. Then see what he does with that no. If you get anything other than immediate, 'Okay, we're not doing that,' you don't see him again."

"How does that go with… doing stuff you wouldn't normally do?" Savarah asks.

" _When you're getting to know him,"_ Rose says, highlighting the important part. "Once you know that he'll take your no and run with it, you can work on learning to compromise on things, but if you tell him, 'No, I don't want to go to the café,' and he wheedles and moans and complains about it, what do you think he's going to do when you say no to something that matters to him? Like, say, getting his shaft in you?"

The girls don't need it spelled out further than that.

"But… But…" Cassie looks down. "What if you say 'no,' and he says 'yes?'" She bites her lips. "My sister said 'no.' Her owner said 'yes.' If the Order hadn't come…"

Rey and Rose share a look. Kylo only brought them Cassie, and she's never said that she had a sister on the _Supremacy._

"Where's your sister now, Cassie?" Rose asks, softly, hoping that Kylo didn't leave her behind, afraid she… and a baby… Rose just knows there was a baby, probably because Cassie's projecting right now, weren't there to be left behind.

Cassie looks away. "She was too little, narrow hips, they said, and the baby wasn't positioned well, and… They both died. We were… going to go, all three of us. Once she had healed up, but… But it was just me."

Rose and Rey glance at each other, hearts heavy. Savarah and Magiit, who both knew this story, are also solemn.

"When I was serving drinks…" Savarah says, "You'd get better tips if you'd be sweet and let them pat your fanny. I didn't like that, but, money's money, and you still have to pay rent, and… And I had enough power to make sure they never got out of line, never more than a pat and some sweet words about being pretty, but… I didn't like it."

Rey takes a deep breath, she hadn't thought about it, but if she had, she'd have hoped to not have to get into this, but... That's not the lives they've lived. "Remember how I talk about sometimes you'll fail? You'll try your best, and do everything you can, and sometimes it's just not enough?"

They nod.

"I was probably about Cassie's age. Maybe a little older. Old enough to have regular-ish cycles and the start of breasts. Young enough I wasn't very tall, yet. There were… a group of them. And I said no. And I fought, and I screamed, and I had my staff, and I know I hit a few of them, but… It wasn't enough." She shrugs a little. "Sometimes, it's just not enough." She rubs her lips together. "On a practical level, if… If you can't fight anymore, or if there's just too many of them… The goal is to survive and get away. First and foremost, survive it. Go limp. Relax as much as you can. It'll hurt less that way. And… Some of them like it when you fight, so don't give them that.

"I didn't have any special Force skills when it happened. Didn't have any Force skills at all. But, you can pull your mind away from your body without the Force. You can send it off, so it's just something that happens to your body. We can work on that. It's probably… useful in a lot of situation.

"I was alone. None of you ever will be. I've got a feeling, that if any of us wearing a Maji pendent scream out with our minds, someone will hear. I know at least two non-Force sensitives who can call out if they work on it. We can work on that, teaching all of us. Being able to defend each other. So, go limp, pull your brain away, call for help, _survive_ , and later, we'll find them, and we'll kill them."

It's the darkest, rawest thing they've ever heard Rey say, and it makes a shiver pass through the room.

"Did you… kill them?" Cassie asks.

"No. _I_ didn't. It happened once. And I hid after. But, I still had to work, still needed to eat, so I came out, and went back to work, and a few of the older ladies gave me some soft cloths for the bleeding. One of them gave me tea… I was on a desert planet, and a gift of water was a major thing. And as soon as the sun started to set, I'd run home and hide. A month later, I didn't make it in time. I'd found a good trove, and tried to get one more run in, and… And it happened again. And the next day, I decided to leave Niima Station. I'd found a downed AT-AT and turned it into my home. It was a few klicks from Niima, so it was safe.

"I got bigger, stronger, better with my staff.

"But I didn't get to kill them. I didn't… even see most of them. You'll do everything you can, and sometimes you'll fail." She tries a little smile. "But none of us are alone any longer, and we protect our own."

And Rose says, quietly, thinking of what Kylo did to Jakku. "And if we can't protect, we avenge."

"That's the idea." She takes a drink, and then stands up in front of the girls. "Do you see me? Whole, here, with you. Living in a place I love, with a man I love, with a life that's important, with all of you, working to build something great?" They nod, not sure where she's going with this. "I failed in the minute, with them. I fought until I couldn't fight anymore, and it wasn't enough to protect myself. But I survived it. I'm still here, now, doing something important and good. They didn't cripple me. They didn't kill me. They didn't win. Do whatever it takes to survive it, and from there, you can do anything."

Then she licks her lips. "And, I'll be honest, it took a while to get used to men. For a long time, I'd be defensive and skittish if one got too close. That's a big part of not touching people. Even Finn," who they all consider the human equivalent of a cream puff, a soft, fluffy, sweetheart of a man, "scared me at first. He grabbed my hand, and I hit him, hard. But, that calmed down. I got to know men who weren't out to hurt me. I can see the person, not just the threat, now.

"For a long time, the idea of sex with men as something good or that I might want to do wasn't there for me, either. I'd touch myself because it felt good, but letting a man do it was a steep hill to climb, but I got up the hill, with Kylo, and he's got his own ghosts and scars when it comes to this, and… If you survive, you can do anything. We did.

"And yes, sometimes, even now, and even with him, the memories are fresh, and ugly, and sometimes certain positions just don't work, because they're just too… everything. So, we adjust and do something else. Sometimes I need his voice or mind in mine, because that's a really vibrant way to _know_ it's him, but… You do that if you need it. And if you're with a decent man, he'll do it with or for you.

"And together," she smiles at that genuine. "We've had some _sweet_ times.

"Just, remember, anything you survive, you can heal. I'm not saying it's fast or easy or you won't have scars, but first, last, middle, survive it."

Cassie says, quietly. "Can that… happen to boys?"

Rey's not sure what she's asking for a moment, then she feels the question and puts that together with Kylo's got his own scars… "Uh..." She doesn't know. "Kylo's got different scars. Sex stuff, but not like that."

"Yes," Rose says. "If it can happen to you, it can happen to a boy. Except for the ending up with a baby bit."

"Most of Kylo's stuff is like that filth the Bishops were spewing at you. Ideas that your body, your desires, your… natural human functions, were bad or disgusting."

"Oh."

There's a general air of gloom.

Rose is quiet for a moment, and then she says, "My Mamie used to say, 'Between your ears and between your legs lies all the power a woman needs.' And, not all. Like Rey said, sometimes… you just don't win the fight, but… enough. There's enough power. Your bodies, your minds, you're not just built to be victims and vessels. You have power, just by being female, you have power.

"You know I'm from Hays Minor, right?"

The girls nod.

"You know what happened to Hays Minor?"

"The First Order," Magiit replies. Growing up in Canto Bight, among the Faviers, she'd overheard the men who built the weapons tested there bragging about how well they worked as they inspected the Faviers they were going to bet on.

"Yeah. They came, and at first they were running the mines, pulling anything of any value out. Mamie watched it, and… She knew it was going to get bad, just from the way they were mining. You don't tear through a planet like that if you're intending to stick around. One night, about a year before…" her voice goes hard, "they turned it into a weapons testing facility, she said to Paige and I, 'They're going to take everything of value off this planet, and leave the rest to rot. You girls are young and pretty. Make friends. With _officers_. Be _valuable_ and you'll get out, alive."

Rose's eyes are hot, remembering. "When the First Order showed up, all the other traders left, so they were it, the only way off planet. And… Every day, we'd get home, and Mamie would be there, asking, 'Did you make a friend?'

"Eventually, we did. A month before they began testing, Paige got out. With her new husband. He was stationed in Coruscant, so that's where I was going to go as soon as I could. A week before testing began, my _friend_ got me out, too."

"What was he like?" Savarah asks.

"Convenient." And it's clear that's all Rose is going to say about him. "He was stationed on Purnell IV. Eventually, I got free of him, and got to Coruscant, and found Paige. She'd already lost her husband. Once we were together again, we got to the Resistance." She looks to Cassie. "That's probably what your Bishop didn't like about pussies. Many men… at least the ones who like women… They'll do things they shouldn't to get pussy. And… if you're willing, if you want or need to, you can use that. I'm alive because I'm pretty, and I smiled at the right time, and opened my legs for the right man."

"Do you… know what happened to him?" Cassie asks.

"Stationed on Starkiller, last I heard."

They all know that more likely than not, that means he's dead. Rose sighs, blowing out a deep breath. "Well, that's a lot grimmer than I was hoping for with this." She shakes her head a bit, and notices that Paige is mostly just nursing to suckle right now. Supper's done. "Come on, you. Off you get." She gets Paige detached, and rights her shirt. She snuggles her girl. "Rey's right. The past happens, and you make the best decisions you can with what you've got, and maybe they aren't _good_ ones, but… Survive it. As long as you draw breath, you can keep going and get better." She snorts a bit of a laugh as she gets Paige into burping position. "You've all seen Kylo around, right? If we want to talk about doing better…"

Rey smiles a bit at that. "A _lot_ better." She smirks a little. "He'd say… okay, maybe not to you, he'd probably blush too hard to get it out, but… Sex with someone you love, or at least like, helps make things better. Helps make it easier to be _better._

"It's not an accident that sex feels good and makes you happy. The Force knows what it's doing. Sex… it's part of a positive feedback cycle. Attraction, love, sex… put them together and they help you feel better in yourself, and helps to bind you to each other."

Rose grins at that. "Oh, yeah. At first sight, I was kind of star struck by Finn. I mean, there he was, _The Finn._ And, I was having an absolute _shit_ day, but seeing him there, that just perked everything up. Until I figured out what he was doing."

"What was he doing?" Cassie asks.

"Running away from the Resistance." Rose shrugs a bit. "Sometimes doing the right thing takes a bit of outside persuasion."

Rey grins, also preferring getting this conversation somewhere lighter. "And Rose persuaded him. With an electro-shock wand."

The girls look like they'd just been hit with one of those wands, too, and then start to giggle.

Finally, Savarah says, "So, uh… You're saying Finn's not a natural hero?"

"No, I'm not saying that. He was trying to get away so he could find Rey and make sure she was okay. I'm just saying he needed a little help finding the right course."

Rey chuckles at that. "Positive feedback cycle?"

"Right. So, first sight, Wow! A long klick of smooth brown skin and those eyes, then I got to know him, and physical attraction slides into mental attraction, which deepens physical attraction, and I wake up after the battle of Crait, and he's sitting there next to me, more of those deep, soulful eyes. He strokes my face, and gently kisses my forehead, and then says, 'See, I'm going to have an easier time saving what I love if you're up and about, okay? Can't save you if you're just lying here in bed, hurt. So, you've gotta heal up and get out there, so I can go save you, because we're not even, and…' And I leaned up and kissed him again. And, really, that wasn't love yet, but it was awfully strong like, which made attraction stronger, and attraction plus like led to love, which led to sex, which made attraction and love grow stronger, and they cycle into each other."

"Your body, mind, and soul are all meant to support and feed each other," Rey adds, "and then make more people. Sex feels good, because we're designed to create life, to celebrate it, and thus making more life makes us feel good."

"But we don't have to only do it to make life?" Savarah says. "That was… something else the Bishops were awfully sure of."

Rey rolls her eyes. "Do Kylo and I have kids?"

"No," Magiit decides she'll be the one to answer the obvious question.

"You wanna guess how often we have sex?"

The three girls look at each other. Two of them blush. Magiit smirks. "A lot. Critt told us about that."

"Why does Critt…" Rey lets it trail off. She knows sex is part of how Kylo stays more balanced with his dark, and she knows he's working with Critt on his own dark, so… "He'd be right. No, you don't have to wait until you want to create new lives. Just for… making yourself and your partner feel good is fine." Rey's quiet for a moment. "Like we've been talking about, life's going to pile sad and hard and bitter on you, so you might as well grab, with both hands and your feet, too, if you can manage it, anything that makes you genuinely feel good."

"Does it? Really?" Savarah asks.

"You like petting with Critt, right?" Rose says.

"I do, but… Just about everyone likes petting." Savarah rolls her eyes a bit. "A lot of girls didn't much like the sex part. Rahel… She was one of the other servers I worked with, she said sometimes guys are too big, and it hurts, and… Eventually, it'd hurt less, but it never got _good._ And Kell said good was possible, sometimes, with the right guy, but even good wasn't… great. Then Sila laughed at that and told them their boys were… well…" her voice drops a bit, "shegellies, and couldn't find a kitty with both hands and a map, and until they started dating men and not twits, they'd never find great, but… Seems like I heard more bitching about lame sex than celebrating about good sex."

Rose is laughing at that. "Well, I'll admit, I've heard a verse or nineteen million of that song, and I've sung a few of them, too, but it's like any other skill, you learn, you practice, you communicate, and you get to good or great. Almost no one is great, first time off, especially if you try the first time in the dark without any communication."

Rey's watching Savarah. "When you and Critt pet, can you feel what's going on with him?"

Savarah nods. "Oh yeah. And he can feel me, too. He's got bugger all for empathy or telepathy in any other situation but—"

"He's probably borrowing yours," Cassie adds. "That's easier to do when you're close. If I hold his hand, Marrok can feel the weather, but he can't on his own."

"So, if you can feel where he is and vice versa, you've got a built-in advantage for communication," Rey says.

Rose grins. "That's got to be more like playing with yourself than playing with someone else. I mean, even if you are good at talking, if you use your own hand, you hit the target, if someone else is using their hand, it can take five or six versions of left, right, no not that far right, a little more left, up a hair, right there, now move but don't slip off that spot."

Rey's laughing at that. "Yes, there are _advantages_ of being able to _feel_ if you've hit the target."

"Plus, for a lot of men, the target isn't exactly _subtle_ ," Rose says while gesturing to her lap. Paige makes a small sound at the move, and Rose looks at her daughter. "Oh, sleepy thing. Come on, bedtime. I'll be back in a bit."

Rey gives Paige a little goodnight kiss, and then Rose takes her upstairs to her bed.

"It should feel good. I'm not saying that every single time will be heart-stoppingly amazing, but," she looks at the girls, two of which are Force sensitive, and the third one who is dating one, "There's no reason why you shouldn't be able to get to good, or great, without massive amounts of effort." She adds a little half smile. "Uh… It usually takes me longer, and a bit more focus, to get to great than it does for Kylo, so, sometimes, especially when it's late and we're tired and just looking to end the night with a glow, I'll ride off of his good time."

Magiit smirks at that. "I… can't feel it through Elias, not usually, but _that_ projects. It was... a very pleasant surprise… the first time it happened." That smirk gets a bit dirtier. "He just about died, he was so embarrassed, wet trousers and all, but… When he realized I felt it, too, he got over that pretty quick."

"He can feel how you're doing?" Cassie asks.

"Yeah. We've played a little with that, trying to focus the feelings and share them, but… It's…" she's blushing a little, "hard to focus, when… he's hard."

Savarah's laughing at that. "Yeah, that's how Jacen's walked in on us a few times. He can sneak up on Critt, but he shouldn't be able to sneak up on me, but I get _distracted._ "

Rey raises an eyebrow. "He's sneaking up on you?"

"Not really…" Savarah sighs. "Look… I know… There's no good solution for it. He likes Critt, too. I get that. Critt's awesome. He should like Critt. And they share a home, so sometimes we're there. We try to keep it to times he's either not home or asleep, but his telepathy is so sharp, that if he wakes up and we're in the living room… Sometimes he'll decide to 'get a drink.' Remind us that we're giving him a concert."

"Does Critt honestly not know?" Magiit asks.

"He really doesn't. I'm not kidding about bugger all for empathy or telepathy. If you don't say it to his face, he can't pick it up."

"And you and Jacen don't tell him because…" Rey says.

Savarah's looking at Rey like she's insane. "I don't think there's anything Jacen could do that would make me that angry at him."

Rey blinks.

"Rey, he doesn't want Critt to know."

"He's said that, but… You and Jacen get along. You both like and respect each other. He loves Critt. Critt loves him. Critt loves you. You love Critt. This doesn't sound difficult to figure out. All three of you have a good time together."

The girls all stare at each other. It's clear they really wish Rose was here right now. Finally, Magiit says, voice very patient and gentle, "Rey, Critt doesn't like boys. At all. And Jacen doesn't like girls. At all. This… isn't something talking can fix. They're both narrow, really narrow," she's holding out her hands, barely a hair apart, "and not for each other."

Savarah nods. "All the love in the world isn't going to make that work. I mean… I like Jacen. He's pretty. He's fun to be around. If Critt… wanted to try… I mean, I guess we could, but it's physically impossible for Critt to have less interest in sex with Jacen than he does. And Jacen looks at me like I'm… well, nothing he wants. He's completely uninterested in me as anything other than a friend."

Magiit's eyeing Rey. "Do you like girls, too?"

Rey nods. "Not… That that matters at this point, but, yes. I've seen women I was interested in."

The girls look at each other. Magiit's the one who says, "Liking boys and girls, that's common enough that there's a name for it, 'Verse, but it's maybe a quarter of people, and most of them will prefer one or the other. Most people have no interest, at all, in whichever sex they don't prefer."

Savarah tentatively says, "Kylo's like that, right? No interest in boys?"

"I mean… He's said that, but…" Rey knows he's said that, but she just sort of assumed that he'd just never met the right one. Granted that was before he and Jon became close. Though, really thinking about it, now, given how he's got no interest in Jon, and how good of friends they are… She sighs.

"He probably meant it, literally," Magiit replies.

"Yeah. So…" Rey's feeling a little silly. "No telling Critt about Jacen."

"Yeah, if he ever wants to tell Critt, he gets to do that for himself, and the rest of us sit on it, because…" Savarah says.

Magiit adds, "Because if you've got any empathy you can feel how much Jacen doesn't want to tell. It'd mess things up and make them uncomfortable, and… Sooner or later, something's going to happen, but not now."

"Jacen liked Jon," Cassie adds.

Rey sighs. "Jon is _way_ too old for Jacen."

"Jon liked him, too," Magiit adds. "I didn't feel it, but I could see that look. That was the look of a man who wants to get with the person he's looking at."

Rey rubs her forehead. "Waaayyy too old."

"He's not ancient," Savarah adds. "Not like he's forty."

Rey groans softly.

"Just saying, both of them were interested, and Jacen's seventeen, so…" Magiit says. "No one would have blinked if he'd met Jon on Canto and became his pet."

"Jon doesn't need a pet," Rey says. "He's got fish for that."

The girls laugh at that. "That's not what I meant," Magiit adds.

"I _know._ Just, leave Jon be. He's got his own stuff going on right now."

"Poe! Or at least Poe's got some sort of Jon thing going on," Savarah says. "I didn't know who he was thinking about until we met him, but Poe likes Jon."

"Does Jacen know that?" Magiit asks.

"I mean, I can't imagine he doesn't. He's a better telepath than I am and Poe takes him up in _Micah_ for flying lessons, so he's got to know, right?" Savarah replies.

Cassie's just watching this, shaking her head. "This is complicated."

Rey takes that as a boon. "It always is. But… For the time being, let's say you guys set the upper limit of older than you are to five years, okay?"

"Why?" Savarah asks.

Magiit adds, "Even on Canto, a man wasn't really considered decent marriage material until he was forty, and girls were marriageable at 18."

Rey doesn't know what to do with that. "Just…"

"Isn't Kylo like ten years older than you are?" Cassie adds.

"We don't know how much older than I am he is. Officially, on the records, it's six years."

"That's more than five," Magiit says.

"I'm not seventeen." 

"I don't see why it matters," Magiit says.

"That's because you're sixteen," Rose says, coming down the stairs. "You're always old enough when you're in the middle of it, and when you get to the other side of it, you look back and think: 'Holy hell, I was a flaming idiot when I was seventeen, eighteen, whatever.'"

Rey sighs, because they can sense she's not sure about that, and are chipping away at her, but Rose is, so they don't argue with her.

"What sort of flaming idiot?" Savarah asks.

"Among other things, being sure that you were going to spend the rest of your life with a man who's… okay… enough, but really, once you've had someone who was good for you, you can see wasn't. But when you're in the middle of it, okay can look awfully good, especially if you've never had good."

The girls think about that, and Rose continues on, "You're not going to end your days on this planet with this group of twenty-five people. We're getting you ready to go out into the wider galaxy, and the love of your life right now will probably be a warm memory later, as you find another love, or loves."

That gets a deep, quiet, contemplation.

"We'll leave?" Cassie finally says.

"I hope so," Rey replies. "I hope you'll come back, too, but…" she gestures to the settlement. "There's nothing really here, you know? The idea is to make sure that you're well-balanced in yourselves, and that you've got the skills to go out and do something."

"We know Jacen's going back to the Order, eventually," Savarah says.

"I could do that, too," Cassie adds.

"Or not, as you see fit," Rose replies. "You joined the Order because it was your best bet. When you're ready to leave here, you'll have options beyond Order or die."

"I could… go home and get people out?" Cassie says.

"You could go home and get people out. You could go home, open up a school of the Maji of your own, and rescue kids from the Bishops. You could decide to go in with Ostrae and open up a bakery somewhere. Like your Great Uncle, you could find a cause you believe in, and become a spy. You'd likely have some _advantages_ on that. You're probably going to end up doing something you could have never imagined." Rey smiles at her. "I certainly am."

"But back to basics," Rose says, "you'll have vastly more in the way of options if you're not taking care of kid while you do this. So, again, no making babies until you're absolutely certain you want one, and you've got enough of a home and stable life set up so you can take care of one easily."

"How do we… not?" Cassie asks. It's clear she heard what the ladies were saying about not doing it, but it's also clear that she doesn't know the particulars.

"Once your cycle is regular, you can get shots from MX-6. You can have your sweetie use a sheath. There's a device that goes inside of you and prevents pregnancies if you want to try that. MX can take you through the options. There are a lot of them. Apparently, since the Order restocked the medbay, we've got _everything,_ so he's probably got more options than I even know exist," Rose says.

"There's a shot for men, too. I… don't exactly know how it works, just that it does," Rey adds.

"How does it…" It's clear from the way she says it, she means sex, not contraceptives, "work?" Cassie asks, looking shy, curious, and a little scared.

"A lot of different ways," Rose says. "That's for you and your sweetie to figure out together. That's part of the fun of it. But, between now and your possible future sweetie, get a mirror, go to the refresher or… You have your own room, right?"

Cassie shakes her head. "The twins and I thought it'd be nicer to set bunks around the edge of the room and keep everything open."

"Okay, take a mirror, go to the refresher, preferably when they're out, and go really look at yourself. And touch everything. See what makes you feel good. Your datapad's got anatomy lessons so you can find out what everything you're looking at is, and then play with them," Rose says.

Rey adds, "If you type human nudes into the library, you'll get lots of pictures of naked people doing a lot of different things. That should give you a pretty good idea of what everything looks like, and a lot of ways that people fit together."

"But there are a lot of ways?" Cassie asks.

"Lots," Rose says with a grin. "It's like a piston in a cylinder. As long as you line the piston up properly with the cylinder, you can orient the cylinder however you like."

The girls giggle at that.

Magiit adds, "I think she's looking for something a little more concrete than that."

Rey arches an eyebrow. She doesn't say, 'she is, or you are,' but instead says. "Well, you know where your bits are, and his are in about the same place, so…"

"Concrete," Rose adds. "Okay, lying down, one or the other of you on top. Usually, his legs are between yours, because that makes things easier. Him lying on his back, you kneeling across him, facing his head, or feet, or any other direction you like…"

Rey gets on the same page with Rose on _concrete._ "You on your hands and knees, and him behind you, usually kneeling. Standing up. If he's strong enough he can pick you up. If he's not, you can lean against a wall or door or something."

"Kylo can pick you up?" Rose asks, looking intrigued.

Rey nods with a little smile. "Granted, both of us have some… advantages when it comes to maintaining balance."

"That man's practically a tree. I bet Rey could climb him without him so much as wobbling," Magiit says, with a naughty grin.

Rose holds up her hands. "Him holding you up, no wall or anything to lean against, sounds more like a workout than sex to me, but… Uh… Positions… You on your side, him behind you. You on your side, him in front of you."

"Sitting down, you in his lap, facing him, facing away, across his lap. Really, anything that gets your maomao in the right place over his shaft will work. Just some of them feel better than others."

"What feels better?" Savarah asks.

"Depends on how you're built, and he is," Rose adds. "Emotionally though, I like Finn on top of me. That's a good angle, feels nice physically, but I can't finish like that. That said, if I've already come, I like that one, his weight on me, being face to face, we can kiss easily, he can go as fast and hard as he likes." She looks pleased. "Uh… His arms… When he's on top his biceps and triceps and lats are flexed and hard, and… I like running my hands over them. All of that strength and power and it's there, in my bed, in my body, with me, moving to make us both feel good… I like that."

Rey's never said it before, she's not sure if she's ever thought it, but… "That's part of what I like about standing up. I can't move much if we're standing up, and what moving I can do, I need to use him as a prop for. And he's strong enough to hold me up, move me, and support himself with me moving on him. He can…" She rolls her lips… "It's like our marriage, he's strong enough to give me what I need."

The girls look a little confused by that.

"It's a symbol. I don't need him to be able to pick me up, at least not routinely, as part of our marriage. I just like that part. He's strong enough to… support me, emotionally, socially, through this life thing we're figuring out and moving through."

"You don't need someone to take care of you, but you like the fact that someone signed up to do the job," Rose says.

"Exactly. And sometimes, as Hiffa showed us, sometimes you _need_ someone to take care of you, and it's good to have people who will."

Savarah's looking a little shy, but she says, "You can do it as much as you like?"

"You can do it as much as you like," Rose says.

"The Presbyters told us that if we did it too much, we'd get loose and floppy and no man would ever take pleasure in us."

Rose again looks like she's ready to go kill people, mostly male religious leaders, but then she reins it in and says, "I pushed a three kilo baby out of my vagina, and it went right back to normal. It took a while. I wasn't hopping on Finn the next day, and everything was _sore_ for a few weeks, but… You heal. You stretch. Your body is designed to get a baby out of it, and no man, no matter how well hung, is going to be anywhere near the size of a kid."

"Your muscles get stronger and more fit when you use them. Your maomao isn't some sort of magic body part that defies the rules of all other body parts," Rey says. "It's just one that can make you feel better. But, just like your arms and legs, it's mostly muscle, so the more you work it, and the kinder you are to it, the stronger and more flexible it gets."

"Does it hurt the first time?" Magiit asks.

"My first time with Kylo didn't hurt at all."

"My first time stung a little. We were both over eager and moved too fast, but it didn't hurt. If it hurts, the first question is do you really want to be doing this? If the answer is anything other than an ultra-emphatic yes, that's likely part of why it hurts. A pinkie finger isn't going to go in easy if you don't want it there," Rose says.

"And much bigger things will slide on in nice and easy if you do," Rey adds. The girls look a little shocked, and Rose giggles at that, well aware of what… who's… _much bigger._

"And if it's hurting but you really want to? Some of the older girls talked about bleeding all over the place, and crying while forcing it on in," Magiit says.

Rose and Rey share a look, and then Rose says, "That doesn't sound like they much wanted to have sex, but… If they did. Or if you do, but it's not just sliding on in easy, first off, sex doesn't dry up and go away. It's not like if you don't do it right that second, there'll be no other chance. There's no expiration date. Mamie and Pops were at it well into their seventies. Trust me, it'll still be there tomorrow and the day after. Shelve penetration for another day. Put his tongue to good use, and put your mouth or hands to good use, and make each other happy another way. Then go see MX-6. Make sure everything is alright. You might have something going on down there making things uncomfortable. Get that taken care of.

"Or, you might have a hymen. Some women have a little extra skin around the outside of their pussy, and that can be tight, and stretching it out can be uncomfortable, which is why my first time stung a little, and if the guy's too eager he can rip it, but… Not every girl has one, and if you've got a guy who's patient, and willing to use tongue and fingers, you don't have to end up in pain or bleeding.

"And you might need extra slick. Get him good and wet with spit, get some lube from the Medbay, make sure he's making you feel really good so your body makes enough to let him slip in. Sex without enough lube hurts, and with enough is a joy, and sometimes bodies just don't make enough to do the job, so if you need extra, go get some."

The girls look at Rey to see if she's got anything else to add, and she thinks for a moment, and then says, "Get on top of him. He might not exactly know what he's aiming for, and you do, so get on top and make sure he's in the right place. That can help, too."

"What do you do with your mouth?" Savarah asks.

"Whatever you like," Rose says.

"No, you said use your mouth instead of penetration… What did you mean?"

"I meant, have him get down on his knees, and kiss, lick, and suck that pretty pussy until you get off."

Magiit looks like she's got plans for this evening all of a sudden, and Savarah and Cassie are intrigued and scandalized.

"And you can do it back to him, too," Rey says. "Really, if you're worried about possibly making a baby, and not wanting one, that's a good thing to do. There's no way he can get you pregnant if it's in your mouth. And no man in the history of human men ever got a woman pregnant with his fingers and tongue."

"And, as of this point, I have not met a single man, anywhere, who doesn't like it." Rose pauses. "Okay, that's not true. I have not met a single man, anywhere, who likes women, who doesn't like muff diving."

"Muff diving?" Rey asks.

"Uh, yeah."

"What's a muff?"

"Do you really not know?"

"I… A long while ago, Kylo and I were talking about names for our bits, and he came up with that one, and he didn't know what that was a non-slang word for. Wasn't sure if it was just a term for..." she remembers what Rose called it, "pussy."

"A muff is a hand warmer. It's like, a tube of fabric, usually fur-lined, that you stick your hands in to keep them warm when it's cold out."

Rey sniggers. "He'll like that."

"You were really talking about body part slang?" Magiit asks.

Rey's got a soft smile remembering that. "We were still really new. Might have been the second or third time we were together, and we were playing, and obviously we both speak Galactic Standard, but have completely different slang, because we're from not even remotely the same part of the galaxy, so… part of playing was naming everything. It was fun."

Rose is smiling at Rey. "That's sweet." Then she looks to the girls. "That's what I mean by figuring it out, together. You take the time, and make a space to learn each other, together."

Rey adds, "Learn each other's parts, and what those parts like. Mostly, just… Take the time to stroke and pet and kiss and lick everything. Make sure he does it for you, too. Explore. Keep talking and feeling with each other."

"Everything?" Magiit asks.

"Well, if it doesn't smell good, you might want to wait until after a shower. Or maybe do it in the shower, while soaping each other up. But… Yeah. That's how you figure out what you and he like. Kylo and I often play after or during a shower or bath, because, well… humans can get pretty stinky, you know?"

The girls laugh at that. They _know._

"Seriously, _everything_?" Magiit's thinking hard about _everything._ The three Force sensitives know what she's asking, and Rose has it from context.

"I'd make sure it's clean first, but _yes._ Everything. It's a lot of fun, feels really good, and if you ever want to see a man squirm and beg and plead and feel so good he's on the verge of levitating off the bed, definitely try licking _everything._ Especially, if you've got your hand on his shaft at the same time."

Rose looks intrigued by that. "You've really?"

Rey nods.

"And he liked it?" Now Rose is the one looking curious and mildly scandalized.

"A LOT."

"Hmm…" She also appears to be developing plans for tonight. "Did you like it?"

"I can feel it through him, so I got the kick of him having a _very_ good time, and me giving it to him."

"After a shower?" Rose asks.

"Sonic, faster and more thorough." She thinks about the practicalities of that. "Uh... I don't generally get sick, so... _Really_ clean. But, if he likes your tongue on him, he'll probably like you washing him up, too." Another moment of thought, and how little fun Hiffa was. "And... I didn't stick my tongue in it, just on... Fingers is where in came into play, and that was kind of messy, but... that's just being human. And there was a very thorough washing up after."

The girls are just watching this.

Rose looks back to them. "It's just… fun. Playtime with your favorite person. It's serious, because there can be serious consequences, but if you take care of that ahead of time, it's a way to make yourself and each other feel good."

"Does it have to be your favorite person?" Savarah asks.

Rose shakes her head. "No. I think it's more fun if you really like the person, but it doesn't have to be. It's been a long time since Poe's had a favorite person, and not that long since he got shagged, so… It can just be something to feel good.

"But, I think it's easier with someone you really like. Any person you run into can likely get you some mediocre sex. Okay sex is pretty easy to get, too. If you're willing to touch yourself during, you can just about always guarantee at least okay sex. Good sex usually takes some more effort. Great sex takes time, patience, and a good read on the person you're with. It's not impossible to do that with a stranger, but it's a lot easier to do it with someone you love and trust."

"You can touch yourself during sex?" Savarah asks.

"Oh yeah. I'd suggest doing it at least a few times so your partner can see what you like and where you touch. And more than that as necessary. Sometimes he's further along than you are, so it's easier to speed yourself up with your own hand. Sometimes he doesn't have a hand readily available, or the position doesn't work well for it. Sometimes, it's been a long, hard day and you're feeling kind of prickly, and just want to get off, so you do yourself while doing him to make sure you get off easy. There are a lot of reasons to touch yourself, but certainly do it."

"Kylo likes watching me do it."

Rose nods at that, a _very_ knowing look on her face. "That, too. Most men really like to watch women do anything involving sex. Also, if it's an option, keep the lights on. You're going to have a much easier time learning each other if you can _see_ what you're doing. And, I'm less visually oriented than Finn, I know watching sex doesn't hit me as hard as it hits him, but it still hits me."

"We have a mirror near our bed, so we can see everything easier. Watching is fun," Rey adds.

"You don't feel weird watching yourself," Cassie asks.

"If I couldn't feel how good of a time he's having watching, I might, but I can see how he watches me, so that means I generally feel pretty good about how I look, too," Rey says.

"You like women, too," Magiit adds.

"I'm not sure if that matters when it comes to watching myself," Rey says.

"Probably doesn't hurt," Magiit says.

Rey shrugs at that. "Maybe? No idea." She looks at the girls, and at Rose… "Did we, get everything?"

Rose looks back to the girls. "Questions, comments, thoughts?"

They don't appear to have any.

"Okay, we're always here, and so are the guys, too. Poe'll definitely tell you anything you want to know, and Kylo might blush, but he probably will, too," Rey looks to Rose.

"I might have to kick him under the table, but Finn'll answer questions, too."

The girls nod at that, and then begin to bundle up.

When they're gone, Rey says to Rose, "Your man… the convenient one, if you want, if you give me his name, I can find out if he's dead."

Rose shakes her head. "He's dead. Paige's husband is dead, too. Mamie didn't just tell us to make friends. She gave us the herbs to get rid of an inconvenient husband when the time was right. We got to Purell, where he wanted me to live, with his wife, who was also less-than-thrilled by the situation. His lady couldn't have children, and he wanted babies. I had the shot to take care of that, but he didn't know that.

"That's how I got him to take me… I told him I was pregnant, and he decided to take me when he left.

"I was there for six weeks. His wife and I teamed up, saving every credit we could, and one night we served him a supper he didn't get up from, both of us bought tickets on the next freighter out, and parted company after."

Rey lets out a long breath. "What happened to her?"

"I don't know. Wherever she ended up, I hope it's better than where she was."

Rey nods at that.

Rose smiles a bit, but it's kind of sad. "I suppose I have to tell Finn that, before one of them runs their mouth and he finds out about it the wrong way."

Rey shakes her head. "You tell him that when you want to. When you're ready. I would have rather been able to _tell_ Kylo, rather than just have him feel it off of me. I think I would have done it eventually, but… You tell him when you need him to know, and when you think he can take it."

Rose closes her eyes and nods. "Thanks." She's quiet for another moment, and then says, "The whole planet."

Rey nods. "I guess, when he told me that, I should have… what… killed him? Got up and left? Hated him forever?"

Rose shrugs. "Before I met Finn, I would have told you that anyone in a First Order uniform was a just kill. And I knew they stole babies. And I knew some of the people in those uniforms are younger than the girls we chatted with tonight. And I didn't care. It was better to die, or be killed, than to work with them. But, I met Finn, and… There were millions of people in First Order uniforms, and… I know how he got out… I read the PsyOps reports on him. He's got off the charts willpower. Anyone who was less strong, less stubborn, couldn't have done it. And just about everyone else has less willpower.

"I cheered when we blew up StarKiller. I screamed with joy when I got the first report on the _Fulminatrix_. It… took about twenty minutes before I knew what that victory cost. But, any of those millions of people could have been another Finn, just… not quite as hard-headed."

Rey nods at that, smiles a little.

"They hurt me, and what I held dear, so I didn't care how many of them died, as long as they did. So… I don't condone blowing up Jakku. I don't think it was right. But I can't hate him for it."

Rey nods at that, too. "Yeah. There was a part of me that liked it. A small savage part that cried out in triumph. I never got to do it, but he did, and… That was good. But it was wrong."

"Yeah, well, just because something feels good doesn't mean it's a good plan."

Rey sighs. "Yeah." They're quiet. "You know, I'd been thinking this conversation was going to be a lot more perky."

"That's how I remember them being as a kid, too. But… We didn't lead perky lives, and we didn't rescue kids who had perky lives, so… I think we're helping them get to somewhere better than where they left. That's got to be good for something, right?"

"Yeah. It is."

"You want to fetch my man home?"

"Sure. Apparently, if it gets cold enough, people get over their aversion to teleporting, fast." Rey makes herself smile at that.

"The fact that it didn't kill Poe helped a lot, too." Rose says with a little smile.

Rey takes a minute to get a feel for where Finn is, with Poe in his ship, and then waves goodbye to Rose, off to get her man, and then wrap up the night with hers.

* * *

Kylo's on their chair, datapad in hand, looking over what is, hopefully, the final, final, final draft of the contract that will begin the eventual emancipation of Polonia.

Hopefully.

It's been through his lawyers, and him, and back to them, five times, and then it went to their lawyers, and their leaders, through Force alone knows how many drafts, and then it came back to his legal team, and they messed with it more, and back to theirs, and back to his again, and now it's back in his hands, and maybe, assuming he can read more than two paragraphs at a time without falling asleep (which is in question, he's already dozed off twice) they can finally get this things done, and start getting mining operations into play.

He feels Rey a heartbeat before seeing her, and tenses, there's this clinging sadness to her.

Then he sees her. And she does look down. He puts the pad on the table next to their chair, and holds open his arms. "Cuddle?"

She nods. "Yeah." And then curls into his body.

He strokes her back, and nuzzles against her face. "Wanna talk?"

"Not yet."

"Want me to talk?"

"Please." She nods to the table. "What's that?"

So, he tells her, and gets into it, and how eventually they'll get this thing signed and that might involve another outing of The Master and Mistress, and she groans a bit at that, though he can feel she's perking up a bit. He's distracting her. So, he bends the idea a bit, "Maybe, this one, it'll be a close gathering. Get their top… I don't know, ten people. You, me, Jon, Schiff, probably, since this is going to feed his shipbuilding needs, whichever one of my people'll end up provisional governing, and just have a nice, quite dinner."

She thinks about that. "I'd like that better."

"Me, too."

"Or maybe they'll want to do something there, and we can finally be guests at these things, and just have a good time and play," and he makes clear what sort of playing he's thinking about, and that gets a little smile, and a lot more sad.

He doesn't roll his eyes, but she catches his annoyance. Anything that makes her feel sad about sex is something he wants to smack. With a lightsaber. Hard. A lot.

That does get an eye roll from her. "Kylo."

"I'm not saying anything."

"I know. I can feel you _not saying anything._ "

He inclines his head, kisses her forehead, and says, "I'm allowed to get annoyed about things that make you sad."

"You're allowed to get annoyed about whatever you like."

"Thank you." He strokes her hair. "Talk to me? So, I'm not just sitting here stewing, wishing I could fix it?"

"You can't fix it."

"Not if I don't know what the problem is."

"I promise you can't fix this."

He grins at her, or bares his teeth. "Try me."

Rey rolls her eyes, but that does get her talking. "That the galaxy is full of fucking evil shits. That my girls had maniacs spew filth into their ears about something that should have been beautiful. That Rose was on Hays Minor when the First Order came to town and had to fuck her way off of it." Kylo winces at that. "That the first time someone touched me it wasn't with love. That kids like you and Critt got raised with the idea that their bodies, their basic, human _needs_ were something to be treated as a problem at best and disgusting at worst. That the past was raw and ugly, and it hurt people I love, and I can't fix it, and the best I can do is try and mend the future, but that doesn't make the scars go away, and…" And she's sad, and angry, and frustrated, and it's bubbling out of her, more in feelings than words because she can't fix it, and she can't make it better, and the future isn't promised, and all she has is the hope that this Maji thing means that more kids get better futures than did in the past, but she's basically on her own here, and there's only so many kids she can get to, and sometimes the problems are just too fucking big and…

And he holds on, and listens, and doesn't try to solve it, not right now, because that's not what now needs.

Now just needs to yell at the universe, because sometimes that's all you can do.

He strokes her hair, and lets her yell, because right now that's what she needs, and he's strong enough to take her anger, and to give her ears to listen to it.

And tomorrow, they can talk about doing better by the rest of the world out there, and trying to spread a better message, and the logistics of thousands of trillions of people, and the fact that they not only can't save them all, they can't save most of them, and if they're really lucky, and everything goes right, they might get something in the range of a decently-sized rounding error.

But maybe they can save some.

And that's got to be enough.

Notes:

Hmmm... when I was mentally envisioning this chapter, it was a lot funnier and perkier than it ended up being. I think a lot of you who mentioned that this chapter would be a lot of fun were thinking the same sort of way. I tried writing just the fun version, but... It didn't gel.

I guess this is one of the hallmarks of a Keryl Raist story, even the funny bits'll make you cry. Or maybe you get to find the laughs between the tears.

Next week, we've got the boys, and, yeah, that'll be *fun* in a laugh out loud and rip your heart out sort of way, too.


	32. The Talk: The Boys

2/15/2

Sitting at Rey's kitchen table, watching Ren and Finn do everything in their power to get out of this job, Poe smirks.

Poe's never said it out loud, mostly because he knows neither of them wants to hear it, but he'd certainly really appreciate it if Finn and Ren would at least attempt to get along with each other.

And he's never said it, because if he were, Finn would go into a long and angry rant about the First Order in general and the huge fucking scar on his back from Ren in particular, and Ren would mostly just sit there quietly, eye twitching a little, and then get defensive about how Finn's not going to forgive him anytime soon. Or ever. So, there's no point in him making nice.

So, part of him is looking at this as a chance for both of them to see the other one in a more positive light, and maybe thaw things out a bit, because if there's one thing that'll get guys to crack a bit, it's telling entertaining lies about sex over a few drinks. (Granted, he's not entirely sure that Ren _can_ tell entertaining lies about sex, but he certainly can listen to them, so that should begin to ease things in the right direction.)

And part of him, the part that is watching, for the first time ever, Finn and Ren both stare at him in agreement about something, namely that neither of them is remotely capable of handling this particular job, and that Poe should really do it, on his own, is aware of the fact that it took the girls telling them that they needed to sit down with the older boys and have a chat about sex and whatnot to get both Finn and Ren to stop staring at each other like a fight's about to break out and start thinking about something else.

Granted, they appear to be thinking that Poe, charming, polished, gets tuffed regularly by lots of _different_ people, Poe, is the best of the three of them to do this, and that really, neither of them have anything of any real value to add to the conversation, and… Finn's actually talking about how much Chewie needs him, and they've got to have that conversation while he's away, and… Ren's doing that thing where he's trying to chew a hole through his lip, and now Finn's pointing out he's only had sex with Rose, and Ren's attempting to top that by mentioning being raised in a sect of celibate monks, and…

Poe shakes his head and decides to say it, because after all, this isn't going to be a conversation with just Jacen. "I know I'm not subtle about this, so how has it escaped both of you that I _don't fuck women?_ That I've _never_ fucked a woman? That I haven't even seen one naked in real life?"

Which would be the moment that both of them stare at him, dumbfounded, and then at each other, and back to Poe, and are suddenly coming to the conclusion that while neither of them feel like they've got anything approaching Poe's level of experience with sex, that _just possibly,_ in that they've both, on a regular basis, seen a woman naked and touched one, they might have something of use for both Critt and Elias that Poe just _doesn't_.

Poe smirks. "Exactly. Yeah, I can have a chat with Jacen, and likely fill him in better than you two can, but… So. My ship. Tomorrow night. Bring the sprogs. We'll talk."

* * *

2/16/2

Traditionally, conversations like this are had with alcohol.

At least, that's how Poe and his dad did it. Granted, on his part there wasn't a _lot._ He had one, small, cider, and then sweetfizz, but it made him feel grown up, and likely got him more comfortable with asking questions than he would have been otherwise.

(And the whiskey his dad was sipping likely made answering them easier, too. Especially since Poe's line of questions wasn't a shock to his dad, but on a mechanical level, wasn't something he had any real experience with, either.)

So, Poe's ready for this. He's got cider, because, especially for kids, it's a good place to start. It tastes good, it's easy to drink, they could probably drain his entire stock of it and just wake up woozy and headachy in the morning, (though he's not going to let that happen), and with any luck it'll dull down their inhibitions enough to get them actually talking, which should make this easier.

So, for the kids, Poe's not expecting any issues.

No, it's Master Dark and The Smuggler who are going to be the issue.

Ren doesn't like alcohol, and Finn won't drink if Ren's around.

And normally, he'd respect that, but if he can't get those two to unclench a bit and relax some around each other, then this is going to fall flat. Ren's already told him Jon'll lube his brain if he needs it, and Poe's fairly sure this counts as _needs it._ And Finn… he's got to relax around Ren, or the kids'll focus on them, and not what they're talking about it.

He makes coffee. It'll cover the taste of the rum he's putting in there, and he'll dole it out slowly enough they won't get more than buzzed.

It feels like a good plan at the time.

* * *

Ren and Critt get there first. They'd apparently been working on whatever it is they do to not be so pissed off all of the time. Poe's never exactly asked, but whatever it is, they don't appear to be any rougher for the wear. And he's certainly noticed, especially since he's been working with Ren, that Critt's a bit less… everything… these days. Granted, he started working with Ren when his parents left, and that might have something to do with it, too.

Critt's looking around, noticing that Poe's changed things a bit since the last time he was in here. "You got a galley?"

Poe half-shrugs. "I'm moving more people than cargo these days, so room to actually feed you guys comes in handy."

(Really though, since he started cooking in the communal kitchen, he's decided he likes it, so… He's got a full galley now.)

Ren glances at the coffee mugs, seeing three of them. "For us?"

"Yes." He hands one over to Ren.

He takes it, and a deep sip, and then slowly lowers the cup and _looks_ at Poe. He shakes his head and takes another drink. It's abundantly clear that he knows _exactly_ what Poe did.

Poe half-shrugs and takes a long sip of his own drink. "Male bonding rituals work better with alcohol."

Ren rolls his eyes and takes one more sip. "How much is in here?"

"Two shots."

Ren nods, and puts his mug down before pulling off his cloak, hanging it up, and sitting at the table. Critt watches that, and then says, "So, does that mean we get to drink, too?"

"Check the cooler."

He does and comes back with a bottle, grinning, then slides in next to Ren.

Poe nods. "Take it slow. You puke in my ship; you're cleaning it up. And I'm sleeping in your bunk until the smell's out."

Critt waves that away. "Back on Frerreau, we used to get cider. I've been allowed to drink it since I was twelve."

"Okay. Good."

A moment later, Finn's stomping up the ramp with Jacen and Elias, all three of them dusted with snow. Either they came from further away than Kylo and Critt did, or they were working outside.

"Poe, Critt…" Finn nods at them, ignores Ren, sees the cups, and says, "Tell me it's coffee, and tell me it's hot."

"It is and it is," Poe replies, and Finn swoops in, grabbing it, holding it in his gloved hands and letting the steam wash over his face.

"Outside?" Critt asks.

Jacen slides into the booth next to him, not taking his coat or gloves off, he still needs to thaw a bit before that, and nods. "Feel like passing some of that my way, too? It's fu-frosty out there."

Poe sets up his coffeemaker for more of it. "Those cups are spoken for. I'll make more. Or you and Elias can have cider if you like."

Elias opts for cider, and Jacen looks at Poe, thinks to him _I'll take mine with milk, sugar, and a shot of rum, please_ and Poe sighs. At least it was a request and not an order, and it was silent, in his head, because he could tell it was supposed to be a secret.

They take a moment, the boys talking about being cold and how the Faviers are getting stir crazy in the barn all the time, and how they really need to get a dome over them or something so the critters can run around, while Poe gets the last of the drinks set. But, eventually, they're all seated around his table, (Ren and Finn on opposite sides, and Finn looks ready to sprint away or fight if need be) drinks in hand (he hopes that look will get less pronounced as Finn actually drinks the 'coffee' instead of just using it as a hand warmer.) and ready to go.

"Okay. One rule for tonight. No lies. We'll talk. You can ask whatever questions you like. We'll answer or not, but no lies," Poe says. (Neither Ren nor Finn appears to be under the impression they signed up for this, but, again, when he was doing it with his dad, that line mattered to Poe.) "I'm not saying any of us'll know the answer, but hopefully between the three of us, at least one of us has a clue."

Finn sniggers at that and then shakes his head. "You can hope. But unless you've got questions about Rose, and I'm _not_ answering those, I don't think I'll be of much use."

"They're women, Finn. They're all fairly similarly built to each other," Poe says, and then looks to Ren, "Right?"

He nods. "All the ones I've seen."

Finn rolls his eyes and takes a drink, and then chokes. "What is in this?"

So much for the secret. "Coffee and rum, drink up," Poe answers. He sees Finn glare at him, and then look at Ren's cup, note that he's a quarter of the way through his drink, and takes another sip.

He swallows, and then says, "Before you tried to poison me, I had a point. Yes, I know they're all built, more or less, the same. I've only slept with one of them, but I've seen holovids. Back in the day, _a lot_ of holovids. That said, they don't all like the same things, and just because you're good with one of them does not mean you're going to be good with a different one."

Ren nods at that, too.

"That's not the level of useful I'm thinking," Poe adds. "You learn how to fuck by paying attention to the person you're fucking. None of us will be any good, beyond the most general level of here's where all the bits are, and maybe try touching them with your tongue or something, at teaching you how to fuck because you've got to be paying attention and talking…" he looks at Ren… "or thinking at your partner, to get good at sex. This is more general stuff… So… let's start here, who's a virgin?"

Jacen smirks, looking stupidly proud of himself, stretches a bit, and says nothing. Critt and Elias look at him, look at each other, and both with horrible sabbac faces, also, say nothing.

Poe looks to Ren for confirmation on the lying. He nods and slaps Critt upside the back of the head as Poe gets Elias.

"First rule of the night is…" Finn says.

Critt glares and says, "Fine. Me."

Elias looks horrified and astonished, and Ren's the one who gets the disconnect, because he's the one who can see what Elias is thinking about. "That's not what any of us mean by sex." Then Ren looks at the other two men. "How are we defining sex?"

Finn stares back at him, astonished. "You have to ask? Yeah, you mentioned the raised-by-celibate-Jedis-bit, but… You know this, right?" Ren, Jacen, and Elias can all feel Finn suddenly wondering what the hell it is that Ren and Rey actually get up to when they're on their own.

Ren's practically got a view of his brain he's rolling his eyes so hard. "I know how I define sex, now. And I know how we used to define sex back when I was one of the celibate monks, and that definition was so narrow individual atoms would have a hard time passing through. By the definition I grew up with, Poe's a virgin."

Poe flat out laughs at that. "Not for a _long_ time."

Ren smirks at that, too. Then he looks to Elias. "But he's thinking of grinding and kissing, mostly dressed, and I'm fairly sure that's not sex."

Elias is blushing so hard he looks ready to burst a blood vessel. Poe gives him an affectionate hair ruffle, nudges his cider closer to him, and says, "We all started there. But, that's not sex. Uh… Let's say anything that involves skin to skin touch and you get off."

Ren blinks. "Get off?"

Finn and Poe are staring at him, as well as Jacen, all three dumbfounded that he's never heard that term before, but Critt and Elias also don't know that bit of slang.

Poe runs his fingers through his hair. This is a significantly deeper hole then he was expecting. "Uh… You know… When you…" he makes a little sort of spurting hand gesture.

"Spurt. That's what we called it," Ren adds.

"Come," Critt says.

"Spend," Elias adds.

"Great," Poe says. "Anything that involves skin to skin touch and _ejaculation_ , that's the technical term, right? That's sex. And no, grinding and kissing, even if you do end up with wet trousers, isn't sex. It's practice. And practice is fun, but" Poe nudges Finn to gets up and grab the packs he got for each of the boys. Finn tosses the slicks at them, and the three boys manage to catch them. "When you get around to real sex, use them. _Every_ time until you're ready to be a dad."

Jacen smirks and says, "So, I can ignore this bit."

Kylo feels it off of Poe, so he reaches behind Critt and gives Jacen a little smack upside the back of his head.

Poe says, "Only if you want to finally do some tuffing, pull your shaft out, find it covered in shit, realize the closest refresher is five hundred meters away at the end of the hangar, finally get cleaned up an hour later, and then pee liquid fire a hundred times a day until you get a shot of antis from the med droid three days later."

Jacen's face goes white and he swallows, hard.

"Yeah, that's exactly as much fun as you think it is. And telling your fifty-year-old, _female_ boss about why you can't work, and having her smirk at you for the next week is an entirely different level of fun." Kylo's sniggering at that because he knows said boss was his Mom, and he can _see_ that smirk. "So, unless you want to have the least comfortable conversation with Rey, _ever,_ learn from my mistakes on that one, okay? Use them." He notices the Finn only grabbed the rubbers. "The little bottles, too." So Finn grabs them, and puts them on the table in front of the kids, too. "And if you don't have any of that on hand, stick to oral or hand jobs, okay? And trust me, if you think the why to use rubbers reason is gross, you really don't want to hear about what happens without slick." Then Poe looks at Finn and Kylo who are just staring at the little bottles. And, watching them look at the bottles, and the fact that Finn didn't automatically _know_ they were part of the kit, he's got the sense that _this_ isn't part of how they do sex. "You use this with the girls, right?"

And for a moment Finn and Kylo are staring at each other now, too. Finally, Finn says, "Uh… If…" He rubs his hand over his face. "We were going to do what you're talking about, yeah, but…" He's staring at Kylo, not exactly wanting to get too deep into this, but… He decides the rum in the coffee is likely a good idea and takes a big swallow.

Kylo sort of nods, slowly, and says, "Uh… Generally speaking… At least in my experience… Which is not exactly vast, but…" He rolls his lips together. "And… Uh… I've never done what Poe's talking about, so… At least not on the penetrating side, so I don't know about that… But, with what I've done, if you… need that, with a woman…" He's taken another gulp of his drink, too, also acutely aware that some things are just easier to say when that little uncomfortable voice in your head is dead, and alcohol is the fastest way to kill it.

"Okay, could you be a little less vague about this, I'd appreciate it. I lost the topic at least a few sentences ago," Elias says. "I'm not entirely sure what Poe was talking about to begin with, and you two aren't helping, so…"

"Right." Poe says, "As you've likely noticed, men don't come equipped with a delta, so, when we tuff each other, it's usually, hand, mouth, or ass. And only one of those options is naturally slick, so… Hand or ass, you want some slick. Spit'll do for a hand, but it's not going to get the job done if you're going for ass."

Elias blinks at that. "You… can… oh… I though… before… you meant… you know… between…"

Poe shakes his head. "Uh… No. I mean, yes, between is an option, and it's a lot of fun, and if you get the angle right, it's really good, but… if you're coming away dirty after that, your partner _really_ needs to work on his hygiene. Also, that's better with slick, too. Honestly, most of it's better with slick, or spit, or something to make the strokes flow. But, I'm talking about _in._ "

Finn quietly says, "You can do that with a woman, too, and… uh… It's… good, but, yeah, you want lube for that. A lot of lube."

"And go slow. That's true for all of this, but especially anything involving anyone's ass, including your own, go _slow,_ " Poe says. "Better yet, get whoever's doing the penetrating on their back, and the one getting penetrated just eases on down. Trust me, until you've got some experience, that'll work a _lot_ better."

Jacen looks like he's wishing he'd brought a pad so he can take notes, and Critt and Elias are both looking slightly squirmy at this.

"Anyway… deltas make their own lube, and if the woman actually wants to be having sex with you, you don't need extra," Finn says. "Unless she had a baby like three months earlier, because her body will be off for a bit after that, but… Assuming none of you are planning to be dads anytime soon, this is information you won't use, so…"

Kylo doesn't exactly grit his teeth, but… "If she needs that… Either she's with you because it's her job, or you're doing a shit job of making her feel good. If it's her job, just roll with it, everyone's going to have a better time because of it, and if it's not, stop, ask, listen, and pay attention. If she wants sex with you… You should be able to slip in nice and easy."

"What if you're big?" Critt says.

Kylo stands up. He's a good twenty centimeters taller than Critt, and likely has thirty kilos on him. Just by standing there, he's getting across the idea of _big_ fairly elegantly. Then he sits down. "Go slow, go gentle, if it's not working with you on top, which it might not the first few times, because you've got a _nebulous_ concept of what you're aiming for, do like Poe said, roll on your back, have her straddle you, because trust me, she's going to have a vastly easier time getting you where you need to go than you are, because she _knows_ where you've got to go in a way you just _don't._ Let her set the speed and angle, and you'll _fit._ If she wants you, it'll work. If her body doesn't want yours, go home, jerk it, and go looking for someone else. Don't try to force it."

"Didn't hit the target the first time?" Finn smirks.

Ren rolls his eyes. "Like you did."

"I was on my back. So, yep, nice and sweet and easy," Finn looks remarkably pleased by that.

Ren glares at him, a little, no real heat in his eyes. "Between the lube and the slick and being _big_ , and not knowing what I was doing, I slipped out of place a few times. Third time I didn't hit the target she got me on my back, took over, and it _worked._ " Kylo takes another drink of his coffee, getting down to half the cup. Without looking up from his cup he says, "Also, if you're on your back, the view's really nice."

Finn takes another drink, and then nods. Kylo can feel him remembering his first time with Rose, and how much he _adored_ it. He's beaming with the pleasure of the memory. "It is."

"What do you mean, 'It's her job?'" Elias asks. It's very clear, not just to Kylo, who can feel it, but to Poe and Finn, that the idea that this might be a job is something that's never occurred to Elias, and that's distracting him away from concerns like potential views.

It's also very clear that Finn and Poe are staring at Kylo with _You're the one who brought it up, you get to take it to its conclusion_ so he's the one who gets to answer.

He takes another sip of his coffee, feeling the heat of the drink and the alcohol, and possibly the topic of conversation, light his cheeks pink. "People like sex. A lot. Not everyone can get it based on just looks or personality. Not everyone wants to take the time and effort to get it by using looks and personality. And some people just prefer to fuck with no strings attached. So, there are people who sell sex."

"You can buy sex?" Critt's looking both amazed and like he can't believe no one has taken them on a shopping trip yet.

"You can buy anything, somewhere, if you've got enough credits," Poe says. "And just an aside, you three _don't._ "

"Here's the catch," Finn adds. "Go to the right place, and the people working there are there because they like selling sex. Go to the wrong place, and the people are there because someone's holding a blaster to their head." He's staring at Kylo as he says that. He knows how the First Order got its manpower.

Kylo knows what he's thinking. "Yes, the Order still has pleasure specialists. And just like with my soldiers, they're there voluntarily now. We don't conscript anyone, for anything, anymore."

"You just let them leave?" Finn can't believe that.

"For a while there, I had more people, on all levels, in all jobs, leaving than were coming in every month. Yes, we let them leave. I'm trying to make it worth their while to stay, but we're not keeping anyone who doesn't want to be there." He rolls his eyes a bit. "Everyone's got a monthly wage, room and board, and it's my understanding the pleasure specialists get paid in tips, as well."

"Your understanding?" Poe says.

Kylo sounds a bit exasperated at having to be this specific about it. "I haven't seen a pleasure specialist since before I was in charge. I read reports, and that's as far as it goes these days."

"But that's not how it used to be?" Jacen asks.

That gets a small wave of exasperation off of Kylo, too, but… This is probably something that's useful for them to know, so… "The Jedi felt differently about this, and not just about sex. They were pretty sure nothing was a _need._ But as far as I'm concerned, sex is a need, like food or air. If you don't get enough of it, it won't kill you, but you'll start to get—" he's gesturing trying to explain it.

"Wrong," Poe adds.

"Yeah," Kylo replies. "Back when I was under Snoke, he particularly liked and encouraged that kind of wrong, so I did it as little as I could, but even I had a breaking point, a point where I didn't like how tangled my head was getting, and that was about once every ten months to a year. And… apparently my personality wasn't particularly attractive to the women around me," Finn's enjoying that line vastly too much, "and all you could see of me was black fabric or metal, so my looks didn't come into play, so I'd hit my breaking point and then visit the pleasure specialists."

Finn and the boys are just looking at Poe and Kylo. They're interested in _wrong._ Then the boys are looking at Finn.

"Uh…" Finn says. "Not for me. I mean, don't get me wrong, I miss it if I go too long, but… I just get irritable."

Kylo half rolls his eyes. Then he points to Finn. "Well balanced, and maybe, some days, on some things, just barely edging into dark." Then he points to himself. "Back in those days, two shades away from black. Amazingly enough, _every_ emotional situation is easier to deal with if you lean more to the light. Back in those days, irritable was me on a good day. _After_ getting my brains sucked out through my shaft." Then he says, for Critt mostly, but he figures the other two might need to know this, "You asked about what I like to do, and how I stay more balanced, and yes, sex is part of that. Sex with Rey helps, a lot. It's easier to not… feel like everything's going wrong, or is going to go wrong, or angry all the time, or just… bad, when you know there's something good, physically and mentally, coming in the next day or so."

"Yeah, shocking revelation, being happy makes life easier," Finn says, voice sharp, sarcastic.

"Fuck you, Finn!" Finn's moving back, fast, into defensive mode, and Poe grabs his wrist, he can feel Ren's not in fight mode, he's just talking. Talking _hot,_ but talking. "You've got no use for me, fine. But try a little empathy and pretend you can imagine that there are people for whom _happy_ isn't the default setting. For some of us, happy takes work. Let me guess, you wake up, and as long as everything is more or less okay, you can go roaming about with a smile on your face and joy in your heart. That's not how it works for me, and it's not how it works for Critt, and it's not how it works for a lot of darksiders. Happy takes work, and effort, and intentionally setting things up to encourage _not_ always being stuck in hurt." Then he looks back to the boys. "And yes, with the way I do it, sex is part of that. Being with people who like me is part of it. Physically enjoying things, being _allowed_ to physically enjoy things, that's all part of it.

"Being raised a Jedi means you aren't allowed to _want_ things. You aren't allowed to enjoy anything that isn't being a Jedi. No physical pleasures, not food, not touch, not… clothing that feels good on your skin, because Force forbid you ever get attached to something other than being a Jedi, and try to seek it out. So, food, sex, touch, cuddling, comfortable clothing and furniture, we wore homespun and slept on mats on the fucking floor. Jon's suggesting at some point I may develop taste in music, because apparently music is a thing people like. Anything like that, things that make you feel good, pleasurable things, _help._ So, fucking helps. It feels good and keeps my mind less tangled. Sex with Rey is better. Speaking of things Jedi aren't allowed to have, romantic love is at the top of the list, and that makes _everything_ better. And unlike the other women I've had sex with, Rey loves me, and that matters. And back when I was under Snoke, literally no one, including myself, loved me, I wasn't getting tuffed regularly, I barely ate, didn't sleep, enjoyed nothing other than occasionally beating the smirk off of Hux's face, so I was less stable, more volatile, and _everything_ hurt and pissed me off _all the time_."

The boys glance at each other and nod. Then Kylo catches part of what they're thinking.

"And, yes, if I'd been so inclined, that was a problem I could have taken care of on my own. I used to do that when I was at Luke's school. And then feel bad about it, because that was 'giving in to my desires.' Trust me, give in, give in a _lot,_ rub yourself raw if you need to, though lube helps with that, too. You'll be better off for it. It's… not as effective as with another person, assuming the other person even remotely likes you, but it'll get the job done."

Which is where Finn and Poe also understand what Kylo's saying. Finn's looking shocked, and Poe says, "Wait… Nothing, at all, for ten months to a year?"

Kylo glares at him, though it's more frustrated than angry. "I know I mentioned being celibate. Did I need to define that word for you? Wake up glued to my sleep pants every ten or so days, very rarely take matters into my own hands, but basically, yes."

"Why would you do that to yourself?" Finn asks, shocked. He's not sure he buys Ren's get tuffed to stay sane thing, but… He was also assuming he was getting himself off, and without that…

Kylo glares at him, too, and this look has some anger in it. Finn's still staring, amazed. Poe's starting to get it.

"Why?" Finn's still staring at him like Kylo isn't human.

"Because there was a fucking monster in the back of my head telling me to use it to kill people. Telling me to save it up, and to ride the release with my literal saber. He was there, enjoying my pain and using me as a fucking emotional battery. You try jerking it with an audience telling you that it's a weakness and you should just go kill things instead."

All five of them wince at that.

"Yeah." Kylo says, voice dry. "Between Luke and his don't give in to your wants because that's how you fall to the dark side, and Snoke's turn every want into pain and death so I can use you for power, I didn't exactly have a normal sex life until I was almost thirty. And, for you three, here's more fun of Force sensitive sex, when you're that close and intimately touching someone, you will generally be able to feel what's going on in their head, which is amazing when you're with someone who wants you, and shattering when you're with someone who is tolerating you for your money or power.

"Unless you're _particularly_ randy, which is part of what I had to be to shut the voices down, or better at shutting down your telepathy," he's looking at Jacen, "or empathy than I am, or you really don't care what people think of you, I don't recommend fucking professionals. It'll be beyond disappointing."

The other five of them stare at each other, and then Poe makes himself snigger to lighten the mood, and get them off of this, because _this_ is a hell of a lot darker than he wants to go with his 'let's get together and try to get to know each other better, talk about sex, and have a generally good time' plan. Granted, it's also making _Kylo Ren_ make a lot more sense. "That's the difference between a pro who wants to work with you and one who doesn't. Trust me, in the right place, they _like_ their jobs; that's why they work there. Even without magic, most of us still have enough of the big head thinking to be able to sense if someone doesn't actually want to touch the little one. And, yeah, if you get the sense your partner doesn't want you or sex with you, that's… Just get out of that. And if you're so drunk you can't tell the difference, you've got no business fucking anyone, paid or not." He takes another sip of his drink, and thinks of something. "You three should have an advantage at finding people who really _like_ their work, and like the look of working with you."

Kylo thinks about that, remembering the massage techs he and Rey visited on their vacation. He intentionally makes himself think of something they enjoyed, together, makes himself pull out of his own dark. "He's probably right. Rey and I—"

"Stop!" Jacen says. "You _and_ Rey. Why are you visiting pleasure specialists _with_ Rey?"

A wave of shocked and curious is cresting over Kylo from the boys. Jacen's titillated, Critt's curious, and Elias is trying to figure out how more than two might even work.

"Okay… Uh…" He's looking to Poe and Finn, trying to figure out how to get out of this, but Poe's just smirking, and Finn's looking curious, so… "Pleasure specialists don't just fuck you. If you're a twit… or _under extenuating circumstances_ … you might just get tuffed, but if you're not, get a full hour or more and let them _work_ on you. Their job is to make you feel good, and that means any bit of you that likes getting rubbed can get rubbed. And if you're anything like me, just about all of you actually likes getting rubbed. And, yeah, I've got more shaft than the next two guys," he eyes Finn and Poe, silently naming the next two guys. "Put together." Finn rolls his eyes, and Poe leans across the table and punches his shoulder, though he's smiling as he does it, pleased that Ren's willing to make a comment like that. "But it's still not most of my body, or particularly difficult to avoid touching, even when I'm naked, so… We were getting massages, together. And someone who _knows_ how to rub you down is an experience I highly recommend, especially if they happen to be attractive wo—" he remembers Jacen and Poe are here, "people, who are not wearing a ton of clothing, and you get to watch them rub on your partner at the same time. That was _a lot_ of fun, and with luck we'll get to do it again sometime soon.

"Anyway, the point was, the ladies working with us were having a good time, and they liked talking to us, and it did feel good, in my head, and feelings, and body, and that was a really good experience, unlike one of the others I've had where the lady was counting each thrust in her head wondering if I'd make it to twenty-five strokes or not, and hoping I couldn't, because she didn't exactly enjoy my company or size and just wanted me to get done before her jaw cramped up."

Finn, Poe, and Jacen wince at that because they can all imagine it.

"Did you?" Jacen asks.

"No, but not the way you're thinking. I went soft, stormed out, and spent the next hour breaking shit, with Snoke cackling in the back of my head. And then the next day Hux lectured me about breaking expensive equipment."

Poe exhales long and low at that, and even Finn looks troubled.

Kylo half-shakes his head, not wanting to dwell on that. He gets back to where they started. The slicks packs. He taps Critt's the one nearest to him. "Do you three actually know how to put those things on?"

Finn leaps onto that. The last thing he wants is empathy for Ren, but it's threatening to break out if they keep talking about Snoke, so… "Good point. They don't work right and are fairly uncomfortable if you don't know what you're doing!"

Kylo notices the way Elias is staring at the slicks packs. Then he remembers what Elias thought sex was. And he realizes that if they wait for Elias to ask for clarification, they're going to die of old age, because Elias can feel the two other boys seem to know something he doesn't, so… "Okay, back further. What these things go on, and why put them on, and what you intend to do with yourself and your friend once you've got them on."

Finn and Poe catch Ren's eye and realize that, okay, they need to go way back on this, and start at the beginning, and that they'd been making some assumptions that were likely unwarranted, and that it's possible that adding a basic human reproduction class to the things MX-6 teaches would be in order.

Poe decides to go all the way back. "Have you three played with yourselves enough to get off?"

That gets eye rolls and nodding and three separate waves of adolescent annoyance aimed at him, though Kylo's the only adult who can actually feel it.

"Quit that. He's not being an ass. None of us have done this before, and it'll go better if we know what sort of stuff you guys know."

"And unlike those two, I also didn't get this from your side, either," Finn adds.

Kylo shakes his head. "I didn't get _this_. Five minutes of mechanics followed by twenty-five minutes of keep your hands to yourself, and off of yourself, meditate to calm yourself, and give up your wants to the Force, was not _this._ "

"What did you get?" Poe asks Finn, hoping this'll help build some empathy in his direction from Ren.

"Twenty-minute-long holovid on the mechanics of reproduction and reproductive anatomy, followed by implants at fourteen, and the older guys trying to get us to go see the pleasure specialists."

"Why didn't you?" Jacen asks. "I mean… If we had them here…"

"You like sex, right?" Critt asks.

"I like sex just fine. I love sex. With Rose. The First Order tried to keep us focused on work."

"That's part of why there are pleasure specialists. It's easier to meet other people's wants if your needs are met. You can focus on your work better if you're not constantly randy. That's why _the Order_ has them." Kylo sighs. "And it dulls down empathy for the people you conquer… You're less likely to find one to get emotionally attached to if you're not fucking them. That's why the _First Order_ had them."

Finn just looks at Ren when he says that. He's never thought about why they were there, but… "Captain Phasma did her best to keep us on the fight, all the time. Focused on fighting, on training, on— Why are you smirking?" he shoots at Ren

"Because she was fucking Hux, and occasionally both of them, together would go visit the pleasure specialists."

Finn winces. "Oh…" He looks like he's got a bad taste in his mouth. "I did not need to know that. Uglh." He just stares at Ren. "Hux? She'd break him like a twig."

Ren shrugs. "I couldn't avoid their feelings at each other, but I did my best to avoid most of the details. Whatever it was she liked, he could give her, and vice versa. Sometimes when we'd train, I'd see bruises and teeth marks, but… she wanted him to put them there."

Finn's lip curls, he hates that he wants to ask, but… He does it. She'd been lurking in his nightmares for more than a decade, and all he'd ever seen was one eye. "What did she look like?"

Ren sighs. He wonders a bit what she might have become out from under Snoke and Hux's influence. Wonders if she'd have been willing to be part of The Order. He puts those thoughts aside, too. "Tall. She was as tall as I am. Broad and well-muscled, not just for a woman. She was big, bigger than Poe in all directions. She could bench press you, or me, and both of us together. Big hands and feet. Blonde hair, short, wavy. Blue eyes." His expression softens, a little. "She wasn't pretty, but she did have pretty eyes. Determined."

"Determined?" Jacen asks. "That's a look?"

Finn's nodding though. "On her, even under head to toe chrome armor, it was."

"She could take me down in a hand to hand fight."

"Did you like her?" Poe asks.

Ren shakes his head. "Not on any level or definition of the word you're thinking of. I respected her."

"You _respected_ her," Finn's voice is curling with derision. "She gave up Starkiller to save herself. That's how we broke it."

Ren half shrugs. "She wouldn't have been the first person to value herself over a horde of nameless, faceless strangers. That's part of why he made sure you were in that fucking armor all the time. So, you couldn't build that kind of attachment to each other."

Poe decides they're far enough afield, and yanks them back. "So, you're busy working your way to officer material…"

"Right…" Finn nods, willing to try to get back onto topic. "Uh… Yeah. So… The older guys keep pushing, trying to get us to go visit the Specs."

"Specs?" Critt asks.

"We had slang for everything. Pleasure Specialists became Specs. But… I'm busy. I'm tired. I'm spending most of my non-training time studying up on _everything._ Good officers need to know their own systems in and out, and as many of the other ones as they can. There are holovids with some really _interesting_ material on them. Ten credits'll get you a mountain of them. Ten credits will also get you about thirty seconds with a Spec. No one ever told me my hands needed to stay above my blankets, and I can get myself off just fine, so paying someone else to do it didn't interest me."

Poe thinks the next bit matters, so he adds, "And then you met Rose."

Finn nods. "And then I met Rose, and suddenly someone else doing it was a _LOT_ more interesting."

Poe gives him a little poke. A non-verbal _keep going._

"And, eventually she got her hands on me and vice versa, and, uh… It's a distinctly different set of sensations from doing it yourself, and they're _really_ nice, and… Uh, especially right before and a few months after Paige was born, I went back to being best buddies with Ms. Righty," he wiggles his fingers, "and I'm much happier playing with her than with myself."

"Which gets us back to basic sex, making babies. Uh…" Poe glances at the other two men. "I don't actually know how to do that. My dad had this chat with me, so, I mean, I _know,_ but, I've never seen a woman naked or had sex with one, so…"

"So…" Finn's staring at Ren.

"You're the one who's actually done it," Ren says back.

This is where the boys are getting confused because it's clear that all of them know at least the most basic of basics and they're under the impression that Finn and Ren should be talking about the same basic thing.

Kylo catches the confusion. "He got his wife pregnant. I haven't. We've both had sex. And, yes, it works the same if you're trying to make babies or not."

Finn half-inclines his head. "The mechanics are probably about the same for guys, too. Just a different target."

Poe shakes his head. "No!"

"No?" Finn asks.

"Let's get sex with women done first, and then we'll compare and contrast."

Finn sighs. "Okay, shaft gets hard. Assuming you don't want to be a dad, and you don't have an implant—"

"What's an implant?" Elias asks.

"It's a small injection in the tubes between your stones and shaft. Makes sure the sperm can't get out," Ren says.

"So… can you… still come, with one of them?" Jacen asks. It's clear on his face that if implants work the way he thinks they do, they're some sort of torture device.

Kylo nods. "There's… a few tubes… maybe?" This would be when Kylo realizes he doesn't exactly know how the implant works. "I don't know, really. It's a shot, one on each stone, it hurts for a few days, it takes two months to really kick in, then no babies for three years. But, yes, you can still spurt."

"They put a needle in your stones?" Critt's staring at him in horror. Jacen and Elias are wincing and curling in on themselves.

Finn rolls his eyes. "Some of us didn't have a choice in the matter. The First Order didn't want us leaving bastards in our wake."

"Didn't want you getting attached to any babies you might have made," Kylo adds. "And it's not mandatory for anyone past their first five years, now."

Finn rolls his eyes. "And yeah, it hurts, but…" he pokes the slick packet. "These things don't always work. You don't always have one. And… it feels better without one."

"A little pain now for peace of mind and more pleasure later," Ren says.

"A little?" Elias asks.

"I'm not saying I'd have it done regularly for fun, but… compared to," Ren rolls his eyes a little and gestures to his face. "It wasn't a big deal."

Finn nods. "Numbing gel, shots, they'd usually time it so you'd get it before your two off, but if not, a day or two of light duty and feeling achy, and you're done."

"Numbing gel?" Ren asks Finn, his voice creeping up toward the next octave as it occurs to him that maybe it didn't have to hurt _that much_.

Now Finn's staring at Ren in horror. "Did you get it done without?"

"What's numbing gel?" Ren's also looking horrified.

"You don't know what numbing gel is… What the fuck?" Finn says.

Ren doesn't make a noise. He's stunned beyond the capacity to verbalize.

Poe's looking from one of them to the other, and the kids are also staring in amazement.

Finally, Kylo gets his voice back and says, "I don't take pain meds. Morphe or anything like that. They… mess with my head. Visions that I don't want to see. Would I be correct in guessing that numbing gel is…"

"A wet gel they just rub on the skin and it makes the bit of your body under it go numb," Finn says. "It doesn't mess with your head. Won't deal with any sort of serious pain, or anything full body, but... You know Morphe is like... only for _really_ bad injuries. There's a _lot_ of options that don't fuck your head up."

Ren's glaring at his mental image of the med droid. "If you tell the med droids no pain meds, apparently they give you _no_ pain meds. No, I didn't know numbing gel was a thing."

"So, if you ever decide to get implants, make sure they give you numbing gel. With it, it kind of pinches, and you likely don't want to watch them do it, but it's mostly just uncomfortable, not _pain,_ " Finn says.

"Great. We've got implants covered. So, you're hard, your friend wants to have sex with you, you've got a pack of rubbers…" Poe's saying.

"Why do you call them that?" Ren asks.

"Because, at least where I'm from, there's this stuff, called rubber, that's awfully similar to what they make these out of. Why do you call them slicks?" He's noticed that that's one of the few other things Kylo and Finn agree on, the little sheathes in front of them are 'slicks.'

"Because the ones the First Order had are lubricated, and slick." Ren nods at the rubbers in front of them. "Are these not lubricated? Is that why you've got the bottles?"

"They're lubed, but if you're having sex with a man, you're going to want more lube than comes on a rubber."

"Okay," Finn says. "You and your sweetie are looking to have sex. You're ready to go. Except you don't have the slick… rubber on, yet." He's opening one of the boxes.

"Hey! I might need that!" Jacen chirps at the idea of losing one of his.

The three older men don't roll their eyes at that, because of the boys, Jacen's the one least likely to need them any time soon. He still feels them all think it. He glares at them for that.

"I'll replace it," Kylo says. He's gone for a second, and then back, and tosses another one at Jacen. "Go ahead."

"Wait. Why do you have these? Didn't we just cover implants?" Jacen asks, looking at the slick Ren just threw at him.

"I'm willing to give you that because I _don't need it._ "

"Oh." Jacen cracks a grin. "Got any more?"

Kylo sips his coffee. "Use two of the first three and come talk to me."

Jacen glares a little at that.

Finn waves the slick in his hand around to get their attention. "They're made to be opened with one hand, in the dark, by people who are too horny to see straight," Finn says, placing the disk on his thumb. "Balance it on your thumb, put your index finger and middle fingers on the rim, push," he does and the pack splits, and the slick slips out. "You wanna demonstrate?" he says to Ren, daring him to take this the next step.

"Why in the dark?" Elias asks.

"Lots of people like to have sex in the dark, and no I don't know why," Poe replies. "Okay, Ren, show us how to use one."

Ren rolls his eyes. "Sure." He grabs Critt's empty cider bottle. "You done with that?" Critt nods. "Obviously, this is not exactly how it works. Pinch the tip."

"Wait." Poe says, "Grab the lube, put a drop or two in the tip, then continue on."

Finn and Ren are staring at him. Poe shrugs. "It'll feel better."

"Pretend I put some lube in it. Pinch the tip, put it on your tip," he settles it over the mouth of the bottle. "Roll it down." It's not exactly rolling down easy, but a cider bottle isn't exactly shaft-shaped, either. "Once it's all the way down, you're ready to go."

"Pro-tip," Poe adds, "practice a few times on your own before you do this with someone else. Don't worry about not having enough of them. I'll make sure the med bay stays stocked. You need them, just go get them."

"When you're done, pull out, make sure you're holding onto it, so it doesn't leak, or you don't accidentally leave it in her, pull it off, tie it up, and toss it," Finn says.

The boys are staring at the prophylactic-ed bottle, and Critt's the one who decides to actually ask. "So, uh… what do you… _do_ … in between putting it on and taking it off?"

The men look at each other. Ren says, "That's… uh… probably going to depend on how close to spurting you are, and how close to spurting she is—"

"Wait. Women spurt?" Jacen's staring at Ren. "Okay, I've never… not with one of them, but… They don't…" He's gesturing toward his lap. "have the equipment for that, right?"

Ren sighs. "Come… Spend… Get off… They do that. If they can literally spurt, I've never seen it. They can… drip, sometimes, or leak, but I've never seen spurting."

Finn half inclines his head. "I've seen pictures of it on holovids. I think she was peeing though. Rose doesn't think it really happens. But they can do the feel really good and twitch part of it, just like us. And, yeah, if she's having a really good time, she'll get really wet, and sometimes she can drip or leak or… Ren said it earlier, if she wants to have sex with you, her body's going to get wet and slick and just going to let you right on in, and it's going to feel amazing."

"Wet and snug and slick and hot and… It's _really_ good. And it smells good, and tastes good, and assuming you like women, you'll like touching and smelling and tasting it," Kylo adds.

Poe breaks in there. "Good point, if… whatever it is, mouth, delta, ass… anything, doesn't look and smell good enough to lick, _don't put your shaft in it,_ rubber or not. Your sense of smell and taste are your first line of defense on this. Beyond peeing liquid fire, there are a bunch of fun, by which I mean terrifying and painful, diseases out there, that you can catch by sticking your shaft in places it shouldn't go."

That's got the boys attention.

"That said, if she's… he's… healthy and clean, you're probably going to want to lick it," Kylo says. "Or they're going to want you to lick it. Or, maybe both at once."

Finn's got a big grin on his face there.

Critt's looking confused. "How are you tasting it if you're… in her."

Ren looks down, biting his lip, trying not to laugh. Then he swallows and looks up. "I meant both of you licking each other at once. Uh…" He's never tried to think of a name for that. "Tops to tails." That seems like it's properly descriptive, though. "Unless you're a lot more flexible than I am, you're not fucking and licking at the same time."

Poe, noticing that all four coffee cups are empty, gets Finn and Elias out of the booth, scoots himself out, and goes to make more.

Finn's smirking. "But a man can dream, right?"

"Oh yeah! If I could do both at once, I would." Kylo's very pleased at the idea of that.

"One of the holovids had a guy with a girl on his shaft and face… talk about died and went to heaven…" Finn's saying, enthusiastically. Kylo's very happily nodding along to that idea.

Poe's chuckling at that as he's measuring out more coffee. "About six years ago. I was on Hollan V, and there was this guy… Uh… He was _flexible_ and, you know, I'm not build like a girl," He holds his fingers out, about waist high, indicating that someone wouldn't have to get their mouth quite so close to his pelvis as he would to a woman, "so… he had me coming and going at once, and that…" He's got a dreamy look on his face, and a slow, satisfied nod. "That was a treat."

"Rey's done something like that. Fingers and mouth, and… yeah…"

Poe's looking shocked. "You let her…"

Ren's surprised that Poe's shocked, but… he rolls with it. "What do you mean? Let? Once I knew it was a possibility, I more or less rolled over and said, 'yes, please!' You're the one who gave her the idea in the first place. Which was a good one! So, yeah, sure. It felt good. It feels good when a guy does it to you, right?"

Poe nods. "Yeah, it does, but… Uh… Men who are narrow for women don't generally seem to like that."

Judging by the way Finn's just watching them, and not immediately hopping on the idea or expounding on how he thought it was tons of fun, too, Poe might be onto something with that theory.

Ren shrugs. "I do." Poe's just staring at him. And Ren knows what he's thinking. He rolls his eyes a bit. "Unless I've got a big surprise coming for me late in life, _just women._ "

"Guys, you've lost me again," Elias says.

"And didn't answer the original question," Critt adds.

"Okay, one more detour, and then we'll get there," Poe says. "You're with a guy, or a woman, hoping to do anal. Unless this is something you do _a lot,_ which we know isn't the case here, you can't just shove your shaft on in. If you just hop on him and try to shove it in him, even with lube, you're going to hurt him, and honestly, it's not going to feel all that great for you, either. There really is such a thing as too tight, and an ass that isn't ready for you is going to be too tight. So, fingering. Lots of people have different ideas on what feels good with this, so… try it on yourself before you do it to someone else, but, in general, lots of lube, slow, start with one finger, rub it around a bit, and when that's comfortable, you can go to two. Some guys'll do three, some'll just go for shaft. Mostly, the muscles in your ass are designed to stay shut most of the time, so you just want to help 'em relax a bit."

Jacen sort of rolls his eyes, feeling stupid asking, but… This feels like something he probably needs to know. "Uh… messy?"

Poe blinks. It's been so long since this wasn't part of his 'getting ready for a good time' routine he'd forgotten it's something you need to teach people. "Oh, yeah. Right. Yes, it _really_ can be. Use a rubber on anything you're going to stick into someone's ass, make sure it's got lots of lube on it, or make sure you've cleaned yourself out first."

Both Jacen and Kylo (who is suddenly wondering about when Rey's done it to him) are staring at Poe.

He shrugs a bit. "Sex is messy. That's true no matter what you're doing. And, honestly… look, a little shit here and there isn't the end of the world. Just make sure you wash up thoroughly and pee after any adventure where you're on the penetrating side of things."

"Wait!" Finn hops in. "For the girls. I don't know if Rose mentioned that, and with the way Rey heals up, she probably doesn't know. Make sure the girls pee after you have sex with them, or they can get the same kind of sick Poe was talking about. Seriously, nothing kills the 'we just had sex' glow like a urinary tract infection."

Poe looks thoughtful at that, and Kylo blinks, because that wasn't anything in his sphere of knowledge. Poe continues on, "If you want to try anything anal, absolute bare minimum, hit the head first, take a shit, and make sure you've washed everything. If you've got time, and you want your sweetie to not need to use a slick, get an enema, read the damn directions, and use it, wait half an hour, and then do it again. When the water comes out clean, you're good to go."

Elias and Critt squirm a bit at that. Poe puts the refilled coffee cups on the table, waits for Elias and Finn to budge over, and sits down.

Jacen nods. "Sure. Fine. We're cleaned up and moved to penetration, now what?"

"Unless you think you're going to spurt in the next heartbeat or two, you're likely going to want to move," Ren says.

Poe adds a very descriptive hand gesture. The boys, and Ren, snigger at that. Finn stares at the ceiling, indicating he's vastly too mature to be involved in a discussion with hand puppets.

"And if you are going to?" Elias asks. What he and Magiit have done might not be _sex_ per se, but he's more than familiar with the sensation of being two strokes away from spending in his trousers.

"Stay very still and let it pass, or if you've got another slick, move fast, enjoy it, then take care of her, and go at it again in bit. You three are young. If you've got an hour, you can likely do it at least twice if not three times, so… It's up to you," Ren says.

"Or, be smart about it, pick a time where you've got enough time to get your partner off first, and then if you get off in ten seconds, it's not a big deal, because she's not disappointed," Finn says.

"Or, she sucks you off first, you take care of her, you both have a bit of a cuddle and rest, and then when she's on you, you're toned down enough to last more than a minute, and you have a good time together," Ren adds.

Finn decides to say something vaguely vulnerable. "Uh… Our first time. Our first time together, and my first time, period. I knew I wasn't going to last. Not… without help. So… We'd been having dinner, talking, flirting, her hand's on my thigh, and it's just moving higher and higher up, and there's no one else around, so after dinner things are going to get hot, so… I excused myself, jerked it, _fast_ and between what'd she'd been doing to me and what she was going to be doing to me, I didn't have any trouble getting done quick, and that bought me enough time to really pay attention to her before my shaft got back into play and I was having a hard time focusing on anything else. Pretty much, do whatever you've got to do to make sure she has her good time, _first._ Then you get off."

"The reverse of this is true if you're penetrating another man. If you're in him, you want to get off first. Maybe not by a lot, but prostates, the little nub inside you that feels _really_ good to touch, are _sensitive_ after you get off, and do _not_ appreciate getting poked then. Just like your stones probably like a bit of attention while your fucking, and DO NOT want anyone pressing on them at any other time. So, try to time it so you fire off a few strokes before he does, and that should leave everyone happy," Poe adds.

That's a deluge of information over the boys, and finally Jacen's the one to say, "Okay, great. Move it, _how_?"

Poe's looking from Jacen to Ren, and back to Jacen, because he was the one making a big show of not being a virgin, and Ren didn't twig to it as a lie, so…

"I've given head before. Gotten it once, too. So, I know what to do with my mouth. Less so with my hips."

Poe nods. "It's similar." He does that hand gesture again. "The in-out's pretty much the same no matter what. But, yeah, hips move more when you're fucking," He curls his left hand into a loose fist and moves it over his extended right index and middle finger, both hands rubbing against each other. "And hopefully, when you're getting sucked, you keep 'em pretty still," this time just the fist moves, and he keeps the pointer finger and middle finger still, "because you don't want to choke your partner. I've met exactly no one who appreciates getting gagged by a shaft. And, anal with a guy…" Poe stares at his fist for a moment, then he flips it so that his thumb is pointing toward the ceiling and away from his body, "Speaking of things I never thought I'd be doing finger puppets for. Okay. If this is his shaft," he wiggles his thumb, "when you're inside him, your aiming for his prostate, which is," he slips his fingers into his fist, pinky finger side, and wiggles them where his thumb connects to his wrist, "about here. Touching it generally feels really good, but, again, lots of lube, go slow, keep talking, and go find your own first, and get an idea of what it likes."

The boys look at least somewhat intrigued by that.

"There's a spot like that on a woman, too. Uh… not in their ass… or if there is, I don't know about it," Ren says. "But, same general sort of place in their sheath. I haven't found a good way to reliably hit it when fucking, but fingers work just fine," he wiggles his index and middle finger together, showing off the motion, "If there's a way to make your shaft do that, I don't know how. Fingers are good at that, and if you pair it with your tongue, you've got a happy woman."

Poe adds, "Okay, actually, yeah. Reliably hitting a prostate while fucking is difficult, too. Some positions make it easier, but fingers are a lot better at that."

"With a woman… when you're fucking, you can wiggle and grind and whatnot, but… Uh… I mean… Shit," Finn looks at Poe. "You don't have any… I mean… Back at our place, on my datapad… Uh."

Ren smirks. "A picture's worth a thousand words, right?"

"Right," Finn says. "And I bet he doesn't have the right sort of pictures."

"You have a copy of the full library?" Ren asks Poe.

"Yeah."

"Go get it."

"Why?" Finn asks.

"Because it's Orlac's library, and he, at least officially, runs an art school, and art schools paint nudes, a lot of them, and I know for a fact he's got some interesting pictures on there." Then he turns to the kids. "And yes, these are on your libraries, too, and I'm not saying you can't enjoy them, but if you boogers decide to use this information to spend the next six weeks locked in your cabins rubbing yourselves raw, I'm going to delete all the good stuff off your copies. You still need to show up for meals and chores and lessons, so, use this information _wisely._ "

All three boys look _deeply_ intrigued by this.

Poe hands his library over. Ren queues up the search feature, puts in erotic nudes, and goes skipping through the list for the one he thinks has the most useful pictures of the bunch. He then goes whipping through the images, because the last thing he needs to do right now is spend enough time really looking at them to get excited, because that'll just make things awkward, but eventually he gets to the image he wants.

"Human female sexual anatomy, all laid out for you. This lady doesn't seem to have any body hair, but most adult women do, so, pretend she's got hair."

"All over…" Critt sounds like he can't wrap his head around that.

"Like your body. The pink parts don't have any or much hair, the normal skin colored ones do," Finn adds, sketching out the triangle where the hair would normally be, which helps to clarify things. He taps the lady's pearl. "Think of that as your shaft. Yes, she can have a good time without you touching it, but, like with your body, it's really difficult to get off without touching it."

"It's tiny," Jacen says, staring. "How… do you… What do you do with it?"

Poe shrugs. This is the first time he's really looked at a picture of a naked woman, and _tiny_ is the first thought that came to his mind, too. The billion and one comments he's overheard his different female friends make about their partners not being able to find it are making a lot more sense.

"Lick it, kiss it, stroke it, suck it," Ren taps his middle finger against the table and makes small circles with it, "circle it, grind your palm against it, kiss it some more, rub your shaft against it,"

"Get her on top of you, she bounces up and down, and you rub your thumb over it," Finn shows off his back and forth gesture. "You get on top of her, in and out is for you, grinding your pelvis against it is for her."

"She's on her hands and knees, you use one hand to support yourself, the other is on her boob, and she touches it herself…" Ren adds.

"Just make sure that someone is touching it," Finn says. "Doesn't have to be you, but knowing you got her off is a kick."

"What about," Elias points to all of the rest of the woman's delta. "What's…" He's blushing furiously. "Uh… the target?"

Kylo doesn't laugh, because, yes, this is a picture of a completely naked woman, lying on her back, one leg bent at the hip and knee, the other spread to the side, so it's a _nice_ view, but she's not spreading her inner lips apart, so it's not _that good_ of a view.

He lightly touches the screen. "Those spread apart, and between them is her sheath."

"So, you just… focus on her… pearl?" Critt says.

Ren shakes his head. "Spend a lot of time on it, but… Especially when you're starting out, touch all of it. Be gentle. She'll let you know when not to be gentle. If she's got hair you can lightly tug on it, and that's nice. But, just, touch it. Get on your knees or have her straddle you so you've got a good view of what you're doing, and touch it. Like I said earlier, if she wants you, she'll let you in. The happier she is, everything gets wet, and swollen and puffy, and those'll open for you."

"Gentle, though," Finn repeats. "It's likely you like to be touched a _lot_ harder than she does, at least at first. So, go soft, and she'll let you know when to use more pressure. And… all of it. Her pussy, her legs, her belly, her butt, and tits, and… If there's a spot on a woman that doesn't like to be touched, I've never found it. Hell, you can kiss her elbows, and if she likes you, she'll likely like that, too."

Ren's nodding along, and Poe's feeling pretty satisfied to see the two of them agreeing about something. "If she's in front of you, on her side, and you're behind, and on your side, you can snuggle up close, drape her top leg back and over your hip, and you'll have free access with your hands to touch everything, and your lips can get to her neck and shoulders and ears and… That's really good."

"Spoons. That's what Rose calls that. Spoons is good. Especially first thing in the morning, when you're mostly asleep, but your shaft's up, because it's morning, and…"

"That's generally where _between_ comes into play, because that's good with a man, too. You're half asleep, but your shaft's not, and it's partially dream, and partially real, and you just reach around—"

And Ren's still nodding along. Then he looks at Poe, "Until some idiot shows up first thing in the morning waving muffins in your face."

"I did that _once._ Come on, even you aren't so dark you need to get tuffed every single night and every single morning. You can take a day of missing out on your morning shag."

"Shag?" Critt asks.

"Shag, fuck, tuff, slam, score, roger, canoodle—"

"Canoodle, really?" Finn asks.

"Yeah, I don't know where that one comes from. Look, there's a million words for sex," Poe says, "They all basically mean the same thing, up, in-out in-out, and done."

"Commune," Ren adds. "That was the Jedi term, _physically communing together in mutual accord and affection_."

"I thought Jedi weren't supposed to… commune… at all," Finn says.

" _We_ weren't. But, supposedly, a master who was well-grounded in the light, with a suitably well-grounded partner could commune in an effort to enhance their knowledge of themselves, the Force, and the light."

"That doesn't sound like much fun," Jacen says.

Kylo shrugs. "Last year, I agreed with that. Now… Uh… Rey and I have done a lot of fucking, and had an absolute blast at it. And when Luke was explaining it to me, I think he meant commune as a 'nice' synonym for fuck. He was celibate, as best I know, truly celibate, and probably asexual, too, so I don't think he knew that sex has… levels… flavors… whatever. But the Jedi who wrote about it in the books he was telling us about, they knew, and Rey and I've communed, too, and it's… Do you know what the word ecstasy means?"

It's clear the boys don't. Finn and Poe don't appear to, either.

"Not surprising, it's a religious term. The idea is that when you've got something immensely good, a mix of pleasure and joy and happiness and sharp, crystalline _good_ usually wrapped in a sense of religious euphoria…" And he lost the other five with that one. Apparently, they're all expanding their vocabularies today. "joy. It's… tasting the Force, feeling wrapped in it, bathed in light and good, and… And if you're really communing, you can get there, and that's… Uh… Okay, spurting is sharp and good and your body sings and your heart races and you feel tingly and glow-y all over, and that's good. Communing, really communing is all of that, all over, in your head and heart and shaft and then take it up a few levels, and… You hit a point where your bodies fall away, where it feels good, but… When you're fucking, it feels good in your shaft and stones, and when you're communing it's just _good_ all over, and your brains sort of meld, and you don't know where she begins and you end and if you're really in it… Uh…There's the old mantra, 'I am one with the Force and the Force is with me,' and okay, yeah, that sounds dry and stupid, but… You… you and her, together, one, flow into and with the Force and… Fun's not the word. It's not _fun._ But it is intense and present and real, and ecstatic and… Uh… yeah… If you can do it, _do it_ because it's amazing, but… We've only managed it once…" Ren bites his lip. That's advanced sex, and they're not there. Basic though…

"Okay, sex for Force users. Slipping out of your head and into hers, and vice versa, is, from what I can tell, at least for Rey and I, pretty easy. And," he looks at the picture in front of them, "Don't get me wrong, good technique is useful, but… She can feel if she's making me feel good. And I can _feel_ if I'm doing something she likes. And, honestly, sometimes it's just easier to have both of us ride off of how I'm feeling, because of the two of us, I'm the easier one to get spurting. But… I can be between her legs, happily licking away, and if she needs me to the left or right or harder or softer, I can usually, assuming I'm paying even the least attention to her, _feel_ where and how she needs it. I don't know if you three will have that, but… You probably will to at least some degree, and that makes everything easier.

"And, even when we aren't communing, when we're just together and present and _with_ each other, it's really easy for my mind and hers to get all tangled up."

"Does that always happen?" Finn asks, feeling like this is a major piece in the why Rey's having anything to do with this guy puzzle.

"No," Ren shrugs. "We can just fuck, too. It works that way for you and Rose, too, right? Sometimes you're just randy and having a quick one because it feels good, and sometimes it's deep and present and emotional and real and _different_ , right?"

"Yeah. I can't… feel it through her body, or get into her head, but, yeah, sometimes you're just getting off with your favorite person because you like getting off, and sometimes it's a lot deeper and more intense, real. Slow and steady and present and you just _feel_ their love for you, in their skin and your skin and through how you touch each other."

"My dad called it making love," Poe says. "Sometimes you're fucking. And sometimes you're making love. He told me I'd be able to tell the difference when it happened."

"Did you?" Finn asks.

"Yeah. It's been a long time, though." Poe says. He shrugs a little. And both Ren and Elias can feel the wave of longing that goes with that. Kylo reaches across the table and gives his hand a squeeze, which shocks everyone else. Poe squeezes back, and says, "They say you know when you meet the right person, but since that's not been working out so hot, these days, I settle for men who like to fuck other men, and that's enough."

Kylo's curious about that, but he's got the good sense not to ask about it, not now.

"I didn't know when I met Rose. She says she knew when she met me, but… I didn't know until she was saying to me, 'We're going to win by saving the things we love,' and then she kissed me, and then I knew, and then I just about died because she passed out, and she was bleeding, and I thought she'd died, and… It was fifteen hours before she woke up, and when she woke up and said my name, I knew," Finn says.

They're all looking at Kylo, so he says, "There was… I guess I was ten. I don't remember the day, not like Tuesday the Fifteenth of the sixth month of ABY 15. Not like that. But… There was a day, and I was… older than eight. I was at Luke's school. And younger than twelve, because Kumman hadn't joined us, yet. I was twelve when he came, so… Sometime between eight and twelve. And there had always been the dark presence in my head. I thought it was my grandfather. It wasn't. And then one day this tiny little light was there, too. It didn't have a voice, or name, or anything like that, just a feel. The dark voice didn't like it. He told me to ignore it. That it was trying to drag me away from my destiny. And it didn't do anything. It didn't talk to me the way the voice did. Sometimes it was brighter, sometimes more dim, and sometimes I got the sense it was happy or sad or hurting, but… It was just a light. A very small light.

"I do remember when I finally saw who the light was attached to. Takodana." He looks to Finn. "You were there, too, right?"

Finn nods.

"I was in the forest, looking for the droid, and I found a girl. I wasn't looking for her. But… I found her. She felt, important. She mattered; in a way I didn't expect. I knew my father was there. I could feel my mother coming. Snoke was mucking about in my head telling me something important was coming, and all I wanted to do was snark at him with something like, 'No shit. The Force drops all three of us here at once, and you think something important is coming? Wow. Amaze me with your glorious insights into the nature of the Force, oh great and powerful master.' But even thinking that is asking to get hit with a million volts of lightning, so I don't think that. I thought about the girl, and realize she's Force sensitive, too, and that I can feel her mind, and… She's seen the map.

"I don't need the droid. She's seen the map, so I can grab her, and unlike the droid, which I can't open to my will with the Force, I can read her mind. So, I grab her, take her with me, and when I start to question her, I'm riffing through her mind, and I can feel it, she's my light. I think I said something like, 'Oh, it is you!' and she's staring at me like I'm a moron—"

"She's staring at you like you're a moron because you've kidnapped her, tied her to a chair, and are interrogating her, and for some reason can't figure out why she's not instantly delighted to be in your company, Ren!"

Kylo glares at Finn but there's no heat in it, given that that's exactly what was happening, it's not like Finn's wrong. Then he shrugs a bit and continues on with, "because she may have been my light, but apparently she wasn't aware of me as the boy she'd been sensing for years, that would come later, anyway…

"Rey's been in your head since she was born?" Jacen asks.

Ren shrugs. "That, I don't know. We don't know how old she is. She was a child when she started to get a sense of the boy we think is me, so… That might have been about when her parents left her."

"Oh," Critt says. "That doesn't sound like love, though. At least, not what Finn's talking about."

"It's not," Ren says. "Destiny and love are not the same thing, and at first, given how many years Snoke had been telling me that my little light was trouble, I was fairly sure she was going to kill me. But, she didn't. And I didn't kill her. And I killed Snoke. And together we killed the guards. And… I broke her heart, because I couldn't be Ben, and she broke mine because she wouldn't help me set the galaxy on fire, and time went by and we got to actually know each other, and I moved light and she moved dark, and we got to a point where we could love each other, and then did love each other, and there wasn't just a moment of 'Oh, you and me forever!' it was a centimeter at a time, and we tangled into each other, and then we started having sex, and that tangled us even further, and now I'm not sure where I end and she begins, and we both rather like it that way, but I can't point to a moment and say, 'This, here, now' is when it happened." Kylo rubs his lips together. "It changes, too. Shifting. Not… not that we're less in love or we don't want each other, though I suppose that's true for some people, my parents, I guess, but… What it… what love means, what we do by and for each other… You and Rose do that, too, right?"

Finn nods. "Yeah. The bedrock, you and me until the end, that's solid, but… We have arguments, and conversations, and trying to figure out how to _be_ you and me to the end, but… the goal, the two of us together, with Paige, and any other children we may make, and a home, that's what everything else has to serve, so there are… boundaries to the fights or conversations. We know where the journey has to take us, but we're often talking about how to get there."

Elias looks over at Poe. "Have you been in love?"

Poe shrugs a little. "Flying?" Jacen's already raising an eyebrow at him. Then he shakes his head a bit, and pours himself a rum, straight, shooting it back fast. "No bantha shit. Uh… Yes. Long time ago. His name was Micah, and we were young and stupid and…" he smiles, but it's sad, "and very in love." Finn's never heard this story, and he's listening intently. Ren's never heard it, either, though he's guessed it exists. It has to, if this Force/balance/destiny thing is real. "We'd both been part of Leia's protection detail, and we were both ace pilots, and… And we weren't actively fighting then, but we were training, and… It was an accident. Close combat flying is dangerous, and he was taking a group of fliers up for their first low-atmo, close combat flying exercise. One of them misjudged how far apart they were, clipped the other's wing, that one spun into Micah, and all three of them died. Just a stupid fucking training accident. There's at least one every year, and we all know it, but… He's the one who got burned."

"How old were you?" Finn asks.

"Seventeen when we met. Twenty-two when he died." There's a small smile on Poe's face. "Like I said, long time ago."

"But not really," Ren adds, voice soft.

Poe shrugs.

"So, you just… find strangers to sleep with?" Critt asks.

"More or less. I tend to sleep alone. I fuck strangers or near strangers. It's easier, especially when we were fighting. I didn't have to worry about getting hurt, or hurting anyone. Out of the twenty-five of us who left the New Republic as Leia's hand-picked help, Connix and I are the only ones left. Everyone else is dead." Finn's glaring at Ren, and he looks embarrassed. Poe keeps talking. "And, I've had some guys I've been sweet on since, but I'm unerringly able to crush on men who don't like fucking other men, so…" He shrugs at that, too. Kylo's almost about to ask about Jon, but decides now isn't the time. "Leia told me to get my head out of my ass once, and to stop doing that, and I'm trying, but… I mean… She never remarried after your dad," he says to Ren.

"Easier advice to give than live," Finn says, feeling very uncomfortable with what Poe just said and the way Jacen and Ren are looking at him.

"How do you… know which ones like men?" Elias asks. He points to Jacen. "He had to tell us."

"Talking is good," Poe replies, pleased to be on this instead of his own deeper feelings. "Talking is your friend. Talking will get you in and out of a lot of situations you need to get into and out of. And… There are places people go when they're looking to find sex and don't want to pay for it, and some of them are just for men looking for men, or women looking for women, and some are for everyone looking for anyone. Anyway, there are more than a few places I'm familiar with where I've got much better than even odds of getting tuffed if that's what I'm looking for."

"If you just want to get tuffed, why not pay for it?" Jacen asks.

Poe doesn't exactly shrug, but… "At a club, a hundred credits can get me a few good drinks, probably a few hours of good dancing, and more often than not, decently fucked, too. Or, at a brothel, it can get me fucked. I like getting fucked, but I like dancing and drinking, too. And, generally speaking, the more I want sex, the more likely I am to get it."

"How do you do that without Force skills?" Critt says.

That makes Poe laugh. "Like a lot of men, the randier I get, the lower my standards drop, the easier it is to find someone to scratch the itch for me."

The other five of them glance at each other, all of them able to imagine that.

Finn's the one who asks the next question, "You say, getting fucked… Are you… uh… giving or getting?"

Poe smirks. "I like both just fine."

"How do you figure out who does what?" Jacen asks.

"Same way you figure out who does what for anything else. You _talk._ " He looks at Ren and Finn. "They don't do the same thing every time, either."

The men nod. Ren adds, "We've got… Okay… This is probably stupid, but I think about it a lot like food. Snack sex. Something quick and easy just because you like how it tastes. The ten minute… shag?" Poe nods, he's got the word right. "In the morning before you get up to go do whatever it is. Usually not a whole lot of talking with that because we're generally both half-asleep. That's normally the same thing every time. We sleep next to each other on our backs, but usually as we're waking up, I spoon up behind her, and we're not wearing pajamas, so…" He figures he doesn't need to be more explicit than that. And, fortunately, it seems the boys are following along well enough he doesn't need to. "Meal sex. That's… like dinner. More variety than snacks, and you take longer to eat it, so, yeah, more talking with that. And some nights we actually talk, ahead of time, about what we're going to do, or other nights we just sort of roll into it, but there's uh… more on the menu… so we've got to talk to figure it out. Then there's banquet sex, where everything you like is on the menu, and you've got the time to have some of all of it, and talking is definitely part of that, and not just in a what are we doing sort of way, but also because talking makes you feel good. It's part of playing."

The boys are just staring at him, but Finn's smirking along, nodding.

"There are things that you _never_ think are going to come out of your mouth, or hers, but then she… says something, and no, I'm not saying what, but it will hit you _hard_ and you'll want to hear a lot more things like that, and she'll want to hear them from you, and…"

"It's good," Poe says. "There's something to be said for the direct approach. Though, this is another pro-tip, you need a certain amount of swagger to pull this off cold, and probably at least five years more growing up, but having an attractive stranger walk over to you, gently brush your hair away from your ear, bend down, and whisper into it with what _exactly_ they want to do to and with you, _that_ feels good."

Poe thinks about that for a moment, and looks at the boys in front of them. Then looks at Ren and Finn. "And let's take a moment here about how to be attractive. Grooming 101. Head to toes. If it grows hair, wash it regularly. Top of your head can probably get by on just once a week, but more is likely better. Pits and pubes, do not go more than two days without applying soap or a sonic, and if you can't avoid going longer, get a wash before you've got to be around people." He glances at all three of them, and then sighs. They smell like teenage boys. "Deodorant, every time you wash. Every time you wash, foreskin gets pulled back, and the glans gets at least a rinse. Apply soap if there's smeg all over your tip, otherwise water's fine, okay?" They blush. "Look, you want someone to put it in their mouth, the odds of that increase dramatically if it smells and looks clean."

"When you have a partner, getting clean together is a lot of fun," Ren adds.

Finn nods. "And if you let your girl do you, you know you're the way she likes you, after. And if you smell/look the way she wants you to, she's a lot more likely to rub herself all over you, so that's a good thing."

"Shave or not as you see fit, but Jacen," Poe reaches across and gently strokes Jacen's cheek, "If you want more than your current bunny fluff, you've got to shave it more than twice before you grow it out." Jacen glares at him, a little, with no real heat. Beard length is coming in fine for him, but the textures is _soft._ "If you want to talk razors and gear, we can do that later, or you can chat with Finn."

"Why not you?" Jacen looks at Ren, who he figures has the closest hair texture to his own.

"Rey's got a laser thing, so I only have to shave once a week, and these days she shaves me, which… uh… That's fun. And, not exactly sex, but kind of like sex, but…" He's coming to the conclusion that this is probably not necessary right now. Not only are the boys staring at him, but so are Finn and Poe. "But, she'll tell you about the laser thing if you want to know more. It works, keep using it, and eventually, you won't have to shave at all, so… if you want options, maybe not a plan."

The boys nod at that, and return attention to Poe.

"Also, shave where you see fit. Some guys have no hair below their eyelashes. Some have lots. That's generally going to be a personal preference thing. If you do your pubes, talk to me first, because there's a trick to not wishing someone knocked the razor out of your hand before you started once it begins to grow back."

The boys look disturbed by that. Finn looks intrigued.

Poe keeps going, "Fingernails get trimmed at least once a month. If you've got a partner who you intend to put your fingers in, nails get trimmed, filed, and scrubbed _regularly._ Do not put dirty fingers in someone else. Do not try to put raggedy, scraggly nails in someone else. I can tell you from personal experience that no one, ever, enjoyed getting a nail snagged in a sensitive area, okay?"

They nod.

Finn adds, "Though if you let them get a little long, trailing them over her back or neck or leg… Rose likes that. Just lightly. It'll light up her skin and make her break out in head to toe goosebumps."

"And if your friend has them… uh… not lightly can be fun, too," Kylo adds.

Poe smirks. "You've got claw marks down your back, don't you?"

"Not today," Kylo replies with a wide grin.

"Rey's so light, I doubt he keeps them for more than five minutes at a go," Jacen adds.

Kylo just smirks.

"Back on track," Poe says. "The rest of you gets washed when it gets dirty. Feet get washed _before_ they get smelly. Clean socks every day. Clean shorts, every day. The rest of your clothing is less strict, wash 'em when they need it. And they need it _before_ they get smelly."

Finn adds, "And all of you need to do your laundry. Yes, it's winter. No, you don't need to wash your clothing as often as you did in summer, but right now anything with a nose can smell you coming a klick away."

They look embarrassed about that.

Poe stops to think. "Cologne. If that's something you want to chat about we can do that, too."

"Just you?" Elias asks.

"Finn doesn't wear it, and Ren appears to still be learning," Poe replies.

The boys look confused about that. Jacen leans a little closer to Kylo. "He's wearing some right now."

Poe smirks. "Yeah, I know. He smell good to you, Elias?"

"Uh…" Elias is blushing. Ren's eyes are narrowed. "Yeah, he does."

Poe nods. "I bet. Like I said, learning. Somehow, either because it's rubbed off from Rey, or he's still a little rough on this, Ren's wearing a woman's scent."

"How can scents have sexes?" Kylo sounds annoyed. "If it's on my body, it's a men's scent."

Poe snerks a little at that. "Finn? You want to enlighten our boy?"

Finn looks skeptical about the 'our boy' bit, but he does answer the question. "I thought it'd rubbed off of Rey." He sighs. "Also, you've got shit taste in presents for women if you bought it for her."

Kylo looks appalled and stunned. "She likes it! I like it! It smells good!"

"You smell like my dormmates coming home from rolling around with the Specs all night. Where'd you get that? One of the sex shops in the R&R section of the F-Deck?"

Kylo blushes furiously. Finally he says, _"Finalizer_."

Poe, more gently, says, "The reason it smells good to you, and Elias, and Critt, and though he's not going to admit it, Finn, is because it's not only a collection of pleasant scents, it's also packed full of female sex pheromones. Which is why they sell it in the sex shops in the R&R section."

"Then why do you know it?" Ren snipes at Poe.

"Just because I don't fuck women doesn't mean I haven't played a million card games in different pleasure palaces. Trust me, I _know_ that scent, and _all_ of its cousins. And I know why it's attractive to you." He glances to the boys. "Speaking of attraction… And why we'll talk cologne one on one. You're going to want to find something that works with your personal chemistry, and is, with any luck, a little less readily identifiable than what Ren's got on," Poe says with a little smirk. "Anyway, yes, it smells good to you, Kylo, it's been designed on an atomic level to make you feel good in its presence."

"And that's why Rey likes it, too," Critt says. He glances around because the rest of the table, including Kylo is sort of just staring at him. "What? She mentioned this to the girls last night, and Savarah told me. Rey likes girls, too. So, it smells good, it's packed full of yummy girl scent, so…" He sniffs at Kylo a little more deeply, and then pulls back. "Yeah, that's just weird on you. My nose is telling me one thing and my eyes are telling me a different thing."

Kylo sighs, deeply, and then rolls his eyes a bit. "That cover all of grooming?" he says to Poe.

"I think so."

"Great, from attraction to desire. You'll feel it, most of the people around you want to be desired, maybe not by you, personally, but in general, and the ones who do want to be desired by you, tend to enjoy proof of said desire," Ren says.

"But, since rubbing a hard shaft against someone without their explicit permission is generally considered inappropriate in most social situations, _learn to use your words_ ," Poe adds. "Which I guess gets us back to walking over and telling people what you want."

"Or patting your lady on the butt from time to time and just _looking_ at her," Finn adds. "Especially if she's feeling a little low, a direct, 'You're the most beautiful woman in my universe,' tends to lift the mood."

"Lift her… his, I guess, hair, lay a kiss on the nape of the neck, and say something sweet. Rey likes that. I like it when she does it to me."

Poe's nodding. "Especially if you're in a relationship with someone, don't ever be afraid to tell them what you like about them, and why. That generally makes people happy."

The men look at each other, not immediately sure what goes after that.

So, after a moment, Ren says, "Questions?"

The boys look at each other, and at the picture, and at the men, and Ren can feel they want to spend a while talking to each other, and looking up _every_ even nearly dirty word they can think of on their library pads, so…

"Never mind," Ren says. "Go, have fun. Learn, ask when you've got more to go off of."

Poe adds. "You can always ask. _Hopefully,_ at least one of us will know the answer."

The boys nod at that, too, and then grab their jackets and hurry off, whispering to each other.

Finn looks to Ren. "We do okay by them?"

Ren nods. "Yeah. They're feeling good about it."

Finn gets up. "Good." He grabs the bottle of rum and adds more to his coffee. He gulps it, figuring that it's doing an okay job of killing the part of his brain that's uncomfortable with the boys, so… Maybe it'll work for Ren, too. One more swallow. "Okay. No bantha shit. Jakku." It's not a question, but it is, because…

Because, for a minute at least, Finn's trying to be not horrified and scared of this man, and he can, almost, sort of, get it.

Sort of.

Poe wants to grin, pleased to see Finn trying, but doesn't, because… Well, Rey hasn't exactly told him about Jakku, but given what Ren did about it, and the fact that Poe's not some sheltered kid out on his first run in the wider world, he's got a pretty good sense of what's going on, still… He's not sure if he should leave for this, but… He notices the way Ren catches his eye, like… maybe this would be easier if he sticks around, so… He pours himself more to drink, and tops up Ren's cup, too. (Mostly coffee, a little rum. The guy's the size of a Wookie, but he doesn't drink from what Poe can see, so… four shots in three hours… probably good.)

Ren nods, and drinks, draining his cup, and then says, "I can look back at it now and _say_ that was a bad decision. And maybe, as more time passes and I do a better job of balancing, I may, begin to _feel_ like it was a bad decision, too, but…" He exhales slowly, feeling that moment when he got hit by Rey's memory of it. "I felt it in her mind. She didn't tell me about it. Not until much later. And…" he rubs his lips together, "it's… different when she tells you, than when you feel it. When she talks, you've got her walls, and yours in place, so you can do things like… think.

"But, the Force kept throwing us together. And it has a sense of humor apparently, or… something. Maybe it mattered for her to see the man, with the scars, the big ones she put there, reassurance that she could hurt me, maybe, but, every other time it would connect us, it would pick a moment where I wasn't particularly dressed.

"The first time she saw me, she was angry, and a little afraid, but mostly angry. Tied up, in my ship, at my mercy, and she was _angry,_ and then confused, and then more angry _._ The next time, I was half-naked, changing after training, and she was on the other side of the galaxy, but she was afraid and disgusted. I'm used to that, so… I don't think anything about it. Then I'm dressed, and she's getting comfortable with me. We talk and touch and the galaxy almost spins apart. Half-naked again, and again disgusted. I said something like, 'It's just skin, you've got it, too,' and got hit with this… wave…" He bites his lip, hard. "I didn't see it, because she didn't see it. Her eyes were closed tight. But for a few heartbeats I felt it… and… She was alone, and afraid, and hungry, and _hurt._ " Finn and Poe can feel the anger burning through him, the wave of dark around him. "And the men who did it to her," his voice is shaking with anger, "and the people who didn't protect her, and the ground they left her crying on, and the dirt her fucking abomination of parents are buried in, their bones, the…" he howls out a word that Finn's only heard Chewie say once, and he still isn't brave enough to ask what that one means, "that bought her from them, _all_ of it's gone, now. Because of _me_." He sounds very satisfied by that, and both Finn and Poe are very aware of the fact that Ren may be balancing, but he's still _dark._

Ren swallows. "I wasn't there to protect her. I couldn't have been. But I could _avenge_ it. And, yes, revenge is hollow, _after,_ but it's _fucking amazing_ when you're doing it." He's glowing with the memory of the feel of watching Jakku shatter. "And if there's anything in this universe I'm _good_ at, it's breaking shit and hurting people, and being able to turn that against people, things, that hurt her… That was _good._ "

Finn snorts. "Good." He shakes his head. "It was a whole planet, Ren!"

Kylo nods. "Small one, but yes. And there were probably a few thousand people on it. Maybe ten thousand, and in all of those years, all of those people, _none_ of them changed her story. Just one of them, in the right place at the right time… Just _one_ getting off his, or her, or their ass to prevent a child from being raped, and everything would have unfolded differently. One person could have saved that whole planet by one fucking act of kindness, but none of them did."

"Don't put what you did on them," Finn says.

"I'm not. It's on me. It's _entirely_ on me," and Finn and Poe again feel the satisfaction that's still thrumming through Ren at that. A dark purr that's richly pleased and _very_ dangerous. "But it wouldn't have been on me if _anyone_ had had enough light or kindness or humanity, or however you like to think about it, to step in and stop a gang rape. And from what she's said, it's not like she was the only one, and it's not like it only happened once." He's looking at Finn, really looking. "I read your files. You were officer material. You had perfect or near perfect scores in the training simulations. Any order aimed at you, you followed as close to perfectly as a human can. Phasma had _glowing_ notes about you in your files. She was grooming you to be her eventual second-in-command. But once there were actual, real, people around you, you wouldn't do it. You wouldn't kill civilians for me. You connected enough, with them, in a matter of minutes, to feel that they were _people,_ break the hardest mental conditioning in the galaxy, and disobey direct orders _._ Not a single fucking person on Jakku did that for Rey. NOT ONE! They didn't even share fucking food with her. We'd been together for a few weeks, and I realize she doesn't actually know how to use a godsdamned fork, because not a single person on that fucking planet took the time to teach her, or feed her a fucking meal that needed one. Not one. Not one in fifteen… eighteen… twenty years? We don't know, because _no one_ on that rock bothered to tell her her birthday!" The cups of coffee and everything else that isn't attached to the floor in Poe's ship rattles as Kylo says that.

Poe lays his hand on Ren's wrist, and Ren nods, making himself calm down. He nods and takes a deep breath. "I grew up with people who tried. They failed. They couldn't… rescue me. But they tried. No one tried for Rey. So, yeah, a _whole planet_. _I cleansed the universe of that filth._ And I wouldn't do it now. I'd probably stick recruiting centers on it, take the people who want to go and likely any child, and get them out of there, and then blow it up, but… I didn't learn about it, _now._ I learned about it, _then._ "

They're all quiet after that.

Finn takes another drink, and then says, quietly, "Okay. You asked me to try some empathy. Now, I want you to. You have a friend, and you love her, dearly. There are five people in the universe you call family, and she's one of them. But, her family fucked up. They screwed her over, left her in the middle of nowhere, and bad shit happened to her.

"And there's this guy, and she says she loves him, and… I can see it, she thinks it's real, but… Based on what? The family she never had? The" he mimics Ren's term for Plutt, "who bought her? The day and a half with your dad where he was basically decent to us, but that was it? I mean, I'm not saying that I know what it is to love, or that I've got any great role models for it, but Rose did, and I can talk to," he nods to Poe, "and Chewie about what it means to love someone, and… So, yeah, I'm flying without a map, but not blind.

"But, she's got nothing to go off of, and this guy of hers, he's _fucking dangerous._ " And if it weren't for how earnest Finn's being, Ren would have his hackles up, but he can feel this. This is deeper than Finn's own issues with him, and is well into his justified concerns for his friend. _"_ And just for kicks and giggles, we know he's got the kind of magic that can warp people's minds. We know he can do things like make people forget who he is and what he's done. And we know he's not exactly good at controlling himself. Just being near him sets my alarms off, and it's not like I don't have good reason for it. You are not some harmless little lamb who got a bad rep by accident or being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Being afraid of you is _not_ unreasonable."

Kylo just blinks at that.

"And sure, maybe the greebles in your head are gone now, or at least calmed down. And yes, it's clear you got the shit end of the childhood stick, too, and I am genuinely sorry for what Snoke did to you. And yes, I can feel that you, as best as you know how to, love her. Like Jacen would say, 'It's obvious if you look,' but, just like with Rey, what map are you using? The parents who didn't save you? The 'grandfather' who wasn't? Would you actually know love if it walked up and bit you in the ass?

"And maybe you're balancing. But… What the fuck are you going to do if something goes wrong? Really wrong? It's abundantly clear that the little voice most of the rest of us have, that says, 'Back the fuck up and turn around, this is _wrong!' is not in your head_.

"If she tries to leave you? Or if any of the probably billion people out there who have a reason, a real, personal reason, to want you dead or in pain, go after her? The Kennas show up next week with a pile of guns and bombard the place rather than see Critt turn into another version of you. What happens?

"Am I going to lose my friend because she's _near_ you?

"What the fuck am I supposed to do if she gets caught in the crossfire of someone aiming for you? Or if some new dark fucker pops up and starts using you as a puppet again? Or if you just get bored of her? Or if you can't, actually, balance? Or something goes wrong and pushes you over the edge again?

"So, _Master,_ help me out. Tell me what you'd do if it were your dear friend who brought this guy home."

Kylo closes his eyes, and swallows, and chews on his lips some, looks at his empty cup, takes a gulp of Poe's, which is straight rum at this point, and fidgets with the cup for a bit before saying, "I used to have nightmares every night." He fiddles with the cup some more. "No, I didn't. Because I could and usually did go a few days at a time without sleeping. I used to have nightmares every time I slept. I don't, not any more. These days, I can go weeks, sometimes months, without them. But when I do… It's what you're talking about. That I'm not stable enough for her. That I'll get bored, and if not of her, then of this… thing I'm doing. That I'll turn into Palpatine and start blowing shit up just for kicks. And then she'll turn on me, because she can't abide that. That any of the billion people out there who want me dead will strike at her. That one day I'll reach out, and she'll just be gone.

"I wake up with my heart pounding and body in a cold sweat, and some nights I can't shut it off, so I get up, grab one of my datapads and work, or go to the gym and fight the training droids. And some nights I roll over and hold close to her, and just touching her calms me down.

"Some nights I pray. I used to do that every night, then… not for a long time… but it's coming back. It's difficult to trust in the Force when you've got my history with it. But the Force brought me Rey, so… I'm giving it another chance.

"And I think about my dad, who literally let me kill him, so I could get to this spot." Kylo bites his lip again, sniffs, makes his voice stabilize. "What do I know about love? He died for me. You saw it, right? He _literally_ died for me. The last thing I said to him… before… was, 'Help me…'" Kylo's lip is trembling as he says this. "And he did. For the chance that it would help. And he didn't know if it would, but he did it anyway, just on the hope that it would. And it did." He takes a deep, centering breath, and another sip of Poe's drink.

"And I think about the children we don't yet have, and, you'll either laugh or be horrified, but Paige, too. And the rest of this pile of children we seem to have collected. About the idea of a future, for them, and what and who they're going to need to have the kind of future where they can go and do or be anything they want to do or be.

"I think about Jon, and if you could get over him having been a First Order officer, you might like him. Poe does, because he's a really good guy, and how when his husband was killed, how he had a very long conversation with his blaster, and how, in the end, he couldn't turn it on himself, because he'd been loved, truly loved, and if he loved his man back, he couldn't betray that love by hurting himself.

"I think about the vows I've made to her, and the ones I've made to myself, and who I have to be to keep them… Like you said, how we get there may shift, but the goal doesn't. And sometimes the sun comes up and I'm still awake, and sometimes I'm back to sleep by then, but…

"According to my mom, I was named for hope. And that's all I've got, hope." He takes another sip of Poe's rum. "And I don't enjoy you being scared of me, and scared of me for her, and it sets me off, because a lot of people who didn't have a good reason to be afraid of me were, and it feels a lot like that, but I know it's not, and your fears are reasonable."

Finn nods slowly. And then he stands up. He knows this is a problem that can't be solved by anything but time. "Fair enough. Anyway, it's late, and I want some time with my woman." He pulls on his scarf and coat, and heads off.

Kylo's about to stand, too, when Poe says to him, voice deceptively mild, "See, when I asked you if Jon was okay, that bit about the blaster is the sort of thing that should result in yelling at the top of your lungs NO!"

Kylo shakes his head. "It was… right after. Before I knew him. He's not… I'd feel it if that was part of now."

"Okay." They sit there, quiet, and for them, very relaxed. Then Poe says, voice low, "If it looks like you're going wrong, we'll take care of it, before it's a big problem. Fast and easy, and you won't see it coming, she won't either."

"Thanks." He twists his cup. "Make sure of that. If I have even a hint of it coming, you won't succeed. I've taken out more than twenty-three coup attempts since I took over, so I'm not kidding about that. Uh... When you shot at me. I could feel you aiming. That's how I stopped the bolt.

"That's how I was able to take Snoke. Did it on a whim, less than five minutes after I knew I was going to. Use a droid or a mech or something. I can't feel them because they don't have feelings. And for her sake, make it look like an accident."

Poe waves that off. Between him and Finn, he figures they've got enough tech to seal up whatever room Kylo's in and space the atmo. Give it an hour, and that'll be it.

Kylo shakes his head. " _I can teleport_. And even if I couldn't, I can slow my respiration down so low I barely need to breathe. I can probably spend a week in a sealed room and pop right back up after. That's not going to do it."

"Noted," Poe says. "You got any other neat tricks?" For the first time, Kylo's really seeing the fighter under the scoundrel.

"Not as of yet. Have you… done things like that before?"

Poe grins, a little. "I was on your mom's security detail. It was part of my job to make sure other people didn't do stuff like that to her. Best way to do it is to come up with every plan they could try, and then make sure they don't. Trust me, you won't see me coming."

"Good."

Poe clamps a hand on his shoulder. "Okay, home with you now, too. Go get some sleep, and no nightmares, we'll take care of you if need be."

Kylo snorts a laugh, stands up, overbalances, ends up on his ass again, then slowly, carefully gets up, and then says, "That's bizarrely reassuring, you know?"

Poe laughs at that, too. "Go to bed, get your snuggle on, and balance some."

"'Night, Poe."


	33. The Talk: Aftermath

2/16/2

"How'd it go?" Rey asks as Kylo, very carefully, walks into their living room, then she looks up from her datapad, and sees exactly how carefully he's placing his feet, and his current laser focus on the floor so his feet end up where he's trying to put them. "Are you drunk?"

He continues to, very carefully, he wasn't feeling it much when they were talking, but he's certainly feeling it now, walk over to Rey. "Poe says male bonding rituals work better with alcohol." He sits down next to her, and once safely in their chair, in no danger of tripping, he sprawls out.

Rey tries to brush him off, get the worst of the snow off of him, before he melts all over her. "You're covered in snow."

"Walking home took longer than normal."

"Why didn't you port?"

He blinks. Right, he can _port._ "Because I'm drunk?"

She gets up, and he sags into the spot where she was. A moment later, she's got a big cup of water. He takes it and drinks it down, fast. "Probably two or three more or them before I go to sleep." She gets another one and he sips it.

"So, was it a good 'bonding' experience?" He can feel her light slipping through him, mitigating some of the damage he just did to himself.

Kylo nods, eyes closed, world spinning slightly on the other side of his eyelids. "I think so. At the very least, alcohol kills the part of your brain that knows when to stop talking, so… the kids got some… un-censored advice."

"Like what?"

"Like Poe once slept with a guy who was flexible enough to fuck and suck him at once? And, apparently, there's at least one thing Finn and I agree on."

"What?" Rey asks with a smile.

He giggles. "We both like the view when you're on top."

Rey's laughing at that. "So, he appreciates the jiggling, too."

"Yeah." Kylo keeps thinking. "And… uh… that little thing," he mimics the finger motion he uses to play with it on her, "on the inside, that really likes to get touched, that's a prostate."

"So, you learned some things, too."

"I learned some things, too. My vocabulary is expanding." He's looking up at her, a bit bleary and goofy. "Shag, spend, canoodle, get off, come…"

Rey giggles, and starts to pull off his boots. "And you like that."

"I like that."

"I got one last night. Forgot to mention it. A muff is a tube of fabric, often with a fur lining, that you put your hand in to keep them warm."

It takes him a minute to figure out why she's mentioned that, but when he does, he starts to laugh, rich and long. Then he's quiet, just laying back in the chair, enjoying this, and her trying to get him out of his wet trousers. "This is good."

"Me taking your wet things off?"

"Yeah. You caring enough to do it. You caring… You…" He looks up at her, big dopey smile on his face. "When I was walking home, I was thinking…"

She raises an eyebrow at him, crossing to their bedroom to grab one of the blankets. Right now he's just too big and limp to really pull him out of his wet clothing, so she'll just wrap him up to keep the chill off.

When she's back, and got him cocooned, she say, "Thinking what?"

"About sex… I know, you're shocked." He smiles again. "Elias is just starting out, rolling around and feeling with Magiit. Critt and Savarah are exploring each other. And Finn waited for Rose… And, apparently Poe had a sweetie once upon a time… And, I wish I'd learned it with you. I wish… the first hand that touched me, the first time I spurted with someone else, the first time a mouth closed on me… I wish I had been naked, and in bed or on a beach or in a pool, and wrapped in you."

She cuddles in close to him. "Me, too." She can feel some of his darker experiences, and she wished he hadn't had them, too. She certainly wouldn't think twice about trading hers for learning it with him.

He kisses the top of her hair. "And I wish we'd had something like a normal life, so I could have met you… Somewhere safe. Where I could have taken notice of you because you were warm and beautiful and lovely and you, not just because I felt the map in your head. And I wish I got to Jakku a decade earlier, and gotten you out of there.

"And I wish the first time you'd seen me naked, it would have made you happy. And I wish the first time you'd seen me naked, I'd have been happy.

"And I wish Luke had found you, and brought you to us, and maybe we'd have been thrown out of the Jedi for getting too attached, but we'd have been safe and together and… I don't know, flying around in the _Falcon_ with my Dad and Chewie and running goods from one end of the galaxy to the other. Or maybe you'd be a mechanic somewhere, and I'd be taking her out for maintenance, and I'd see you, working away, and swagger up to you, smile, and say something like, 'Hey beautiful. Can I buy you dinner…" he grins at her, "and breakfast, every day for the rest of our lives?"

That makes her smile. "Ambitious."

"According to Poe, there's something to be said for swaggering over and telling someone exactly what you want."

She laughs a little, at that.

"And I wish the first time a man touched you, it was me, or if not me, then at least someone you wanted to touch you.

"And I wish I could have given you someone unbroken, not covered in scars. Someone whole."

"Okay, we're stopping this now. We've gone from nice fantasies to something… Something I don't like." She holds his face in her hands. "If I'd wanted a smooth and easy light sider, I could have had one."

"Could you? Finn asked me what would happen if things went wrong and you wanted to leave…"

"Stop. Now." She sighs at that. And mentally whaps Finn upside the back of the head with her staff. The last thing she needs is Kylo thinking things like this.

"Sorry… Hard to control, the good and the bad, when I'm drunk."

"How much did you have?"

"I don't know. Poe was pouring. At least two shots, maybe four? I drank the last cup fast." Then he squints in memory. "Then I drank half of Poe's. Might have had a half-decent conversation with Finn though, so… That's something." His eyes close for a moment, and he's just quiet on the chair next to her.

She can feel his thoughts whirling, mostly in directions she doesn't want him going. Time to nudge them.

She hits him with a mental image of her, in brown coveralls, her hair back in a kerchief, deep in the gizzards of the Falcon, working on something, when he comes up to her.

His eyes don't open, but he smiles. Kylo knows what she's doing, re-centering him on something positive. Playing instead of dwelling.

He mentally leans against one of the side walls, enjoying the view of the back of her, her ass cupped in her coveralls, her arms as she reaches out, and then says to her, "Hey, beautiful. How about I buy you dinner?"

She turns, looks at him, her eyes flicking from his hair to his boots. He's in his Padme clothing, blaster on his hip, no lightsaber, period. Her eyebrow raises at him.

"And breakfast," he says with a grin. "For the rest of our lives?"

She smirks at that, and then laughs. "Let's see how dinner goes." She looks him up and down again. "I eat a lot, you got credits for that?"

He smirks at her. "I've got my tricks."

She pulls herself out of the innards of the _Falcon_ , and heads up to him, extending her hand. "I don't eat with strangers. What's your name?"

He's still grinning as he takes her hand in his. "Kylo."

"Just Kylo?" He still hasn't let go, and she hasn't pulled back.

"Kylo Amidala. Though the old fart who owns this bucket calls me Ben."

She sniggers at that. "Uh huh. And why would that be?"

"Because that's what he and my mom named me. How about you? What's your name?"

"Rey."

"Just Rey?" His index finger is slipping over the back of her hand.

"Just Rey, unless you're serious about forever."

He lifts her hand to his lips. "I am."

He's in a much better mood when they pull out of the fantasy play. She looks around their home, feeling him in her arms, and close. "You know, we could do something like that."

He raises an eyebrow. "You mean, not just think about it?"

"Yeah." She kisses his chin. "Day after tomorrow. I'll be on the F deck, 3rd subsection. Come find me, Amidala."

He smiles at that. "I can do that."

* * *

2/18/2

He could find her the easy way. Could just focus, port, and be by her side in a moment, but that's… probably defeating the purpose of the game.

Two strangers. Two _normal_ strangers, who just… like the look of each other, or something like that. However, it works for normal people. He's a little fuzzy on that. And though finding Jon and asking how this works is tempting, he's thinking that how to go about meeting strangers to have sex with them is likely a skill he's not actually going to need.

So, in his really off-duty wear, his not even remotely black at all Padme clothing, he wanders the F-Deck, just… strolling, keeping an eye out, looking for her. He's got his _do not recognize_ spell up, not wanting to deal with being Master Ren, not now.

Just… Kylo Amidala, a trader here for a deal maybe, walking around, looking for someone to spend a pleasant meal with, and if things go really well, maybe share his bed, and if it's even better, then maybe breakfast, and the rest of their lives will be in the offing.

Maybe.

He's not sure if normal guys feel that way when they're out looking for a good time.

He senses her before he sees her, but that's normal, for them. A few more paces, and he can see the bench she's sitting at, near the squammath courts, she's half-watching a game, half-reading.

She skipped her usual Mistress of the Maji clothing. He smiles again. She's got on a dress. Light and loose and he can see her legs. It's simpler, and, to his mind at least, a lot sexier than her usual Mistress of the Maji clothing.

Apparently, to the minds of a few other men as well. He notices a few of them notice her, and one wanders closer, sits on the bench next to Rey, and Kylo watches, smirk on his face, as he attempts to strike up conversation. He can't hear what she's saying, he's not close enough for that, but he can feel it. _This seat is taken._

The man leans a little closer, looking like he's going to try pressing his luck, but Rey looks up at him, makes eye contact, and he suddenly jumps up and _leaves._

Kylo smirks at that. He drifts a bit closer, still watching her. She's just reading now.

He's not sure what to do next. He's probably about three meters off, just looking at her, feeling a little stupid, because, sure, Poe's swagger on over technique is probably great and all, but he just… Can't.

That's not who he is. And, apparently, that's not who Kylo Amidala is, either.

Her eyes leave the page, and catch his, and a slight smile lights her lips. He's almost blushing, getting caught staring, and he's not sure if that means he's too damn far into the fantasy of this, or it's just too silly of a game, but…

"You're staring." Her voice is a little sharper than normal, but not unkind.

He nods, and after a moment comes up with something to say, "Intentionally. You're worth staring at."

She inclines her head a little. And he realizes she's gesturing to the bench, so he sits next to her. "Like I said to the last bloke, this seat's taken. So, don't make me a liar, eh?"

He grins at that, sitting next to her. "Never. I'm Kylo."

"Hello Kylo, I'm Rey." Her datapad's on her lap, page still up.

"Good book?" he asks.

"Useful book. I'm not sure if it's good."

"How does that work?"

"It's the most boring writing I've ever had the displeasure of laying my eyes on, but it's a topic I need to know more about, so…"

"Ah… Yeah. I did a lot of that sort of reading when I was at school."

"What was a boring but useful topic for you?"

"Uh…" Kylo tries to think. He remembers being bored, but the useful part... "Anything about disciplining myself. It's much easier to just do than it is to _read_ and then do. How about you, what's boring but useful?"

"I'm reading about formal modes of address."

"Are you a diplomat then?"

"Not today." She smiles a bit at that and shuts off the datapad. He scoots a little closer to her. "You?"

"Today, I'm a pilot, off-duty."

"And tomorrow?"

"We'll find out then," he says with a little smile. She leans in towards him, watching his lips and eyes. He's enjoying the attention, a lot. "Do you spend a lot of time here?"

"Some. Not a lot," she says.

"This is my…" He's thinking, how many times has he been up here? Three? Four? More, the correct answer should be more. "Fourth time here. You come here often enough to have a favorite place to eat?"

"Not yet."

He looks around at the carts and counter service cafes. He knows neither of them have ever attempted to eat a meal in one of them. "Well, in that case, is there anywhere you want to try?"

"Why?"

"Because it's almost dinnertime, and I'd like to eat it with you."

"Then I suppose I can find somewhere with something I'd like to try."

He stands up, and offers her his hand. She reaches out, fast, easy, and just takes it, because normal people, doing a normal thing, like just meeting each other, don't hesitate for a week, tentative fingers creeping ever closer before barely brushing skin on skin. He gives her a little tug, and she's standing, too close, sweetly close, and her hand is in his, and it still feels so _right_ there.

He rubs his lips together, and then says, "Don't take this the wrong way, but tomorrow, I'm going to be yours."

"That long from now?" she's smiling up at him.

"Nah," he's grinning down, and she's on her toes, kissing him, and this is the most successful 'first meeting' ever, likely because it's the millionth time they've done this, but… Maybe… If things had been different… It could have been.

One of his hands is in her hair, and the other's at the small of her back, and her arms are around his waist and neck, and it's just _right._

 _So much for pretending we just met._ He thinks to her.

 _Hush. This is good._ She thinks back.

He nips her bottom lip, pulling back to rest his forehead against hers, both of them with closed eyes, just feeling each other. Then he says, out loud, "It really is." _Dinner or bed or dinner in bed?_

 _Take me out. Tease me some. Then bed._

"I can do that."

* * *

They pick a noodle shop, mostly based on the long line of people in front of it. If lots of people want what they're selling, that's got to be good, right?

Whatever it is they do, it's fast. There's a good fifty people in line in front of them, but they still get up to the counter in less than ten minutes.

The people around them order in numbers. "I'll have a five and seven to go." Or "Three and six, here."

Kylo glances at her as they get within speaking range. Eyebrow raised.

"I'm hungry, Amidala."

He nods. And then looks to the clerk. "Five, three, and seven, for here."

Rey's smirking at him. "You have no idea what you just ordered do you?"

"Nope, but you don't either, so it'll be an adventure."

She smiles up at him. "I like adventures."

* * *

And while she might like adventure, she, and he for that matter, don't like three. It's… got to be some sort of noodle with what appears to be a protein of some variety, but all of it's swimming in a broth so blisteringly hot that Kylo doesn't even bother to put it in his mouth, and Rey only lets it barely touch the tip of her tongue before putting the rest of it back in the bowl, and wiping her chopsticks off.

Five and seven are good though, again, even after eating them, neither of them know what they are. Filling, warm, and tasty. That's what they are.

Of course, most of the fun of eating goes hand in hand with Rey's _tease me._

Kylo's not entirely sure where to start with that, but he's game to try.

"So, my diplomat, you ever get a chance to swim?"

She raises a brow.

"Pools are rare. I know that. Most ships have sonics, or maybe showers, but something you can actually stretch out and float in… They're _rare._ "

"I actually don't know how to swim. I can float. And a friend of mine has promised to teach me when home warms up enough for the water to not be ice, but…"

He gives her a little look, because he hasn't actually done that, but likely should. Or… wait, maybe she's talking about Poe or Finn. Well, he's bloody well going to teach her to swim, now. He cares fuck all for the fact that Poe doesn't like women and Finn's beyond happily married, if anyone is going to get to play with a wet, naked Rey teaching her how to swim, it's going to be _him._ "Well, I don't have anything big enough to do laps in, or anything like that, but… If you'd like to do some floating…"

"You know a place."

He grins. "I know a place."

"I don't have a swimming costume."

"Not necessary." He grins at her, wider, eyes dropping to trace over her body, imagining what's under her clothing.

"So, this is either a very private sort of place, or an extremely relaxed one."

"It's a very private, and hopefully very relaxing one."

"Uh huh. And do you have a swim costume?"

He shakes his head. "Never understood the point of them. It's one thing if the water is cold and your costume keeps it off you, but I know the water's warm."

She giggles a little at that. "Are you trying to get me naked?"

"Yes, very much." He grins at her, wide and easy. "Is there any chance of you saying yes?"

She grins back at him. "There's always a chance."

* * *

Three bowls would have been enough to be very comfortably full.

Two is not quite enough.

It's Rey who decides to up the ante on the 'tease me' front. One of the carts sells frozen fruit mush concoctions. Popsicle. The word on the side of the cart is Popsicle. All sorts of different flavors, in many bright colors. If that had been all there was to it, she would have kept walking by, but there was a picture next to the word Popsicle. Apparently, Popsicle are long, frozen oblongs on a stick.

The kind of thing you've got to lick and suck to eat.

She gets a myrsh melon one. It's a warm pinky-red color. And once she's got it, and starts to lick it, every thought not solely related to getting Rey off the F-Deck and into his bed goes galloping out of Kylo's head.

She slips the top six centimeters into her mouth sucking it, making small mmmm noises, as she pulls the oblong out from between her lips. The heat of her mouth melted the mush just a little, so it's wet and shiny, slipping into and out of her mouth.

She holds it out to Kylo. "Want a lick?"

He swallows hard, looking at her lips, pink from the juice of the oblong. "More than you can possibly imagine." He doesn't move toward the dessert, and it's clear he understood how she meant the question.

She returns the dessert to her own mouth, lightly flicking her tongue over the tip of the confection.

Kylo's eyes shut, and he grits his teeth.

When he opens them, she's… fellating the Popsicle. There's just no other word for what she's doing to it.

"You're killing me."

"You're enjoying it."

He shifts again, making a mental note to get a long fucking coat to go with his casual wear, gently takes her hand, removing the Popsicle from her mouth, and eating it, very fast.

"Kylo!"

"There's only so much teasing a man can take."

"Light weight."

"I promise, when we're in private, you can tease me as long as you like, but this isn't the place for it."

Her eyes light with mischief. "Really?"

He bends closer, his lips cool and red, and just barely brushes them against her ear as he says, "Please."

Rey smiles up at him, open and wide. "Take me somewhere private."

Kylo's never, ever been so tempted to port in public than he is right now, but… People might be looking. So, he offers her his arm, and she snugs up against him, and they walk to the elevator, which as soon as the doors shut, leaving them alone, he ports them out of.

* * *

When they're in the courtyard, Rey says, "Breaking character?"

Kylo smirks. "Kylo Amidala has myriad talents, apparently."

"Kylo Amidala really wants to get shagged."

"That, too," he says, and she laughs at that.

"Are we still playing?" she asks.

"I was having fun, so if you were, yeah, I'd like to."

"Okay, Amidala, show me your pool."

He gestures to the door to his office. "On the other side of that door is my office, and behind that is my room. It's in there."

* * *

"You actually have a pool!" Rey says to him as soon as they're in his room.

"Why would I lie about that?"

"This ship doesn't seem like the kind of place that has a lot of pools."

He shrugs. "Well, maybe I might have… left something out about the whole pilot bit. I can and do fly a ship, but…"

"I noticed the courtyard and office. You're a big deal here, aren't you?"

He shrugs a little, dismissively. "Kind of. Do you want to know?"

"Tonight," she shakes her head. "You're Kylo and I'm Rey, and that's enough."

He pulls her close to him. "It really is." His lips are hovering above hers, and his eyes are warm on hers, and he licks his lips, tongue tracing slowly over them before saying, "Do you want a swim, or… shall we get naked and play first, then get a soak?"

"Oo… Options." She reaches up, gently brushes her nose against his, and then closes the gap between their lips.

It's good kiss, warm and pleased. Settled. That wasn't there the first time they did this. There's no electric uncertainty.

There was a heartbeat when his body first brushed against hers in the pool only a few meters from them, all those months ago, unsure, afraid she was going to blink out of existence, electric from hair to toes on the anticipation. All of it coursed through his synapses, lighting his skin from scalp to toes. Then it was her skin, wet on his, and then he was reaching for her, pulling her up, her lips against his and the… no words. There just aren't words for that moment of the first time her lips touched his.

There are words now. Part of it is just he's not so touch starved his brain whites out at the smallest physical affection. Now, he can think and revel, and feel her on him. Now, he knows that little sigh, and the quiver of her body seeking his, and the way her body cups his, and his hands find their familiar places on her head and back…

Settled.

* * *

Heat. That's the same. He still burns for her. Maybe burns deeper if not quite so wild. The flush of heat at her skin on his, the fire flicking through his senses as she melds to him.

That was there at the first kiss.

Was there in the longing for the first touch.

In the way his hands shook has he began to ease his gloves off, wondering if they'd actually make contact.

And it's here now, in his touch and hers, as his hands slip under her skirt, and her hand brushes his face.

* * *

He's holding her close, kissing her ear, feeling good all over, as she's pulling his shirt up, fingers splayed on his back. Then she says to him, "You know, Amidala, for all your moves, I get the feeling you've never done this before."

He pulls back, staring at her, eyes wide. He swallows, realizing what level of game she's opening up to him. No, they can't change the past, or kill it, really, but they can at least pretend, and, he swallows again, loving her and this and the chance to do it _right_ and… He licks his lips. "What gave it away?"

"Nothing. Just a sense I had."

He blushes a little, fully throwing himself into the game, into the idea that this is his first chance, first time, first day meeting this glorious woman and he's got her all to himself and… "It's not embarrassing, is it?"

"Why would it be?"

"I'm thirty-three?"

She shrugs, and kisses him. "I'm not embarrassed by it, so I don't think you should be."

"Is it yours?" he's laying the game back at her, letting her feel that any answer she wants to give here is just fine with him. He'll roll with any of them.

"It's my first time with you, and that's all that matters."

He smiles at her, and kisses her, and says, "I suppose so. Just, tell me what you like. I can't read minds, so _tell me_."

She grins. "You like hearing words?"

"I do when they're coming out of your mouth."

"Then I'll talk. Though right now, I'd rather be kissing."

And Kylo can get on board with that.

* * *

"I think I'd like you naked." Rey's hands are under Kylo's shirt, her body pressed flush to his, as they kiss.

He pulls back a little from their kiss, grinning at her. "I really liked the sound of that."

She's down to her bra and panties. He steps back a little, pulling off his shirt and tossing it aside.

The first time the real Rey saw him without a shirt, she glanced for a tenth of a second, just about swallowed her tongue, and then looked away, blushing.

The first time the real Rey saw him without a shirt, his back was to her, and he knew what she was about to see, too big, too angular, too pale, too many scars. He was rubbing his thumb and middle finger together, cursing the Force for linking them _now,_ quieting that, forcing himself to calm. He'd never get the map if he scared her off. And then he turned around.

She asked him to put on a cowl or something, and at the time he was sure that was disgust. Now, he knows that was _part_ of what was going on, but not _all_ of it.

This time, she's not blushing. She's smiling at him, eyes trailing over his skin. This time, she's enjoying.

"Oh, you're a treat under all that clothing, aren't you?"

He flushes at the sound of that, shaft getting even harder, begging to be released so she can appreciate it, too.

She steps a little closer, trailing her fingers from his clavicle to the fine line of hairs on his belly. "I bet these lead somewhere fun."

His mouth feels dry, and his shaft too big for his trousers, and all of his attention is on her finger, and the spot just below it, where he's fumbling with his belt, trying to get out of his clothing.

The buckle clangs against the metal of his floor when he pulls his belt out of his trousers and drops it on the floor. The top button and zip take a few more seconds, and then he's shucking his trousers and his shorts.

He's standing naked in front of her, save for his socks, and she's _beaming_ at him. "Force, you're lovely." She gently nudges him back to the bed. "And we are going to have such a good time."

* * *

Most of the time Kylo doesn't feel a lack from not having any sort of artistic outlet in his current life. Of course, in his past life, his art of choice was calligraphy, and, right now, calligraphy doesn't feel like the kind of art he'd need for this. If he could compose poetry as well as put it on a page in an aesthetically pleasing way, he'd have something he could use to capture this feeling.

But he doesn't.

But it does feel like there should be entire branches of art dedicated to celebrating Rey getting naked. The way she looks, the curve of belly, buttock, and breast. The sway of her hair, and the way she gracefully drops each piece of clothing. The way her doing this makes him feel.

It makes him want to sing or draw or… something.

He settles for watching her, for projecting the sensation of it, and saying to her, "You are _so fucking beautiful._ "

* * *

She's on the bed with him, her body straddling his, not really touching, not yet. He traces his hand over her cheek, and down her neck, feeling goosebumps raise. He lightly, with just the tips of his fingernails trails across her chest. That gets a happy moan. (He makes a mental note that, if, at some point, he and Finn ever have the sort of relationship where they can actually talk about this stuff, to thank him for that tip, because Rey really likes it.) He stops that path with his fingers just above her breast. "May I?"

"Please." She gestures to the head of the bed. "How about you sit up? You'll be able to see and touch easier."

He does, sitting up, scooting back, and she follows, then glances at his lap, and his very hard, very high shaft. "Can I sit in your lap?"

He nods, vehemently.

"You'll tell me if it's too much, right?"

He grins at her, breaking character for a moment. "Even Virgin Kylo didn't spurt from that."

"Virgin Kylo had a naked girl in his lap while licking and stroking her breasts?"

"Maybe?" He flashes her a lightly naughty, slightly mischievous look. He hasn't told her that story, and he's not sure if that counted as Virgin Kylo, though, he supposes by the rules he was raised with, that was technically true. It was the first time he had the kind of sex that could make a baby, so… In an Obi Wan sort of way, that was Virgin Kylo. In a, how-Kylo-himself thinks of it way, that was one of a very tiny handful of good times he had when we was still under Snoke's command.

It's clear Rey's curious about that. It's also clear she's not going to ask, now. "Well, Rey the Diplomat is being careful. Don't want things to end too soon."

"I'm sure Virgin Kylo can figure out what to do with his tongue if his shaft goes off too soon." He licks it slowly, easily over her lower lip. "Or better yet, Rey the Diplomat can show him _exactly_ what she likes, and tell him all of her sexy little tricks."

Rey laughs at that, kisses him, wet and deep, and then settles into his lap. "Touch me?"

"Yes!"

* * *

She's in his lap, snug up against him, her pearl nestled at the base of his shaft, so every time she squirms a bit both of them get a treat.

And right now, Rey's very squirmy.

And Kylo's enjoying it immensely.

"So…" His hand is just, barely, a hair and a half's breadth away from the skin of her bosom.

"Soft and easy to start. They're sensitive."

He makes contact, his fingers spanning her ribcage to her back, the palm of his hand cupping her bosom, drawing it higher up, and his thumb, lightly, so lightly rubbing back and forth over her nipple.

Rey makes a pleased sound.

"Is it good?"

She wriggles a bit more, and he feels her skin slick on his, slipping just a bit. "It's good. Maybe… thumb and forefinger, don't pinch, but…" She shakes her head, and then gently reaches for his nipple, drawing her thumb and forefinger over it. Not a pinch, not hard enough for that, but a similar sort of motion. "Like that."

"I can do that," and he does. His left hand gets into the game. "How about…" He cups her whole breast in his hand and gently squeezes, pulling his fingers up toward each other, all five meeting at her nipple, to glide back down again.

Rey rocks against him a bit harder, lifting up a little higher, the wet of her body slicking down on his. "Can you feel how much I like that."

He nods, swallows hard. "Yeah." His hips rock, too, his body hard, hot, pressed against her belly. "Feel how much I like that?"

"Oh yeah." She kisses him, as he plays with her breasts, lips and tongue and fingers and wet and dry, soft and then sharp. She fists her hand in his hair, pulling back swift, but not too hard. Kylo gasps, grip stuttering, eyes slipping shut, shaft jerking. Her lips caress over his. "That good, too?"

"It really is." His hands leave her bosom, and settle under her ass, letting her know to lift up some. She does, and his lips find her nipple. "Keep talking to me. Tell me it's good. Tell me you love it."

She's cradling his head, keeping him close, stroking his hair. "It's better than good. It's soft and wet… And… I feel it in my breast, but… not just there. You lick and suck and… I don't feel the sensation in my maomao, but I feel the pleasure of it there."

She's high enough up that she can rub her delta against his tip, and she does, wet and slick. "I feel it under your lips, and I feel it there, and" he sucks a little harder, "Just like that, baby. Just…" He does it again, and again, "like that. It makes your shaft on my skin feel even better."

He groans a bit at that, and she can't feel the vibrations of it, but she can feel the intention behind it. Behind a lot of this. Desire. Being desired. A first time of joy and love and acceptance, and…

She pulls his face away, so he's looking up at her. "You make me feel so good." She strokes his face, and over the line of his scar, across his lips. "Can I make you feel good?"

He nods. "Please. I want…" He licks his lips, and she follows his tongue with hers.

"Lay down." Them sitting up like that is a shallower position than him lying down. And for this, Rey wants every millimeter of his shaft to glide into and through her.

He does, kissing her breasts as he eases himself below her, laying on his back, looking eager, pleased, ready.

Rey scoots down a bit, too, so she's straddling his lap. As she starts to ease down his body, she's moaning, loudly at the slick stretch and easy glide of his skin on hers.

He's being very still, very quiet, looking up at her. _Feeling it._

* * *

"Do you like it?"

Does he _like it?_ Newly divested of his virginity Kylo Amidala likes this. He likes this just fine. He's having a _very_ good time with a pleasant stranger who he hopes will one day be vastly more than just a pleasant stranger.

On day one, minute one, of his next great adventure, Kylo Amidala likes this.

Kylo Ren, doesn't _like it._

In his home, with his wife, and the life he's building with and for her. No, he doesn't _like_ this.

"No."

For a heartbeat Rey's confused, then she catches where he's going with this.

He's fairly still right now, calm, peaceful. He tugs her gently down, so she can kiss him, and does, once, again. He breaks the kiss, his face a dozen centimeters from hers, his fingers pushing her hair out of her face, so he can see her eyes, and she see his.

"I don't like this. I _live_ for this. Every breath, every heartbeat, from now until my last, and likely beyond, is dedicated to this."

He kisses her again, and it's clear that he's talking about the sex, desire, and pleasure between them, but wider as well, their home, this life, the universe they're building with and for each other.

There's another quiet, content breath. His light, and hers, together, blending into something that makes knees weak, and toes curl with pleasure.

Then he flips them, fast, and begins to thrust, deep, hard, breath and heart quickening.

"Kylo!" Half a gasp of surprise, half pleasure.

His head drops to hers, to wet, deep kisses, to nipping bites, and the wet slap of skin on skin. His dark, his passions, rising. Hers meeting his in arched hips, and fingernails down his back. His eyes meet hers again. "I'd kill for this. Destroy anything that threatened it, remove anything that gets in its path." His hand is clasped behind her neck, hand gentle, firm, _hot._ His lips are hot, too. His dark pouring out of him in searing heat and rising pleasure.

His body moves faster, chasing release. She's clinging to him, caught in the storm, in him, letting it all out, saying it, with words, because she likes hearing words, too. "I'd die for this. Lay my life down if it meant you got to keep going. End it with a smile on my face if you get to walk away."

He's not doing well keeping his voice going. Moving too fast, breathing too hard. _We're building a life. Figuratively. Eventually…_ His body rushes, flares at this idea, pulsing hot, steady, high and deep inside her, taking her over the edge with the intensity of the thought, and the pleasure of _life_. When the lights stop flashing behind his eyes, he finishes the thought, _Literally. You and I, my life, yours, and we'll make another life._

They're still, quiet, and he kisses her gently. Eyes wide and dark on hers. Between rushed breaths, and slowing heartbeats, he says, "This is transcendent. I love it, need it, live it, breathe it. It's who I am and want to be. It's my armor, weapon, and faith." He kisses her once more, and then gives her a little bit of a cocky brat smile. "So, no, I don't _like it._ "

She gently swats his shoulder, and then kisses it.

He snuggles in close, taking a moment to just lie with her, resting.

* * *

They do, eventually, end up in the bath. Close, snuggly, warm and wet. It feels good to float with each other for a while.

"You really can't swim?" Kylo asks.

"You actually didn't know that about me?"

He shrugs a bit. Raised on a desert, spent a year or so on the move, mostly in ships, then a planet with a lake that never got above 4. Of course, Rey can't swim. "I probably should have put that together. Who's supposed to be teaching you when it warms up?"

"I was thinking you, but I'm sure Rose would be happy to. Actually, probably a good idea to do that for all of us. I know Finn can't, too, and probably at least half the kids."

If he'd been thinking about it, he would have known that Finn can't swim, either. Or if he can, he learned in the last year or two. Not like the First Order taught swimming. Not like it was a skill most people on a ship will ever need.

They float for a few more moments.

"What was your real first time like?" Rey asks.

Kylo takes a moment to try and sum that up. "Uh… Fast. I guess."

"You guess?"

He rolls his eyes a little, and scoots a bit so she's in his lap, and can make eye contact easily. "The doing part was fast… The working up to doing it took months."

She raises an eyebrow. He closes his eyes for a moment, and then takes her hand in his, and thinks about it. It'll be clearer and take a lot less explaining that way.

He probably spent about three months of debating, thinking, deciding, debating some more, and finally Kammun slapping him, (physically and metaphorically) upside the back of the head, pointing out that they burned the fucking temple to the ground and killed their master (though Kylo was awfully sure Luke wasn't dead, but he hadn't shared that.) and more than half the classmates, so there was literally no going back, and this wasn't burning his bridges because the fucking bridge was not just ash, but had fallen into the river and flowed out to sea.

And Kylo had sighed at that, because, to a degree that was right, but…

Burning the temple, tearing it all down, destroying the Jedi, that had been rage and fear and… rash. A slew of decisions all piled on top of each other brought about by rage and blind panic.

This was not that. This was… predetermined. Chosen.

This was intentionally stepping over a line he'd held to his whole life, even when he really didn't want to, and…

It was different.

That said, part of him, both his mind and shaft _wanted._ And wanted _hard._ And… he wasn't a Jedi, so holding to the code was… weak… useless… trying to please a Master he left buried under a ton of smoking rubble…

And, like whiskey, which, honestly, about half of his Knights had really enjoyed, and the other half, like him, thought was highly overrated, he was a bit worried that this would just be disappointing. That he'd finally take the step, mind and emotions cold, break the vows he took when he claimed the title of Master, and it'd be… worthless. At worst disorienting and unpleasant, and at best, a cheap and hollow thrill.

But he _wanted._ And here, he could _have._ And he was twenty-three, and burning all the time, and…

"Didn't you say your first kiss was at twenty-six?" Rey asks.

"I did."

"You didn't kiss her?"

He shakes his head, "Kissing, and a girl in my lap, that came later. That was twenty-six."

She raises an eyebrow at him, and he drops back into the memories, making what happened clearer.

He spent close to twenty minutes just standing there, in one of the pleasure houses, surrounded by pretty people not wearing a lot of clothing. He was in his full blacks, with the mask (because in those days the mask only came off in the shower, and during the rare intervals he slept), supposedly deciding which of the Specs he wanted to 'work with' but really chewing his lip into oblivion, until he tasted blood, dithering about just turning around and leaving or going through with it.

(He can feel how sad this makes Rey, and he kisses her shoulder.)

Kammun nudged his shoulder.

He chose.

She was pretty. Blonde hair, blue eyes that still had a bit of gentleness to them, or maybe she was good at reading people, even people cased in head to toe black, and knew he needed that a lot more than her mouth or delta. Knew he needed a bit of gentleness, and some kindness, and maybe, if he'd let himself, though he didn't, a little affection.

She tried to take his hand, but he shook her off, so she waved at him to follow her, led him to a private room, and tried to get his clothing off, but that didn't happen.

She tried to talk to him, too, but he was mute with… everything. Shame, excitement, fear, longing.

He did undo his pants.

She looked at his shaft, jutting hard and high. He knew she was going to laugh, could feel it coming, but she didn't. She just smiled, stroked her finger tips up the length of him, and grinned up at him. "Well, that's a pretty shaft. But you've got to tell me what you want me to do with it, sweet."

He swallowed hard, because _talking_ was going to be an issue. Hell, standing there, his shaft so hard it ached, the aftershocks of the pleasure burn of her fingers on him making the room spin around him, was already an issue. He felt like his knees were sinking into rubber, and he was half a minute from bolting away. But… If he didn't say anything… That'd be almost as bad a running away… That'd be weakness and shame and letting someone see him fear. It'd be failure.

The vocal modulator on his mask kept his voice steady when his real voice cracked as he said, "Suck it."

She grinned at him. "Good choice." She knelt down, took him in her hands, rolled a slick down him, and then lowered her mouth to his shaft.

This was not whiskey. _This_ was _not_ overrated. _This_ he loved. _This_ was everything they ever said it would be and _more._ This was hot and plush and suck, and she was making pleased little humming noises, and he knew they were just to make him feel better, not any sort of genuine pleasure on her part, but he could pretend, and… oh… he'd _wanted_ and now he was _having_ and it was _amazing._

It probably only lasted a minute or two, and almost all of that was due to the lady on her knees being very good at what she was doing, because he was ready to spurt about ten seconds into it.

And when he did, his knees went weak, buckled, and he ended up on the floor, sort of half-reclining, half-sitting, brain blank, body shivering at the feel of _that._

She'd smiled at him, took care of the mess, gently tucked him back into his trousers, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and said, "I hope to see you again," before giving his gloved hand a little squeeze and seeing herself out.

He'd nodded absently, still floating on how _good_ that had felt. A billion times better than anything he'd ever done to himself.

Rey's smiling at him. "I'm glad you enjoyed it."

"Yeah, well…" He knows that's not where that story ends, and she catches that.

"Kylo?"

He shakes his head. "No. That next bit…" He lays his head on her shoulder, and breathes in her scent, lets himself dip into the quiet of her Force. Then he kisses her forehead. And her lips, and rubs his together. "It's not that I don't want you to know. Not… factually. It's…" he licks his lips again. "It's… context. I can tell you about what happened, or what I'm thinking about, as facts. As: these are things that happened to me… but… I can't tell you my stories the way you told me yours. I can't, talk about how I feel about them, or what they did to me. Not these stories."

"Then let me feel them. And I won't press for commentary."

He nods at that, and finishes that memory.

Snoke gave him a good ten minutes to get himself back together. He got up, left the pleasure specialists, very much planning on doing this as often as he possibly could, feeling really pleased with that decision. Really pleased with everything in the universe at that moment. It was likely the first moment… maybe ever… that he just felt _good._

And then Snoke was there, in his head, summoning him, filling him with dread. In the throne room, black and red and pain along the edges of his vision and thrumming through the Force of the room, Snoke started in on him, on how his desires were perverse, how his body was meant for pure things, like fire and death and pain, how he was betraying his strength with his weak, base, ugly, _needs._

He didn't say it out loud, but he thought it, _You couldn't have said this_ before?

Between the bolts of lightning and the beratement, Kylo knew Snoke wouldn't have. After all, it wouldn't have hurt nearly as bad to have never tasted how good that was and just forego it, then it would to know, and now _struggle._

And now, close to a decade later, he knows that it didn't matter if he chose to see the pleasure specialists or not. If he'd turned around and left, Snoke would have called that weakness and cowardice and questioned him about his dedication, because how could he truly be dark if he kept holding onto the code of the light?

There were no right answer with Snoke. There were never any right answers, not once Snoke owned him. Because he wasn't there to be right or good or talented. He was there to burn with pain, so Snoke could warm himself by Kylo's fire.

And that's something Kylo doesn't want to talk about, not with his voice. He doesn't want to get into how he feels about that.

Rey kisses him, strokes his hair, she can feel that he's not withholding this because he thinks she's too weak, or that she can't take it, or that this is any reflection, at all, about her. "Context."

He nods. "Snoke used my desires as a knife against me. And he cut me with them, a lot, but… You were abandoned and gang raped, twice. I… It feels like complaining about a hangnail to someone with an amputation. And… It's not that you can't or shouldn't know. It's not that there's anything I won't let you know. But it's just… It feels bad, to me, to dump how this feels to me, on you."

She strokes his face. He rests his forehead against her. "It's not a competition, you know? Or only the one that got hurt worst gets to complain."

He kisses her forehead again. "I do. I really do. It still feels bad."

She nods. "Okay."

They're quite for a moment, and she says, "It's not a hangnail, you know?"

"Yeah. I got close to talking about some of this with the guys. Actually, said some of it, and I could feel the horror in them. Apparently, that sort of thing, isn't… normal. Even Finn, raised by the Hux-method, thought it was too far. I know it's real. I know it was beyond wrong, but… Everything with Snoke was beyond wrong. And… It's in _me._ This is a choice I get to make about how I, and you to a degree, get to shape and handle this, and… This is something I need."

"Then it's something you can have."

"Thank you."

He scoffs a little, face still pressed to her neck. "Our first time, our real first time, on the beach… When I was in your mouth, and close, and… fighting spurting. It was barreling down on me, and I'd never tried to push it off before… before finishing as fast as possible was always the goal… Get it done fast, and then move onto whatever came next. But, on the beach, I didn't want it to end, and you said to me, 'Enjoy it, Kylo.' That was the first time, as an adult, I was encouraged to enjoy something. The first time anyone was ever doing something for me solely because they cared about my pleasure. That put me over more than anything your mouth was doing. First time I just _knew_ it was going to be okay. You weren't going to vanish on me at the exact wrong second, no one was going to come marching over and wreck it, it was just going to be me and you and pleasure and… good. I knew it was going to be good, and that wasn't my first time of any of the things we did, but it was the first time I really got to enjoy any of them."

She lifts his face to hers, and kisses him, soft and easy. "The first few passes, the dream, or not dream… I know it wasn't real, but it wasn't imaginary, or the time in my room at Orlac's school… I needed to be sure. I think that's why the Force kept yanking you away. It was giving me room to want. Let me walk right up to the line, peer over it, and see if I thought I'd like what was on the other side. Room to be scared if I needed it. Room to pull back from you, emotionally regroup, make sure I was okay, and wanted to do more, go further, without crushing you by running away of my own volition."

He nods. "It would have. If you'd… fucked me and ran away… Hell, kissed me and ran away… It would have crushed me. Everyone else left or pushed me away, and that would have just snapped whatever was left of my mind at that point. When we fought on Starkiller, I remember you thinking, screaming in your head, at me, to stay down. When you left on Crait… I got back up because if I didn't, Hux was going to kill me then and there. But if you'd touched me, let me enjoy you, and then just left… That's the thing that would have done it. I don't think I could have gotten back up from that."

Another long quiet moment of just breathing together. Then Rey says, "What do you want?"

He half smiles, a little. It's not a happy gesture, though it is fairly peaceful, at least for him. He kisses her, soft, sweet. His hands curl through her hair, stroke between strands of brown silk. "The past doesn't actually die, you know?"

"I know. We can't kill it. Can't change it. Just… have to bear it and try to do better by the future."

He sighs and kisses her gently. He takes her hand in his, and says, "This wedding thing… Vows are part of that, right?"

She shrugs. "I think we get to do it however we like. Do you want… public vows?"

He smiles a little at that idea. "Maybe? Definitely, private ones."

Rey lets that pass. They'll figure that out later. "Private vows, for you and I."

He lifts her hand, kisses her marriage band, and says, "I will use my past, and the lessons learned from it, to build a better life with you."

She lifts his hand, and kisses his marriage band, "I will use my past, and the lessons learned from it, to build a better future, with you."


	34. Darling

3/13/3

Most women of Thea Schiff's station have a droid to do the errands and shopping for them. She doesn't begrudge them that convenience, but a long, long time ago, she found that going out, personally, to do the sort of chores and errands the other wives of her husband's men do, makes it a _lot_ easier to see where the rough edges are.

It's been a long time since the days of the Empire, back when her family, and the families of the men her husband commanded, would be stationed in actual cities all around the Empire, but the lessons learned there are still valuable.

After all, the way the local butcher treats the spouses of service men tells someone who's paying attention a _lot_ about how that occupation is going to go.

And there's no substitute for walking through town, no better way to get a feel for the attitudes, often unspoken, of your men, as well.

A man in uniform will often be cagey about directly bitching to his commander about issues that are 'beneath' them. But he'll complain to his wife and girlfriend, and she'll complain to her friends, and if you happen to be in line behind them at the store, or sitting in the next booth at the cafe… Well, it's always good to keep an ear out.

 _The Supremacy_ is a bit more contained than the towns, cities, and freeports she'd been stationed with while Josh was working his way up, but the practice keeps her sharp.

And lets her see… interesting things. Like… it makes her smile, Lady Ren is actually out and about, sitting on one of the benches on the F-Deck, reading.

Thea settles in to watch. She, in general, approves of the idea of their leader having a consort. She, in specific, thinks that the idea of Rey, a calming, softening presence, will help them shake off some of the harder edges the days of Snoke left them with.

She's not entirely sure she buys Kylo's idea of just… letting people come to them. It seems… inefficient. But… given who Kylo… _Ben_ used to be, that's likely as good as it's going to get. She really can't expect the child of Organa to be a conqueror. If it takes them longer to increase their grasp, well… This might be slower and more stable than the way they've done it before.

At this point in her life, much closer to eighty than seventy, she's okay with slower and stable.

She's also very okay with what she's seeing. Rey being out, in public, letting people see her. That's… good.

Maybe… Thea's eyes narrow. Not everyone recognizes Lady Ren, not yet, especially not how she's dressed right now. Some idiot captain is trying his luck. And he's not exactly noticing, or doesn't care, about the first two brush offs. He's absolutely not noticing who he's trying to chat up.

Thea's about to get up and offer her own company, because nothing wards off unwanted male attention like a seventy-six year old woman, but… Rey tells him off, and he leaves, tail tucked between his legs.

The next one does, too. Nothing like a pretty girl in a pretty dress, without a man next to her, to attract the rascals.

From the way she's reading, it looks like she's not interested in company… Anyone with the sense of a gluber should be able to tell this is not a woman looking for a friend.

Oh. Thea's eyes go wide.

Lady Ren's not interested in her previous company. She seems very interested in this one.

He's… a friend. She's an adult woman. She's allowed to have a tall, blonde companion, with horrible fashion sense. Who puts an orange jumper over a pair of drab green trousers or wears… spectacles? She hasn't seen a pair of them in fifty years.

She can feel the cold growing in the pit of her stomach. Just… a friend… a companion… to… talk… They're just… talking…

 _Fuck!_ She thinks it loud and vicious. _Stupid, stupid fucking girl!_

She's not just kissing a man who isn't Ren, she's doing it in public, on the fucking F-Deck, of his flag ship.

At seventy-six, Thea Schiff doesn't run, but she can hustle awfully quick. She does wear a comm. She hits the buttons on automatic. "Darling, meet me in our ship."

* * *

Josh Schiff, Grand Admiral of the Order, second highest ranked man in the entire system, second only to Lord Ren, knows that when his wife comms him out of nowhere and calls him Darling, it's time to drop everything and run.

That's their system.

If she calls him Darling, everything is about to go so fucking sideways that the universe is on the verge of imploding.

He doesn't even make an excuse. He cuts his meeting short, and is heading to their ship.

Their _private, routinely debugged,_ unmarked, ship.

* * *

He doesn't beat her there, but he's not far behind. As soon as he's in, she shuts the hatch, and has the coordinates planned. They're getting _out_ of Order space, and fast.

Just because the ship is debugged, doesn't mean there hasn't been something they missed. That said, they know the range of both the furthest scanner, and right now, they're beyond it.

"What happened?" Schiff asks, once they're clear to talk, really talk.

Thea tells him.

For a moment he inhales slowly, and exhales, and nods. "Baby, are you sure. Those eyes of yours…"

Her vision isn't as sharp as it used to be, that's true, but it's not _bad._

"I was less than twenty meters away. She didn't notice me, but I noticed her. And her… friend. Tall and _blond_. Short, shaggy hair. An orange jumper! There is no possible way that was Ren."

Shiff cradles his head in his hands for a moment, and bites out the same thing Thea said, "That stupid fucking girl!" He growls softly. "Fuck. FUCK!"

She nods. "What…"

"How many people saw?"

"She was right there, out in public. I don't know how many noticed. I didn't see a lot of heads turn or people tracking them. On her own, she's a lot less noticeable than he is. Two men actually came up to hit on her before her… friend appeared. Neither of them recognized her."

"Fuck!"

He turns his comm on. "C8, where is the Master right now?"

"His comm is in his room, right now. I'm fairly certain he's not in there, though."

"Fuck, fuck, fuck!"

"Sir?" C8 sounds, as best he can, concerned. "Do you want me to check on him?"

"Just poke your head in and see if he's in there." He covers his comm, and says to Thea, "Get Ylness up on your comm."

Thea nods. Any and every commander of Josh's level needs people absolutely loyal to him. Ylness Urath, Commander of the Resh Squad is that for Josh. Officially, Ylness and the Resh Squad don't exist. They are not on any roster of Order personnel. Technically, they weren't part of the Empire, either. But Resh Squad has a long and glorious, if you ride in the right circles and can catch a hint of them, history.

"He's not in his room, sir."

"Thank you, C8. Let me know when he's in, okay?"

"Certainly, sir. Should I ask what this is about?"

"No."

"Then, I won't."

Thea hands her comm over. Josh doesn't even begin with a hello. "Top secret, Ylness. You, me, and no one else knows this. I need you to grab Mistress Ren and take her into protective custody. Take her to my wife, and then get both of them off the ship. Do not tell me where you take them. Tell her you're there on Ren's orders and you have to get her off the ship, fast, and then do it. If her companion fights you on it, kill him, just get her off the ship, okay?"

Ylness doesn't ask questions. "Protective custody."

"No harm is to come to her. Just find her, and get them off the ship. Thea'll be waiting for you and your men in her ship. As of an hour ago, Lady Ren was on the F-Deck, keeping company with a…"

Thea describes the man with her.

"I don't care what you do to him, just get her off ship, preferably before Ren finds her. If he engages with you before you can get her off the ship, she's at his mercy, but… please, get her off the ship before he finds her."

"And once she's secure?" Ylness asks.

"Treat her gently. She is a guest of my wife and under my protection. I'll eventually tell you what to do with her, but right now, first priority is getting her off the ship." He doesn't say, _So, he doesn't kill her when he finds out_ but he's sick to his stomach at the idea of it.

* * *

They're twenty-seven minutes out from _The Supremacy_ , which means that Josh and Thea have a little time to plan.

"Are you going to tell him?" Thea asks.

He's rubbing his forehead. "No. It's not… It shouldn't come from me."

His comm chirps. C8's voice. "Grand Admiral. Master Ren has just returned to his rooms. Shall I tell him…"

"No. Just… if he tries to leave, keep him in there, okay?"

"I can do that."

Josh comms off. "Small miracles."

"So, who tells him? Pat?"

Josh feels like he's tasting that. "Almost… Just… No. No, whoever tells him has to be fast enough to dodge whatever comes when he hears."

Fast enough is what gets Thea's attention. "The new Grand Marshall."

"Jon. That's… Yeah. His friend." He pulls up Jon on his comm.

"Grand Admiral?" he sounds confused to see who's calling him.

"Is this line secure?"

"Uh… No. Give me a minute." There's a few moment's pause, followed by, "Okay, we're on the hex-quad-code now, and I'm in a private room. What's going on?"

And Schiff explains.

* * *

Jon's first thought is that this is a joke. Anyone who's ever seen the two of them together knows that this just… There's no way. Let alone the idea that after what Rey shared with him… There's no way she's that good of a liar.

"Are you sure?" Frakes asks, tentatively, after all, this is the Grand Marshall offering him this. He might not believe it, but it wouldn't do to just smack him in the face with it. "I mean… That's… really out of character."

Thea's voice is steady. "I watched her do it."

Frakes is still doubtful. But, now he's got the Grand Marshall's lady as an eye witness and this is going to be a heap of trouble if he flat out tells her she's wrong. He thinks for a moment for how to work with this. "This feels like a plot. Someone fucking with him. I mean… We know face dancers exist. They're rare, but… They won't fool a camera, right. Do we have footage of it?"

That takes both Schiffs up short. "Good point. Let's…" Josh spends a few moments keying requests into his pad, checking with Thea, getting exactly the time and where they were. It takes five minutes, but they get the security feed that covers that section of the F deck, playing on both is pad and Jon's.

It's a bad angle, and it takes them a moment to find Rey, but when they do, it's clearly her. And her companion…

"He did _not_ look like that in person. It's not even the same clothing," Thea says, looking uncomfortable.

Josh grabs her comm and gets Ylness up again. "Ylness, bely those orders. False alarm. Call them off." Then Josh looks to Thea. "Well, I suppose we've got confirmation of that rumor that he can appear to be someone else."

Jon snerks a bit on his side of that. "Tall, blonde, and an orange jumper?" he asks Thea.

"Spectacles, too."

Jon's chuckling at that idea. "He really doesn't enjoy the kind of attention The Master gets when he's out and about. But Force alone knows what he was thinking with that. I'll, uh… discretely mention to him at some point in the not wildly distant future that if he and Rey want to play in public he's got to work the magic on both or neither of them."

"That's… a good plan," Josh says.

"I'm going to comm off," Jon says, and then his line goes dead.

Josh looks at his wife, shoulders slumping in relief and exasperation. "You know, the Emperor never used his powers to pull shit like this."

"How would we know? We were both twenty years off when he was a young man."

"I suppose." He shakes his head. "I told you about our last meeting, right? The one where I couldn't keep Ren focused on anything but her."

She chuckles at that. "You did. Poor boy's got it bad."

He pulls her a little closer. "You miss those days?"

"Sometimes." She kisses him. "Nothing saying we couldn't have a night out ourselves."

He does smile at that.

* * *

3/16/3

"Good date?" Jon asks Kylo a few days later, when they get some time not dominated by work.

Kylo blinks at him, completely unaware of what Jon's talking about.

"A few nights ago. You and Rey. F-Deck. Apparently, Thea Schiff saw Rey out flirting and kissing with someone who, on the video footage, looks an awful lot like you, but she couldn't, by sight, identify as you."

Kylo's mouth opens and closes, and then he winces, hard.

"Yeah," Jon says. "Schiff had his pet stormtroopers searching the ship for her, to get her into protective custody before you found out, fortunately we got video of it before they grabbed her."

Kylo rubs his lips together. "Protective custody?"

Jon just looks at him. Then he says, "And I was the one going to get dragooned into telling you, and I was going to go into that meeting in head to toe body armor, or possibly do it over the comm, because… Well, you're fucking scary when you're mad, you know?"

Kylo swallows at that, too. He's… actually incapable of imagining what he'd do in that situation, because he cannot begin to imagine Rey off… fucking around with someone else… But… if it had been real… He supposes being wary and armored, and… likely in a different ship, possibly quadrant of the galaxy, and doing it over the comm… might not have been a bad plan.

"So, whatever it is you do that makes people report you as being tall and blond, with blindingly terrible fashion sense, go do that to her, too, _before_ the two of you go off and have fun on the _Supremacy._ "

Kylo's thinking that's a good plan, and then he tilts his head to the side, "Blond?"

"Thea reported you as being big, tall, blond, no scars, wearing spectacles, and a bright orange jumper."

"Huh…" Speaking of things Kylo can't imagine, a version of himself that looks like that is on the top of the list.

"Huh?" Jon asks.

"It's a do-not-recognize spell. I've got a do-not-look spell, too, but we're out, and part of the fun of being out is other people seeing us. It's… difficult to order dinner if people won't look at you. So, this one makes them not see, me. I have no idea how it looks to them. I can't see it in a mirror, and Rey sees the real me, too, so…"

"Apparently, your alter ego is a big, blond guy, who was wearing an orange jumper."

Kylo rolls his eyes. "Have I told you before the Force is an ass?"

Jon sniggers. "No, but I get that sense from time to time."


	35. Training Day: The Maji

3/20/2

"Okay, so, what, if anything, do we think about that?" Rey asks the kids.

They used to do their lessons in the chapel, but these days, it's just too bloody cold in there. And dark. It's designed for natural light, which is great, even on cold, snowy days, until, of course, the damn snow piles up and freezes on the dome and you're sitting in the middle of three watts of light because there's a meter-deep snow and ice frozen to the outside of your building. And yes, dark is natural, dark is important, learning to be in and with the dark is a skill Rey's trying to build in herself and in the kids, that said, if you're attempting to work on balance and strengthening exercises, enough light to see what she's demonstrating comes in handy.

To say nothing of when C4-98, the tutoring droid, is going over how to do long division.

So, they're in the kitchen. These days, they do a lot in the kitchen. It's warm. There are snacks. Everyone fits in there. And, it's less than half a klick from everyone's cottage, so that makes for a much more comfortable walk in the cold and wind.

Jacen's sitting in the back of the room, closest to the door. Usually, he sits with his friends, and they did save him a chair, but they're at one of the tables near the counter Rey's sitting cross-legged on top of, and to get there, he'd have to go through the whole room.

Which he doesn't want to do, mostly because he got in late. Rey doesn't say anything, but she does _look_ at him. He slouches a bit. It is his fault that he whacked the chrono and 'slept in' this morning. It's not his fault that Critt was in their living room petting with Savarah late into the night and he had to… listen… to it.

Not really. They were quiet, but… Neither of them were thinking quietly, so he might as well have just pulled up a chair and watched.

He's got his first training run with Chewie and Finn tomorrow, and getting out of his cottage when Critt's _entertaining_ is probably the best thing for him.

That or figuring out how to just ride it through Savarah's eyes. If he's going to have to deal with the jealousy, he should at least get to enjoy the show… For a moment he's really enjoying that idea. After all, it wouldn't take _that_ much focus to pull off, and it'd certainly add to his bank of wank fodder. He glances ahead, where Critt's sitting, next to Savarah, and the empty chair he saved for Jacen.

 _Fuck._ Jacen just thinks it. He just... can't. It doesn't feel right.

It'd be so much easier if it did.

As the other kids are heading out for their various chores, Rey wiggles a finger at him, beckoning him forward, and then meets him at the table where his friends had been. "You okay?"

He shrugs. "Eventually. Rough night."

"Yeah. I can feel it. You got a plan for how to have fewer rough nights?"

"Run away?"

Rey smiles a little at that. "Sometimes that's the best plan, but… again… you could try _talking_ to him."

Jacen sighs at that. It's the second time Rey's suggested that, and apparently, she suggested that to the girls, too. He just doesn't know what it is she thinks he could possibly get out of that. "Rey… Uh… How do you think that conversation goes? Hey, Critt, yeah, so… Uh… You know how you feel about Savarah? Yeah. I feel that way about you, and it'd be really nice if you felt that way about me, too." He tries a wide, open lipped smile to go with that. It comes off as a death's head grin.

"Maybe not exactly like that."

"Hey, Critt, remember those things Poe said about what guys could do to each other? Wanna decide that you like boys all of a sudden _and_ want to try them with me? I promise I'll enjoy it! And I'll do everything I possibly can to make sure you do." Another manic grin that doesn't reach his eyes.

Rey winces.

"Uh huh. I know you're not telling me to _talk_ to him, and without doing that, I'm fairly sure there is no version of that conversation that gets me where I want to be, so, running away."

"I'm sorry."

"Yeah. I've… just got to get through this, hopefully find… someone, thing else to focus on."

"Okay, how about… Have you tried talking to Poe about that?"

That has Jacen's attention, in a good way. "Why Poe?"

"He's got some experience wanting someone he can't have. Maybe he could help."

Jacen does think about that. "I like Poe."

"And Poe's likely willing to have a chat with you. Bring it up the next time he takes you out on _Micah_."

"That's…" He runs the days. "Probably a week from now. I've got you, an hour of free time, then lessons with C4, Kylo's grabbing me after that for one-on-one training, and then supper here. Tomorrow, I'm off with Chewie and Finn for a few days, so…"

"Good. Now, about that free hour…"

"I'm not getting to skip out on today's lesson, am I?"

Rey shakes her head. "Nope. Focusing on me, now, okay?"

"Yeah. Fine. Sith, all passion and dark. Jedi, all serenity and light. Sounds boring and limiting, and even if it didn't, neither are good solutions to being living creatures in this galaxy. I wasn't totally zoning out."

Rey does look pleased by that. "Yes. So, let's work on finding your own balance. Settle in, and let's feel it. Where's the point that your own dark and light melt into a stable gray?"

Jacen resettles himself. He shifts out of his slouch into an easy, relaxed, feet on the floor, hands on his knees, seated pose, shuts his eyes, and slowly breathes in and out.

This is a lot easier than it was when he started. When Rey first had him do this, the idea that he'd just sit around, breathe, and think was ridiculous. The idea that it'd be anything other than a boring waste of time was beyond ridiculous into insane, but as he's gotten deeper into it, he can… see… access… more of himself, and the ability to do that has made using his skills easier.

He doesn't know all the tricks, yet, but he can feel where the missing pieces are, and he's getting a better view of things he didn't even know were options before, like low-level healing.

 _Where's the point?_ To a degree, this is easier to do with his body. But, that's also the, or maybe a, point, he guesses. They all, to a degree, have an easier time standing on one foot, than on… Finding their internal balance points. (Rey keeps telling them that standing on one foot gets easier when they find the internal point, too, but as of now, Jacen's skeptical on that.)

As he's shifting through the feel of his own Force, he can see Rey's, bright and steady and… changing. He wasn't expecting that. Rey's… steady. There are a lot of things about her, but those things all… stay. And now… they're moving.

"You're shifting."

"I know." Her eyes are closed, and she's meditating with him. "Focusing on you. I'm focusing on me. Where's your point?"

He breathes deeply, seeking that spot, between passion and serenity, between life and death, between anger and joy. It's there, somewhere. Every time he gets closer to it, he does find doing… everything… else easier. He's just got to find it, and then… balance on it.

* * *

"Crouch," Kylo bites out. This is the _fourth_ time he's had to tell Jacen to do this. Every time he attacks, he wants to leap up, extend up onto the balls of his feet, and go at Kylo full height.

To a degree, Kylo understands what Jacen's doing. Normally, Jacen's the tallest one around on Lirium. He uses his height and voice to take up space and make himself seem more… everything. Or, perhaps, he uses it to make himself _less_ a seventeen-year-old kid.

But Kylo's got eight centimeters on him, which means he can't use his physical body to impose himself around Kylo. So, he's trying to get closer to an equal height. Trying to use his body to fend off some of the fight. Probably not a terrible tactic if he's sparring with Critt or Elias. Hell, it might not be a terrible technique for Finn or Poe, (Well, after he's got enough fight to last more than a minute against either of them.) but… It's just… appallingly bad tactics against _him_.

And, as Kylo leans back and swats at Jacen, who's over-extended (because he's trying to pretend he's got an extra eight centimeters that likely aren't ever going to show up) he overbalances and goes down.

This is _frustrating._ By any and all metrics Jacen should be a hell of a lot better with a saber than he is. He's (for the amount of training he's had) an _excellent_ pilot, which involves the use of both hands and feet independently of each other. A saber should be child's play compared to that.

Next run at it, Jacen drops down, a little, barely, and waits for Kylo to go at him again. And as soon as Kylo's moving, Jacen's up, again, full height and extension, saber in one hand… This time, Kylo whacks him, hard enough to bruise, not hard enough to break the skin, across his lead shin with his training saber.

"Kylo! The fuck, man!" He's dropped his practice saber and kneeling, rubbing his shin. "You did not need to do that."

"I've asked you _nicely_ to crouch. Several times. I've explained why you need to crouch. Several more times, and I'm about to do it, again. You are a human, which means most of your strength is in your _legs._ " He taps Jacen's thigh with the training blade. It's hot, so he can really feel it through his trousers, but it won't burn. _"_ Standing straight up, you can't use them for power. On top of that, you aren't fucking Yoda. Your body is longer than your blade, so you need to make yourself more compact to protect it. Plus, you physically cannot intimidate me with your body. I've got eight centimeters, fifteen years, and probably twenty-five kilos on you. It's not going to happen." He lightly taps that shin again. "Lesson learned, I hope."

Jacen winces. "Just because they broke your legs to teach that lesson doesn't mean you have to break mine."

Kylo rolls his eyes and gives him a hand up. "It's just bruised. You won't even have a welt." As he's saying that, it's occurring to him he's never _told_ Jacen that story. "Am I projecting or did you go looking for that?"

"You're projecting. Yeah, I get it. Protect your legs. The fact some maniac broke yours doesn't mean you need to do it to me." Jacen returns to position, crouching this time, deeply enough he can cover his whole body with his saber. "It's harder this way."

"I _know._ Believe it or not there was a time when I was a gangly seventeen-year-old who couldn't fight for hours without a break. You're still building up strength. That's normal. But once you've built it, when need power, you'll be able to pull it from the big muscles in your legs, instead of hoping your arms are up to the challenge. Here's a hint, they aren't. Mine aren't." Jacen looks skeptical at that, each one of Kylo's arms is the size of two of his. "You are human, your strength is in your legs. Finesse and fine tuning is in your arms. Okay, enough talking. Come at me again."

Jacen's eyeing him, getting a feel for how Kylo's going to move, where he is, how he's balanced, the position of his training saber. He does, as requested, crouch, and runs the fight in his head first. How he'll move, what Kylo will likely do in response, how to counter that. Every version of this he can think of involves him getting more bruises.

He closes his eyes, breathes, feels for the point. _Find your balance. Where's the gray?_ He exhales long and slow. _There._ Jacen shakes his head and then lowers his training saber. "No."

None of the kids have ever even suggested not doing this to Kylo. The _all_ like getting to run around and whack at him with training sabers. Granted, Jacen's the only one he's really starting to work with on any serious level when it comes to form, control, and strategy. So, yes, this is more precise and difficult, but… "No? You giving up?"

Jacen nods. He can feel it. _This_ isn't part of his balance.

Kylo's still staring at him, stunned, but he is staring, not immediately attacking or demanding that he get on with it, so… Talking. "On this, yes. This is wasting my time and yours." He tosses his saber to Kylo. "A more elegant weapon for another age? That's Obi Wan's line, right?"

"According to Luke. Yes." Kylo's still a bit annoyed, but Jacen's making it clear that he should listen, so, he puts the blades on the floor and turns back to Jacen, paying attention.

Jacen's looking at Kylo's actual saber. He raises his eyebrow, and Kylo nods. Then he pulls the saber to himself, and Kylo's pleased to see that he's mastered his telekenetics enough to do that. Jacen holds it, swishes it around a few times, but doesn't turn it on. It's clear he's surprised by how heavy it is. "The weapon of the Jedi Knight."

"Before I rebuilt it. Before the crystal cracked, back when it was still blue." He pulls the saber to his own grip and ignites it. The red flame sears through the yellow light of the training gym, and a second later the cross guard comes to life. "No Jedi ever had a saber like this." He smirks a bit. "Technically, this isn't a saber. It's based on something called a claymore. All blades used to be made of metal. The one this is based on was bigger, heavier blade, with a cross guard to protect your hands. Normally used two-handed, maybe one-and-a-half if you had the strength for it."

"You're not a Jedi." Jacen nods a bit, as Kylo extinguishes the blade. "I'm not a Jedi, either. I have never been and never will be a Jedi. I don't want to be a Jedi, let alone a Knight."

Kylo's hearing that, but not sure what, exactly to do with it. "Not even a Maji Knight?" _or a Knight of Ren._ He mentally shakes his head at that. The Knights of Ren are, and should remain, dead. They aren't reshaping the past, they're building anew, and better, from it.

Jacen shakes his head. He then looks at Kylo's saber. "If I need that, I've already failed." He flicks his tongue to his upper lip. "The Force gave me a voice. A voice and a pretty face. I can feel it. I'm not made for this."

Kylo pulls a towel to his face, and blots the sweat, thinking. Part of him is aware of the fact that this isn't _easy_ for Jacen, which is part of why he's not enjoying it. Part of him is aware of the fact that, as he said, the Force gave Jacen a _voice,_ so he's weighing out how persuasive this argument _actually_ is. And part of him is remembering a slew of adults who wanted to bend him into a shape he wasn't made for.

Kylo glances at the tank top Jacen always wears to train, and thinks about the scars that are under it, the ones Jacen hasn't spoken about, but he _felt_ them when he watched Kylo and some of the others strip down to their trousers to train, and he kept his shirt on. Knowing they're there, and sensing the shape of them, if not the exact image, Kylo comes up with, "It's important to be able to defend yourself."

"I know, but…" Jacen stares at the saber and shakes his head again, "not like that." He's quiet for a moment, and Kylo can feel him getting an image of his future self. "I'll keep a blade on me, wrist sheath or something, a last-ditch effort weapon. Learn enough with it so that I'm never completely at the mercy of my mouth, but…" He focuses on the future Jacen McGy, Maji Knight, robes and light saber, and shares it with Kylo, at least as well as he can. The image won't form, not the way his other glimpses of the future do. "That's not me."

There's a moment where Kylo feels, almost, like saying, "It could be. If you practiced and worked at it. It'd get easier and you'd probably like it." He doesn't. He doesn't have to. Jacen felt it, and from the looks of it, he appreciates Kylo not giving that voice. Instead, Kylo says, "If you ever feel like it is you. You know where I am."

Jacen nods at that.

Kylo tosses a towel at him, and Jacen begins to mop himself off, too. They both sit on the floor of his training gym, apparently talking today. "So… What do you want to do? What… isn't wasting your time?"

Jacen thinks about it. Thinks about who he's supposed to be, as well as he can see it now, at least. "Flying. That's definitely part of it. Poe's letting me take _Micah_ out some. That's a start. Going out with Chewie and Finn tomorrow. Flying and fast talking. That's definitely part of it."

He lets Kylo feel how flying feels to him, and Kylo nods at that. "Yeah."

"You feel that way with a saber in your hand."

"I feel that way in a cockpit, too."

Jacen looks surprised at that. "You didn't feel that way when you brought us here."

"Because getting all of you in my ship is stressful. On my own, fighting… Any sort of fighting… Ship, saber, hand to hand… I like that. You like flying."

"I do."

Kylo thinks back. "Did you get through the sims far enough to begin combat training?"

"The most basic level. I got moved up here for level one non-atmo with live ships, officer training, and intensive combat maneuvers." As he's saying it, he knows that Kylo didn't go through First Order flight training, so he understands the words and knows what they must correlate with, but he doesn't _know_ what that means.

"You want to get back to it?"

"Eventually. I'll earn my stripes, eventually, but not yet. A lot of what Rey does with us, the focus, the ability to balance, that's helping. I know it's useful. Maybe not so much on how to use my powers, not yet, but on how to decide what to use them for. I… can feel this is something I need."

Kylo half inclines his head at that. "I found figuring out what to do with them a hell of a lot harder than mastering them, so… Yeah, it is."

"I also remember you offering to teach me some tricks, too. Wouldn't mind moving forward on that."

Kylo rubs his lips together on that. Then he looks at the practice sabers. "Those tricks."

"You're evading."

Not a good plan to try that sort of tactic with Jacen. Fine. "All right, full-on honesty. For us, for… as long as we're doing this, that's the rule. No bantha shit from either of us."

Jacen looks amused by that. "Is that a rule, or just… a nod toward reality. You're not a good enough liar to lie to me, and I'm not well-trained enough to do it to you?"

Kylo sighs. "How about, it's a nod toward reality, and also a sign of mutual respect? We might not be able to successfully lie to each other, but we'll also choose to be honest with one another."

Jacen smiles, a little at that. "I like that."

"Good." Kylo sighs. "Honesty. You're not exactly a grown-up, but you aren't a kid, either, and I'm worried that if I teach you the tricks you need to fully master your voice talent, you'll use it in ways that'll hurt you and everyone around you."

Jacen doesn't _like_ that, but he understands what Kylo means by it.

"And I don't like feeling that way because rewind fifteen years, and I had a pile of adults with similar concerns trying to hedge me into shapes I didn't want to be in."

Jacen inclines his head, and Kylo's not sure if it's a relief that he's willing to listen, or if this is him being able to see, to feel, what sort of tactics will work best for getting Kylo to go where he wants him.

Jacen responds to the thought he doesn't verbalize. "Honesty. Yes, I'm looking to leverage this, but I'm also genuinely interested in you, too."

Kylo nods. "Okay. Concern. My concerns. Take Jon."

That gets a massive eye roll, and a tangible wave of annoyed snark. "He wanted that."

"No, he didn't. _You_ wanted it. He..."

"Liked it." _Don't even think about telling me he didn't._

Since it was abundantly clear that Jon did like it, Kylo's not going to challenge that. "I'm not saying he didn't. But I also know that he doesn't _want_ you. He's… maybe developing a thing for Poe, and still mourning his husband, so, you're not on the scanners, okay?"

Jacen snorts. "I wasn't looking to marry the guy. Just get tuffed. He was interested. He was thinking and…"

"You blasted everyone in a fifty kilometer radius with enough raw lust that _everyone_ was interested. Random guys on the F-Deck were wandering around wondering why they'd suddenly gone hard for no reason they could ascertain. And… That's part of what I mean about… Not being a kid and not being an adult and not being sure if teaching you how to use that is a good idea. Because I know if you could have put the right spin on that he would have taken you to bed and that would have just… complicated things, for him and you."

 _Massive_ eye roll. "Gods, Kylo! It's _just_ fucking. It's not that complicated."

Kylo watches him, and tries to really _feel_ what Jacen's telling him. Because, for him, even when it was just fucking, it wasn't _just_ fucking. It takes a moment, and then he says, "Oh… You…"

Jacen knows what Kylo's understanding all of a sudden. "Telepath. That's the word you're looking for. It's in one of Rey's old books. I'm a telepath. I can hear/feel/see what people are thinking. You're an empath with sharp telepathy skills, too. You feel what they're feeling/thinking, primarily, and can catch the actual thoughts sometimes, too, if you're really working at it, or like with us, we're close and not blocking each other. It's very much not the same thing."

Kylo immediately gets the difference. "It's really not. That's… why you're sane, isn't it?" Kylo can feel the threads of Jacen's family lines. "Your mother…"

"Felt and heard too much. I think. I don't actually know. I don't remember her, but… That's in the things my grandfather didn't say. For me… It's like having loud neighbors. I'm fairly good at shutting the noise out."

"So… You could tell Jon was interested…"

Jacen nods. "I got interested in him first."

"Even the popcorn noticed that. I'm not kidding about how much desire you pumped into the area. _I_ was interested in Jon for a minute there, riding off of you."

Jacen smirks at that. "Empath." He giggles a bit. "Must have been educational."

Kylo's voice is Tatooine dry when he says, "Certainly." He shifts back to his normal tones. "So, you see Jon, and are _interested._ And he's got enough sensitivity to pick up on the pile of lust you dumped on everyone, so he's interested, and you can pick up what he's thinking—"

"But I can't _feel_ it. He's got an amazingly sharp visual fantasy life, so that was… impressive. No ambiguity there. I know for a _fact_ that he was having a perfectly good time until you mentally tackled him and pummeled him about the head with NO!"

"He's not good for you."

That gets an eye roll, too. As well as a level of jaded exasperation a seventeen-year-old shouldn't be able to produce. "Kylo, he was more than perfectly capable of doing anything and everything I wanted from him. If we're going to talk about more than fucking, we're going to be talking about Critt, who isn't capable of doing _anything_ I want from him, and honestly, that'll just depress both of us, so…"

Kylo more than understands the _stay away from that_ that Jacen's got over Critt right now, so he doesn't touch that. "Okay, how about this? You're not good for Jon. You may just be looking to have someone handsome to service your tool; he's not. And because of your power, his ability to turn you down without me tackling him with NO is _limited._ "

Jacen has the grace to admit Kylo might be onto something with that. "Yeah, that's the sort of thing I couldn't get off of him unless he was thinking about it, and he _really_ wasn't."

"Because he _couldn't,_ because you overpowered him. You just being you were basically… un-turn-downable."

Jacen looks a little uncomfortable at that. "I could _see_ what he wanted, and some of the things he was remembering. Apparently, Jon has had some _very_ good times over the years. I couldn't _feel_ them. I don't have any empathy, beyond the ability to figure out what people likely should be feeling given what they're thinking. But I know what he was thinking, and whatever was in the back of his mind, the front of it was perfectly happy to spend some time in a dark corner with me."

Kylo nods at that, and sighs. "Yeah. I know." He sighs again. "You'll hate this. That, and things like that, makes me more wary about moving forward, because if you've got enough empathy, it's not just easy, it's pretty much unavoidable, to take the other person into account. And without it, it's really easy to just take _you_ and your wants and needs into account."

Jacen's quiet for a moment, sensing what Kylo isn't saying. "He cut you off from it? Who are you thinking of? And, what happened to his face?"

Kylo sighs at that. "That's Snoke."

Jacen winces a bit. "And that's why we never saw him. Just putting the mark of the First Order on everything makes a lot more sense now."

Kylo doesn't dispute that. "I never knew what happened to his face, but, as you noticed, it wasn't pretty. And… For a long time, I felt everyone and everything very intensely. When I left Luke to go to Snoke, that dulled down, a lot. It didn't vanish, but it was significantly less intense. Then I found Rey, and I could feel her, very brightly."

"You killed Snoke, and… It's coming back."

"But not the level it was before. I'm not sure if I'm burnt out, or developed enough emotional calluses that it's not as fierce. I… prefer it this way. It's easier not to know what everyone thinks/feels about you all the time."

Jacen inclines his head on that. "This might be your natural level. If he could tamp you down, he could probably nudge the sensitivity up, too."

Kylo blinks slowly at that. He's never put that idea together, but… "Fuck." A lot of pieces all fall into place. He was a naturally sensitive child, but not necessarily _that_ sensitive. And… he thinks back, he doesn't remember ever getting hit with approval, or pleasure, or… He inhales sharply, it's just not possible, not rationally, not logically, that no one, ever, in his entire life, ever managed to approve of anything he did. It's just… _not._ He just never _felt_ it. He was constantly being fed a diet of every doubt, second thought, ill opinion, an uncensored gut reaction of everyone around him, but he never got the other side, so he just assumed there wasn't one. "Fuck," he says it softly, again.

Jacen sighs, too. "That's why you're afraid of what I'll do. Someone overpowered you, and you couldn't say no, could you?" Jacen glances at Kylo's training saber, and feels the sore spot on his leg. He doesn't have to say it, they both remember. _Just because some maniac broke your legs, doesn't mean you need to do it to me._

That pulls Kylo to here and now. "I… don't know. I cut the fucker in half, so at least once I managed it, but I don't know how much of the rest was me doing what he wanted. And I'm not afraid for you, not like that. You aren't… evil. But, I am afraid that you'll… Be who you are." Jacen doesn't like that, so Kylo quickly adds, "And it's not bad or wrong or anything like that. It's just… Young. Inexperienced. Too-confident. Self-centered in a completely normal and rational sort of way." Kylo's quiet for a few moments, and Jacen lets him sort this out. "But for you, it's dangerous in a way that it's not for most people. Finn's got a bad plan. The people around him can smack him upside the back of the head and tell him it's a bad plan. You launch a bad plan. Everyone around you nods and tells you what a great idea it is."

Jacen's not thrilled with that, either, but he also knows it's not wrong. When he came up with the plan to get out of the circus _everyone_ thought it was splendid. And… maybe if someone who wasn't fourteen had done the planning, more of them would have gotten to the Order recruiting center alive.

"Yeah, I didn't want to hear that either. Not now, not then, not ever. It's still true. The more power you have, the harder it is to take good advice, the harder it is to get it, and the more damage you can do by not taking it."

They're both quiet, because Jacen knows that the only thing he can do to prove he's worth this is grow up, and it's the only thing he _can't_ make himself do any faster than he already is.

Kylo pulls his saber to hand. "Luke didn't much like teaching us this. Working with the droid to deflect shots was fine, but letting us fight each other made him very nervous. I think it's useful, not… Just because I use it as a way to burn through the dark, twisty thoughts, but because it's an exercise in discipline and patience. It's about being aware of who's around you, and what they're doing. It's… figuring out what's coming, and learning to trust your instincts."

"You want to train up my empathy by fighting?"

"That's how I'd do it. It doesn't have to be how you do it. But… Let's… find a way that works, for both of us, to work on that. When you can reliably get a feel for the emotions, not just thoughts, of the people around you, we'll start working more on your voice control. Is that… a good compromise?"

"It's… frustrating."

"I know. I can feel it."

Jacen snorts at that.

"If you want to work on a wrist blade… I have one… It's…"

"Who's the ginger?" Jacen can see who Kylo's thinking about. The man he took that blade off of. "Oh… Shit… Uh…" He looks deeply disturbed. And how Kylo took it.

Kylo nods. "It's complicated. But, if you want it, I'll fetch it for you. Though, speaking of things that you can hurt yourself really badly with. This is very much a train up on other weapons first sort of thing. One mistake with that, and you'll have a prosthetic hand."

"He wasn't a fighter." Jacen's still seeing Kylo's image of taking that blade off of Hux's corpse.

"No. He was a killer. He's probably personally responsible for more death than anyone else in the galaxy. That's Armitage Hux, the man who designed Starkiller, and fired it. That's what that blade is for. Killing people. You don't defend with it. It won't deflect a hit. It's, as you said, the last-ditch weapon. It was his last-ditch weapon, too. The only downside, for him, was that when he got to his last breath, it was a fight, against me, and I knew he had that blade. I knew I couldn't stop the blade, but I could stop the arm it was on, and that worked just as well."

"I can only see the sheath in your memory."

"It's a mono-molecular blade. All you'll ever see is the sheath. It's so sharp, the person you hit with it will be dead before they can feel the cut." Kylo can feel the wave of interest off of Jacen. "It's also so sharp, your hand will be on the floor before you know you've cut yourself. I'm really not kidding about the prosthetic." He glances at the chrono. "You're due back home soon, right?"

Jacen rolls his eyes at that. "Yeah. Rey's put me on the kitchen duty rounds. Apparently, I'm grown-up enough for that."

Kylo smirks at that. "Luke did that to me, too. Old enough to make sure the kids don't burn the place down or poison themselves, not old enough to go out into the world alone. Shockingly enough, I was not thrilled with that decision."

Jacen does chuckle at that. He also checks the chrono. "Yeah, I've got to get moving if I want a shower before dinner."

Kylo reaches out, and a moment later they're in the cottage Jacen shares with Critt. "Next time we train, I'll have the blade, and something to start training with one."

"Okay. Uh… Chewie and Finn are taking me out, so it's going to be a few days."

Kylo's not sure how he feels about that. He didn't expect a wave of annoyed jealousy.

"You're projecting. Even I can feel that."

"Yeah." He sighs. "Enjoy it. I've been told she's awfully sweet to fly. Looks like a pile of shit, but handles smooth like…" He pauses and thinks about how his father felt about flying the _Falcon_ , about the words Han didn't say, because they were completely inappropriate for the seven-year-old who desperately wanted to learn to fly. The ones that didn't make any real sense to Ben, though he remembered them, likely because they didn't make any sense to him. By the time he was Kylo, more than a decade later, he did understand, and they made him distinctly uncomfortable. _Like wet lips on a hard shaft._ Now… well, he's flown more than a few fine ships over the years, and had some lips on his shaft, and… now he gets it.

So, he says the same thing Han did, "oiled silk."

Jacen smirks at that, too.

* * *

There's a knock on the refresher door, and Critt's voice, "You decent in there?"

"Sure," Jacen says as he rinses his toothbrush, whacking the control panel that opens the door with his Force. Once it slides open, and Critt steps in, he says, "Thought you had company tonight."

"Nah. You're heading off early tomorrow, wanted the chance to say goodbye."

Jacen smiles at that, as Critt grabs his own toothbrush and gets to it.

"You look tired." Ever since Rey got him doing some healing, Critt's been way more in tune with how everyone's physical bodies are doing. It's like that one moment found a huge balance point for him, and he's suddenly leaping forward in his Force use development. Sometimes that's good. A week ago a cold started to go around the town, and Critt killed that fucker _fast._ Other times… Jacen's just glad that Critt's got fuck all for empathy or telepathy, otherwise things would get really complicated, fast.

"Didn't get to sleep until late." He gives Critt a long stare. "Someone was being _loud._ "

Because of his dark skin, it's difficult for most people to tell that Critt blushes very easily. Jacen doesn't need to see the blush to feel it. His empathy isn't great, but… This close, with someone he likes this much… It's there.

"Shit, sorry. Thought you were asleep."

He shrugs. He was asleep, at first. Woke up rock hard, somewhat confused, and it took a moment to sort out what was dream and what was Savarah and Critt having a great time. "It happens. Not your fault I can hear things I shouldn't."

"My fault we were in our living room."

"Magiit had Elias over?" The two oldest girls share a cottage. Unlike Jacen and Critt, their's is one large space, with the cooker on the one end and the beds on the other. Why they didn't set it up as several rooms, Jacen doesn't know, but they didn't.

"Yeah. And… We thought you were asleep. Didn't mean to…"

Jacen waves that off, and again thanks the Force, the stars, and any and all gods who may be looking down on him that Critt is someone he _can_ lie to. "You've got the place to yourself for a few days, going to take advantage of it?"

Critt grins. "I really hope so, but…"

"But?" Jacen's leaning against the sink, looking at his friend, wishing, desperately, that he felt, thought the way he's thinking about Savarah about him, but… He doesn't. He never has and never will. They're friends. And Critt does love him. He _knows_ that. Part of why he hasn't run away is the fact that it's abundantly clear that Critt would miss him, and that he enjoys being with him, and he _loves_ him.

But not the way Jacen wants him to.

And that fucking burns.

This fucking burns, too. But… Critt loves him, and he… wants to be worthy of that. So, "But… Come on, talk to me."

Critt looks a little like he's not sure if this is supposed to be a secret. Then he thinks a bit more, realizes that it couldn't be, after all, if Jacen hadn't slapped the chrono without opening his eyes and rolling right back over, he'd have _seen_ Savarah in bed next to Critt, and says, "She slept over last night."

Jacen hadn't known that. Apparently, he must have actually fallen asleep at some point. Actually, that makes a lot of sense. He might have dreamed a lot of what he 'heard.' "Was it good?"

"Yeah. It's…" Critt's got a dreamy smile on his face. "Good. Really good. But we didn't… you know. Just… And then slept."

"Critt, I can hear the words you aren't saying. So, you might as well just say them, okay?"

Critt shrugs. "I want to. A _lot._ And, like, all the time."

 _Fuck,_ Jacen knows _all about_ that.

"And she does, too, but…" He sighs, and scowls at his toothbrush, as if it's what caused the problems. "Those lessons are still there, you know? The things Kylo talked about, don't give in, and don't want, and be passive and calm, and let the Force provide for your needs, and… And she got it worse. The Bishops told them they'd be punished for all eternity for fucking if they didn't marry first. And… We _know_ it's not… real, you know?"

"I know. But it is, isn't it?"

"Yeah. So…" He runs a frustrated hand through his hair. "That's… limiting. There's what we want, and where we're comfortable, and where we want to be, but… It doesn't feel right, yet."

"Then wait."

"I don't want to wait! What if I can't get rid of it? What if it never feels right, because… I'm supposed to be some calm, celibate Jedi off meditating his wants away, and disciplining himself with the Force."

Jacen hates the fact that part of him preens at this, because it means Critt's not going to be fucking Savarah anytime soon.

"You know that's shit."

"I do, but…"

"Yeah. I know. If it doesn't feel right, don't do it. Sooner or later, it will. I'm sure of that." He rolls his eyes savagely. _Now_ he gets a fucking flash of the future. "That wedding Rey and Kylo are talking about. We're going to be there. You and her and a beach and starlight and bonfires. Romance overload. It's _going_ to feel right. Just… give it time." The shape of another flash, not as real, or shaped, but... "And use the damn slicks. I'm too young to be an Uncle."

Critt laughs at that, and then smiles at Jacen, and hugs him. "I'm gonna miss you."

Jacen holds on just a hair too tight and a second too long. Then he steps back. "I'm only going to be gone a few days." _This time._ He's fairly sure he _can't_ keep doing this.

It hurts.

But that hurt buys him hugs, and Critt looking at him like he's awesome, and…

 _Run away._


	36. Training Day: The Pilot

3/21/2

They're a billion klicks from anything. Light years beyond the nearest system.

Just Jacen, Chewie, Finn, a passle of Porgs. (And fuck, if he thought Critt and Savarah petting away all night was annoying, sharing a bunk with the fucking porgs is just… Ugh! Okay, yes, it's hazing, and yes, tonight Chewie will magically find somewhere other than his bunk for them to go, but… Yuck! He really liked that shirt, and Porg chewing is not improving it any, and it's not like there's anywhere on Lirium to get a new one. Maybe there'll be time for shopping on this trip. He did bring his credit stick, just in case.)

And space as far as the eye can see, and well beyond.

 _All right kid. Open her up!_

Chewie's in the co-pilot seat. He's cool, collected, a little smug. He's heard Jacen talk about the flying pile of junk, but it's clear that he's enjoying what he knows is going to happen next. Finn's in one of the passenger seats behind, nervous. These days he can pilot, but he doesn't enjoy doing it. He's a lot happier in the gunner's tower, or on the ground making deals. That said, he'd rather be flying the _Falcon_ than sitting back there hoping Jacen actually knows what the fuck he's doing with this ship.

Jacen lays his hand on the throttle and thinks about what Kylo didn't say. What his father didn't say to him. That opening the _Falcon_ up and letting her fly was smooth as lips sliding over a wet shaft.

He eases the throttle forward, feels that half a heartbeat where the engines catch, and… all the air in the ship pulls into his lungs in a deep shuddering breath, and a sound highly reminiscent of the one that slipped out of his mouth two years ago when Billy Pryce got down on his knees and made his year falls out of Jacen's mouth.

Another shuddering breath, while he puts the _Falcon_ through turns tighter, faster, and more precise than anything he's ever done before.

Chewie's sitting next to him, _beaming._

After half an hour and ninety-thousand klicks, Jacen says, "Oh baby, I take back every mean thing I ever said about you! Chewie, I love her!"

Chewie settles back against his seat, hands behind his head, satisfied smirk on his face. Then he says, _Good, now do something useful. H'Rada system. Plot the course and take us there._

"Yes, sir!"

Apparently, Chewie likes _that_ , too.

* * *

"So, what's in the H'Rada system?" Jacen asks an hour later. This part of the trip is kind of dull. The course is plotted, the _Falcon_ is doing its thing, Chewie and Finn are playing Dejarik, and Jacen's supposedly "studying." They've got him reading up on the _Falcon's_ specs, so if needs be, he can jackleg mechanic, but…

He's not a mechanic, he's a pilot.

 _First and foremost, fuel._ Chewie says.

"Leads," Finn adds. "Jobs. Things that have to go from one place to another."

 _Don't fly with an empty hold. H'Rada has fuel, and often cargo, so that's the first stop._

"From there, we see what needs to go where, spend a day or so reading up, and then plot a course that'll hopefully result in a full hold, and credits in the account, each step of the way."

Jacen nods at that. "Okay. What do you want me to do?"

"On this run, mostly sit quiet, watch and learn," Finn says.

 _Don't talk._

"I'm good at talking."

"Yeah, we know." Finn says, "But shut it until you learn some more."

Jacen rolls his eyes, but… Finn's not wrong, he's _learning._

* * *

Jacen supposes that, to a degree, all space ports have to look somewhat similar. A long, flat spot to plant the ships. Machines for mechanics to work on the ships. Fuel slugs creeping through delivering fuel. Mechanics in greasy, dirty coveralls, and pilots, many of whom are also in greasy, dirty coveralls swarming those ships, working on them.

Sort of like how every restaurant kitchen has to, on some level, look, more or less, the same. It's there for a reason, and the things that allow it to do that are all the same.

Still, it's only the third port he's been in, and he mostly wants to just stand around and gawk. Talk about finding the balance point. This feels _good._ He's not going to be a mechanic. He knows that, but he can feel how being one of the pilots, the legions of guys in jumpsuits, or swaggering around in… It's not a uniform, but he's got more of a sense of why Poe dresses the way he does. A LOT of men and women here are in slim trousers, blaster tied down shootist-style on the hip, and leather jackets.

Plus, the swagger of the place. It _feels_ good in here. His kind of good. And, again, empathy may not be his strong suit, but this many people projecting _this much_ of an image...

Yeah, he feels it.

And is, apparently, responding to it. Pulling himself up, swaggering along, wishing he had a leather jacket, too.

"Walk small," Finn says to him, out of the corner of his mouth. Though Jacen's noticed he, too, has acquired something of a scoundrel's swagger, too.

"Why?" Most everyone else is strutting around here. This is very much not the sort of place where walking small is going to get you any slack.

"Because you are the small one here."

Jacen gets what Finn is saying. He wants to make sure that people know they're dealing with _him_ and not _Jacen._ And he knows why. "I'm taller than you are."

"I'm older." Finn's voice is pointed. But between the height, and the beard, and the fucking voice command, he's not sure if they will deal with him over Jacen.

"By what, five years?"

Finn squints at Jacen. "How old are you?"

"Seventeen."

"Seven. And don't forget it." Jacen gets a flash of the conversation Finn's trying not to think about. This is, apparently, the first time Finn's been out on one of these runs, in charge of things, on his own. Chewie's been letting him do all the talking for a while, but… It's _easy_ to make a deal when you've got 2.3 meters of seen-everything-and done-it-all-wookie standing behind you.

With a bowcaster.

And a reputation even bigger than he is.

It's not just Jacen who's training here, it's Finn, too.

"That's barely older," Jacen says. He shouldn't. Finn's nervous and doesn't want to fuck this up. He's got this untested, unknown kid by his side, and after a bit more than a year, Chewie's finally letting him scope and make the deals on his own. Jacen mentally rolls his eyes, and draws himself in. He's not slouching, but he does shift his posture and attitude a bit. "Better?"

"Yes. Thank you."

"Where are we going?"

"Dam's cantina. There's usually something going on there. Stick close, okay?"

"Glued to your ass."

Finn looks slightly startled at that. "Maybe not that close, okay?"

Jacen smirks at him. "The blaster for show, or is this the kind of place you might need it?"

"Mostly for show."

"Why don't I have one, then?"

" _Mostly._ And, because I know when to pull one, and you don't."

Jacen shrugs a bit, deciding that, to a degree, that's fair enough. He's fairly sure that he's a _much_ better judge of if someone around them is a serious threat than Finn is, but Finn's likely better at reading a whole room than he is. He glances at the blaster and rolls his eyes at himself. He's getting caught up in the image of this. Among other things, Jacen doesn't know how to shoot, so… "Lead on, Master Tico."

And Finn does.

* * *

The hanger is _not_ Jacen's place.

It was close to his place.

But it wasn't his place.

 _This_ is his place.

Dam's. It's a hive of scum and villainy and people who make their fortunes by their mouths and wits and guts and… He _loves_ it in here. It's _almost_ as good as opening up the _Falcon._

It'll be better when he's allowed to be something other than Finn's shadow. But right now, this is good. They sidle up to the bar, and Finn orders for both of them. He's not thrilled with the cider that Finn gets him, but… Well, that was the downside of asking silently for rum in his coffee, Finn doesn't know he can handle at least one drink.

But he can.

Finn takes his, turns his back to the bar, and scans the crowd. He's watching everyone around them, and Jacen takes a sip of his drink. Not only is it cider, it's shit cider. This is probably half water, a quarter beer, and a quarter cider. Cheap as hell.

 _You can hear me like this, right?_

Jacen also watches the crowd. _Yes, you getting this back?_

Finn blinks. _Yes._

 _Lovely. What?_

 _I'm only swallowing every third or fourth time. I'll spill a little later. When I get to the second or third one, I'll keep my movements loose and slur a little. People here think I'm something of a drunk, but it helps the deals go down._

 _I can keep the lie going. So, what's up first?_

 _To your left. Connor McDall. He's going to show up. Not sure how long he's gonna take, sometimes it's right away, sometimes it's hours, but he'll be by. You're going to listen quietly. I'm gonna talk._

Jacen nods, and watches.

* * *

It's a matter of seconds. Finn's barely finished thinking it when McDall's ushering them over to a table.

"Where's your partner?" McDall asks Finn once they sit down at one of the tables tucked into the nooks around the outside perimeter at Dam's.

"Tending to the bird."

"You have a kid when we weren't looking?" He's watching Jacen, and wondering who he is, and why he's here, and if that mark means what he thinks it does.

"Connor, this is Jacen. Chewie and I are thinking of bringing him on."

"Why's that?" He's fairly sure the tattoo is a bond mark, and now he's wondering if Chewie decided to buy a kid.

"I'm a pilot."

Connor looks surprised. "Young one." His eyes narrow, and glance to the tattoo. _Runaway._ Taking on a runaway is the sort of move Chewie would make. Lot of shared history there. He's wondering if there's a bounty on Jacen, and if it might be high enough to risk burning Chewie. Slaves with skills are valuable, though… And pilots even more so.

"Last I checked, we all start out this way," Jacen says, and makes Connor stop thinking about checking into his past and if he's wanted anywhere. He's not, or at least shouldn't be. Anyone who'd want to make a claim on his bond is dead, or at least broken, now. Still, he's almost wishing he had an Order hex on him, something to show that he's not bound any longer.

Connor smirks at that, and Jacen can see Finn relax. He's okay with this, as long as he stays quiet when he's not being directly addressed.

Finn takes another sip of his drink, and then says, "So, we're all introduced, what's the deal? I know you didn't call us over just to catch up and be social."

McDall sips his own drink, and then grins. "It's a good one." And then he explains.

Jacen does his job. He sits. He listens, and he _listens._ And once McDall is done speccing out the job, he thinks to Finn. _Pass on that one, it's hot._

Finn smiles, looks like he's thinking about it, maybe calculating the base cost in his head, as he thinks back, _Jacen, three quarters of what we deal in is stolen. And everything we're going to get here is hot._

Jacen glances at the empty mugs, picks up all three of them, and heads for the bar. It'll be a lot less noticeable how closely he's focused on Finn and their mental conversation if his back is to them.

 _I know that. It's_ hot. _Stolen from the Order, and they're looking for it. The theft went bad and they caught some of the guys on the job. That's why he's offering so much for it. Whoever gets caught with it is going to die, and the time to getting caught is getting slim._

Finn nods again. "That's less than a third of the cost. We take that off your hands, we're going to need 250,000. In specie."

McDall looks like he just bit into a chocolate covered turd. "Chewie never asks for specie."

"Chewie's not here right now, is he?"

McDall doesn't like that. His eyes narrow and he's eyeing Finn. He's wondering if Finn's on his own the first time, and showing off. "What's your game Tico?"

Finn leans back in the booth and rolls his eyes at McDall. "We watch the newsies all the damn time looking for good deals. You honestly want to believe I don't know what you're doing? You want to get that off planet before the Order shows up and shoots your ass, you're gonna pay, and pay a lot, and pay in specie. Otherwise, we've got to be just about fueled up, and getting out of here soon is probably a good plan."

Conner doesn't wince. His face doesn't shift at all. Jacen does make sure to note that word he just thought and look it up when he gets home, because it's one hell of a curse.

Jacen comes back with the refills and passes them around.

Connor takes one more sip, and then says, voice annoyed. "If you've figured out what it is, why are you willing to touch it?"

Finn holds up a hand, and then strips off his jacket and shirt. Then he turns around. Apparently, Jacen's not the only one sporting an impressive scar on his back. "Got some history with the First Order, and Ren. Wouldn't mind tweaking his nose. You make it worth the risk, I'll take it."

 _What the fuck are you doing?_

"I can do half in specie and half in credits."

"No deal." He's putting his shirt back on. "I'm willing to risk my skin to get rich. I'm not about to do it with numbers that can be tracked."

McDall looks pained. "That's every cento I've got in specie, and passing a plate around the guys in here to get over the line."

"I'll stake you a plate." Finn's got his jacket on.

"Tico, you're killing me."

"I'm not doing anything. The Order's the one gonna kill you if you sit on this shit. They got a tracker on it?"

"Not anymore."

Jacen sips his drink. _He's telling that bit true. At least, as well as he knows._

"But when they get to wherever it died, figuring out it ended up here won't take a genius."

McDall doesn't bother trying to cover that. He knows it's true, Finn knows it's true, and so does Jacen. "Yeah."

"You know the price, take it or leave it."

Connor's thinking. Finn puts his drink down, and Jacen does likewise. He starts to leave, and Jacen follows. They're almost out the door, one more step, and out.

 _What was that?_

 _Wait for it._

Five steps, ten. A large man bumps into Finn, doesn't apologize, and staggers off. Finn pulls a key out of his pocket.

"In an hour there'll be a satchel in this locker. It'll have the credits and the goods." _And now's probably a really good time to get a hold of Rey and figure out what the fuck to do with this shit so the Order doesn't shoot us out of the sky._

* * *

"Chewie, how good is the code on the _Falcon?_ " Finn asks, moving fast as soon as he and Jacen are out of sight, up the ramp.

 _Ours are okay, and I've still got Leia's personal codes if we need better than okay._

Finn blinks, and then remembers something. Remembers Chewie finding out from Padme if Rey was okay. "You know how to get a message directly to Kylo, right?"

Chewie sighs. _Don't exactly love using that._

"Yeah, well…" And then he explains how they're about to get very well paid for a very fast, straight run, if they can make sure the Order shows up _after_ they get off this planet, and not _before._

Chewie decides that's worth sending a note for.

* * *

Sixteen minutes later, in Leia's code, in written Shariwook, they get back: _You've got 73 minutes until troopers land. Bring it to Lirium, and I'll pay you for it._

* * *

Jacen watches Finn and Chewie. They're thinking. Looking at the fuel tank. Thinking through when that locker is most likely to be full.

"It's cutting it close," Finn says. He knows asking for specie means that getting the cash in one place is going to take time.

Chewie agrees. _You got it in specie?_

"If this key leads to what I think it does. If they can find enough cash. If they actually put it in the locker. We're not going to have time to count up before we run."

"But, they'd have to put enough in to at least look like there's money in there, right?" Jacen says.

"Yeah, but they could probably get away with a half or third of the asking price."

Chewie tilts his head to the side, pondering. _So, we're not totally fucked if it goes tits up._

"Just… one fewer place we can do business."

It's clear neither of them like that.

Really don't like that. Still, a job is a job.

Jacen feels it when they settle into the idea. "You're going to take it to Seti Tau?" he asks. He's… stunned. If Kylo'll pay for it if they take it home. And if they've already gotten paid to take to to Seti Tau. This… Is a no-brainer. They'll get double paid by taking it back to Lirium.

 _That's the deal kid. We're getting paid to take it to Seti Tau._

"We'd get paid to take it to Lirium. It's a good deal. No more fuel than you'd use otherwise. We're back home sooner than expected. Rose is happy. And we get paid. Twice! This is a good deal."

Chewie offers up a subvocal growl.

Finn sighs and begins to explain, _patiently._ "We are being paid to get this out of here and over to Seti Tau. If we don't do that, we can't come back here for another job. We want jobs after this one, too, Jacen. If this doesn't get to Seti Tau, McDall'll spread the word, and that will burn us."

"But if they don't put enough specie in there?" Jacen asks.

"I can promise you that if they don't, the rest of our asking price, likely plus ten percent will be in our account. He'll take the tarnish of not paying in specie, he won't take the rot of not paying period," Finn replies.

Jacen's not loving that. "Say the Order got close and you had to jettison it. If you can't sell the lie, I can. No harm, no foul, let me do the talking, and I promise you won't have to give back more than half of the shipping money, everyone is good, we all get paid."

That gets another sigh. Chewie's rubbing his forehead. Finn's doing his best not to look at Jacen.

He can feel what they're thinking. "Look, it's stupid not to do business with Kylo. Not if you can get away with it, and this one, I can _make sure_ you get away clean on that. It's not like we're smuggling vaccines or food or something. The guys on the other end aren't going to die if they don't get these transmitters. If they were, they'd have come here to get them themselves, not hoped someone could be roped into bringing them along."

He can feel Finn wavering. Then his eyes narrow. His thoughts aren't complimentary.

"I'm not doing it! I'm just arguing with you and making sense. I actually know how to be persuasive, too, you know?"

"That's even more of a kick in the ass. How long do we have?"

 _Sixty-nine minutes._

"I'll hit the locker. Get us ready to go. If it's not there in fifty, we're out of here, okay?"

 _That's_ a plan they can all agree with.

* * *

There's not much to do while they wait for Finn.

Chewie double checks the hyperdrive, makes sure it's in tip top shape. Jacen makes sure the fuel is properly topped off, and then… There's just sitting around.

Finally, he says, "Okay, I don't get it, why not sell to Kylo, and don't give me the we can't come back here stuff, I can fix that. Is it just because he's… Kylo?" Jacen asks as soon as Finn's out.

Chewie sighs a bit, growls a bit, and then says, _Look no one in our business likes The Order. Kylo's got some bright boys somewhere who pulled a metric ton of shit, and that's making business hard for us._

Jacen looks confused. "I thought… Didn't the Order back off on contraband, and open travel lanes, and… they're taking out raiders and…"

 _And cut our profit margins to the bone. We're_ smugglers _kid. We move goods that aren't supposed to move through places they aren't supposed to go to people who aren't supposed to get them. Under the Empire something like ninety-thousand goods were illegal, and half of everything else had its price marked up like five hundred percent on value added taxes._

He can see he's lost Jacen who isn't making the connections that are obvious to Chewie, and anyone else in his game.

 _There's always a market for illegal goods. And it'll be a good one. An_ expensive one. _Because illegal shit is dangerous to carry around. High risk, high reward. Under the Empire a lot of the illegal stuff was small, easy to carry, not particularly dangerous unless you ingested it in too large a quantity, and that made for good payoffs for people like me. Now, the only stuff the Order still has banned is big, dangerous no matter what, difficult to move, and generally speaking, the kind of people who want it aren't the kind of people you want to sell it to. Han and I never had any problem hooking up the local recreational pharmacologist with goodies to sell. That business is gone. If I still want to move illegal shit, it means taking more Rathnors and the like, and they're just… shit to move._

Jacen nods. "Too high of a risk for the available reward."

 _Exactly._

"Taxes?"

 _Best thing that ever happened to me and mine is a value added tax. It's a fucking goldmine for smugglers. Mine the shit out of the planet, pay a tax on it. Ship it to somewhere to refine it, pay a tax on it. Ship the refined stuff to a factory to make parts out of it, pay a tax on it. Ship the parts to a manufacturer to make something out of the parts, pay a tax on it. Ship the finished thing to a market, pay a tax on it. Buy it from the market, pay a tax on it. Any time anyone did anything that 'added value' to a thing, they had to pay a tax on it. And once it was finished and went to market, they paid a sales tax on top of that._

 _Any step of that where I provide the transportation, and some forged tax stickers, everyone's better off. Especially me._

"The Order doesn't do a value added tax?"

 _Right. Some fucknut in the Order said, 'Hey, how about we just charge a straight tonnage fee for anything that moves through our space,' and suddenly it's only a few centos per credit more expensive to do it legally than illegally, so most people opt for legal. Which means half of my, and everyone else in this business's trade vanished overnight. A third of it was moving illegal shit from place to place. There's still local markets for that, and, like you see, there's always a market for stolen goods, but used to be, I could lay hands on… Cigarras for example, and run them from one side of the galaxy to the other, and make bank on them. Now, you can just buy them in the local apothecary, and respectable fuckwits ship them with medipacks and vitamins for the cost of fuel and 5% markup._

 _Taking out the raiders means the risk of any given trip is gone. Means the cost is lower. You don't need a ship as fast and nimble as mine to get through any part of Order controlled space, because you're never more than a call away from someone who'll show up with a billion tons of firepower to absolutely crush any raider who tries to lay a hand on you._

 _When Han and I started in this game, under the Empire, there were millions of these little ports all over the galaxy. Since the Order showed up and made taking shit from place to place safer and less expensive… Everyone is going legit._

"You and Finn?"

Chewie looks positively heartbroken. _Yeah, any given day now, we're moving legit goods, too. It's boring, the profits are minuscule, barely enough to have a good time after maintenance and wages are paid._

"Wait, you pay wages?" That floors Jacen. He never actually thought about what Finn gets out of this arrangement.

 _Yeah. Keep the ship moving, first. Pay yourself, next. Every month. Then we pay anyone we owe. If there's anything left after that, we sometimes pay our taxes. Doesn't hurt to have a few legit entries in our books. Then, if there's anything left, we split it._

"So… You don't want to sell to Kylo because… he's unintentionally fucking your business by making it easier to legally trade stuff?"

Chewie grows at that.

"Huh."

 _You catch what we're getting for this run?_

Jacen nods. "Oh yeah."

 _If that wasn't stolen cargo, and if the Order wasn't hot on our tail, that run would get us less than a tenth of that price. You can live on that, but not well._

"Oh."

* * *

Forty-five minutes later, Finn ambles on in, a satchel over his shoulder, pulling a hand truck behind him.

"Punch it, Chewie."

Forty-six minutes later, space bends into streaks of light as the zoom into the sky.

As Chewie and Finn are counting up the specie, Jacen notices that they're on route to Seti Tau, but he doesn't say anything. Wether he will, to Kylo, later, is something he'll think about.

He does have one question though. "Uh, once the Order tosses Dam's looking for their stuff, are they going to be hot on our ass when they realize it's not there?"

Finn smirks.

Chewie grins.

"They're certainly going to try," Finn looks really pleased with that.

 _Rose has a few tricks up her sleeve._ Chewie adds.

"And one of those tricks is…" He hits another button. A soft _kerrthwack_ sound rattles through the _Falcon,_ followed by the pressure of lightspeed pushing them back into their seats. "Can't launch it in lightspeed, but once it's off, hop away, fast."

"What is it?"

"It's a scrambler decoy. Won't last too long, but once it picks up anything using Order frequencies, it'll bounce them around and fuck 'em up for two hours. More than long enough to make sure there'll be nothing of us for them to track."

"That's what Rose builds when she's in the workshop?"

Finn smiles. "Smart, beautiful, and good with her hands. I got the whole package when I married her, kid."

* * *

"So, what's the plan?" Jacen asks as they're heading toward Seti Tau.

"For this one, we're just dropping it off. We take proof of receipt, and we're done."

Jacen's got a curious look on his face. Receipts are also not part of how he understands this job. It's apparently more complicated than fly fast and look cool.

"So, if McDall decides to fuss about us not getting the job done, we've got proof we did it," Finn replies.

Jacen nods.

Chewie's coming along for this part. Not everyone likes to give a receipt, and well, maybe they don't like it, but they rarely tell him to fuck off.

 _Then we settle in for a bit, do some research, see what's cheap here and expensive somewhere else. That's the kind of legit goods we take._

"Ish," Finn says. "Usually if it's really cheap somewhere, and expensive somewhere else, it's gonna be illegal somewhere else, but, at least en route, we're not carrying hot stuff."

 _For right now, research, though._

"And we do it in a place other traders can see us, so if they want to drop by for a chat, we're ready to talk."

"So… you sit around in a bar, sipping a drink, reading the newsies?" Jacen's not sure if this is the coolest job ever, or the most boring.

 _Pretty much, actually._

* * *

They're still an hour out when Finn settles next to Jacen. For a moment, he's just _looking._ At least, that's what it looks like from the outside. It's not how Jacen understands it, so he answers the unasked question.

"It's like listening to a conversation on the far side of the wall. If the neighbors are yelling, it's really easy. If you've got something else to pay attention to it's easy to ignore. Sometimes, you leave the house, and you can't hear it at all."

Finn blinks slowly. "Do you… hear it… like… words?"

"Sometimes," Jacen says. "Or I'll catch images. Depends on how you think. Most people think in images, so I usually get it that way. Some think in sounds and words, so for them that's how I get it."

Chewie looks up from the newsie he's reading. _How's the leaving part work?_

Jacen shrugs. "Just like leaving the house… I can't get a sense of what anyone back home is thinking right now because I'm too far away." He thinks about that. "Okay, if I really focused on someone back home, I could probably get it, but... People I know well, you know? You two, less than two meters away, focused on me, me focused on you, are very bright and clear."

"So, you just… feel everything we're thinking?"

Jacen shakes his head. "I can but generally don't. You speak galactic standard and have made it clear you don't like me in your head. So, I ignore you as much as I can, and we talk to communicate. Mostly. You sitting down and staring at me while wondering about me isn't something I can ignore. Chewie's different. I don't actually speak Kashyycistan or whatever, so I've got to focus hard on Chewie to follow what he's saying. I get enough images from him that I'm okay at figuring out what he's saying.

 _Shariwook._

"Yeah, that meant nothing to me."

"He speaks Shariwook, not Kashyycistan."

Jacen files that away. "And that's the sort of thing that you won't have an image for, and the word means nothing to me because I don't speak the language he thinks in."

Chewie and Finn stare at each other.

"What happens if you're in a crowd?" Finn asks.

"I learned young to get good at ignoring it. Especially when it's not aimed at me, tuning it out is fairly easy. If you can't keep the voices quiet or filter them out, especially in groups, you go insane."

And Chewie and Finn suddenly know that Jacen isn't exaggerating or speaking metaphorically.

He shrugs a bit. "Mum couldn't block it out. Other than he or one of his kin must have had red hair, they don't know who my dad is. My mom was locked up at the time. She couldn't make the voices shut up, and Kylo thinks she could probably feel what they were feeling, too. Granda said a few things that back that up over the years.

"That's a bad combination, if you can't control it.

"I just get the thoughts, unless I work at it, or the situation is right. That's easier, I guess. She had both sides of it, and she'd hurt herself to try and make it stop. I think they kept her very heavily drugged. She, obviously, was not supposed to get pregnant in there. Granda took her home, but we lived in a city, and shortly after I was born, she killed herself. At least, that's what he said. I don't remember it. I think he was lying. He could shield his own thoughts, and when I was young, I could only get impressions, not full thoughts. He knew I had a lot of her 'gifts' and thought it would be less scary than telling me that she had to go off to live completely alone, away from everyone else, even me, because it was the only way for her to find any peace.

"He was a good man." Jacen looks sad about that. "I was twelve when he died." He smiles a bit, but it's a sad smile. Chewie lays his hand on Jacen's shoulder and nods at him.

* * *

They're in sight of Seti Tau when Finn says, "You gonna tell Ren where his stuff ended up?"

Jacen shrugs. He _knows_ there are a lot of intense feelings there, and he can see how Finn thinks of Kylo, so he can _assume_ what they likely are, but he doesn't _know_ what they are. "You going to ask me not to?"

"They're hot goods, and we'll tell 'em why they're hot, so they can't trace the Order showing up to us, but we're better off with this outpost up and working, you know?"

Jacen inclines his head. "I imagine, if you were to say something like that, he might just send a few people in to _buy_ the stuff back. You might get him thinking in new directions, especially if he's serious about this trade thing being easier and working better than marching in and stomping everyone's spines into mush."

Finn's eyes narrow. He doesn't like that.

Jacen pushes a little more. "I get you don't like—"

Even if Jacen couldn't read the vibrant _NO_ that arcs through Finn's head, he reads body language well enough to see the massive wave of defensive posture that leaps into place on Finn's body. "No, you don't!"

 _Stuff it. Landing soon._

* * *

Dropping off the goods is a lot less exciting than Jacen had been hoping.

The port. That part is great. Even bigger than the last one, with more ships, more pilots, more… everything. And they walk by several cantinas that look extremely promising. But they keep walking.

And then… Get in a cab… Okay, he's not talking because he's trying to look like he knows what the fuck he's doing, but… They just walked out of the port, past all the seedy deal zones, into the city proper, and got in a hired speeder, and now they're zooming through a decent sized city, which is nice, but…

And they're at a… This is a business. Like, a real business. With… a store front, and big glass windows showing off goods, and… middle aged people who look like they've got credits are milling around looking at electronics, talking to clerks.

It's clear that he's looking perplexed. Chewie doesn't say anything but he does look at Jacen, and then thinks, _The best way to sell stolen goods is to sell a lot of legit ones, too._

Jacen blinks in understanding.

These are hot transistors. Really hot transistors. Stolen from the Order transistors. Put them in a real store, one that has things like inventory records and shipping manifests and… He nods, slowly.

They're identical to the transistors anyone else uses, too. If anyone asks, the people who run this place will be able to show that they ordered, received, and bought them legitimately.

They do go around the back, to the loading and unloading bay.

"Chewie!" The man who probably owns the place heads down the back stairs to them, opens his arms wide, and clasps the wookie in a bright hug. "I didn't know McDall'd gotten you into this."

Chewie waves that off.

"Right place, right time," Finn chips in with. Then he pushes the handcart a little further forward, and the man takes the handle.

"My gain, then. It's always good to have dependable people moving things around."

Chewie pulls a micro datapad out of his crossbelt, and snaps a quick shot of the man with the goods.

"Extra dependable. They're Order goods, originally. Make sure you've scrubbed 'em clean before you try to move them," Finn adds.

That gets a raised eyebrow. "How close behind?"

"We got reliable intel that we got out less than an hour before they hit dirt."

"They got a track on you?" The shop owner asks, starting to look like he's thinking twice about holding onto these.

"Oh, come on." Finn smiles wide and Chewie howls in derision at the idea. "We're fucking ghosts. No one tracks us."

"I've heard that." The man looks at Jacen. "New friend?"

"Something like that," Finn says. "New blood, we're testing him out."

"Ah." The man pats the handcart. "Well, I thank you for this."

"No problems."

Chewie's playing with the microdatapad and then nods.

Finn glances at the pad, and nods. "And McDall knows you've taken receipt."

The man nods back, and Chewie gives him another hug, and then they're leaving.

* * *

It's not until they're back in the _Falcon_ that Jacen says, "That's it?"

 _For this one._

"You don't talk at these things, either?" Jacen asks.

 _He never learned to understand me._

"Is that mostly what Han did, talked to people?"

 _I found the good deals, he set them up. I'm a better shot. He was a better pilot. We were… good together._

"Oh." They're quiet. "Now what?"

Chewie glances at the chrono. _Eat, sleep. Up and at it in the morning._

* * *

The _Falcon_ has one refresher. It's small, has a water shower, because the fuel processing produces water as a side effect of making energy, and that water is always hot, because it's part of the cooling system.

According to Chewie, it's one part of this bird that works, reliably, in all situations. Likely because Lando always wanted to be clean and pretty.

Finn's finishing up his nightly ablutions. He's in a pair of shorts, and blotting his hair off when Jacen knocks on the door.

"Can't you hold it?"

"I want to talk."

Finn hits the door and it slides open. Jacen's in front of him, in a pair of trousers and a tank top.

He looks down at Finn. "I do get it, you know? I mean, I _get it_ better than anyone you've ever met. I can't feel your fear, but I got to ride along on your memories as you were taking your shirt off. I know how every time you see him, you check your blaster and look for the exits. I know he's why you still wear a blaster when you're out and about at home. And I know you do it because you know you can't win the fight against him. I know what your mental image of him is, and, by the way, it's off by twenty kilometers. He does _not_ look like that. He's big and kind of grump, but he's not _that_ big or mean looking. And he doesn't even carry the saber around Lirium. He intentionally goes unarmed there these days.

"I know you're afraid. I know you're angry. I can see the red tinges of your mental images of that fight."

Finn's eyes narrow, and he's not looking happy about any of this.

"And I know the last thing you want to hear about is how he's not as bad of a guy as you think he is. So, I'm not trying to convince you to like him. I'm here to make you understand why _I_ do."

Jacen turns his back to Finn and pulls his shirt off.

The very sharp hiss of an inhaled breath breaks the quiet followed by, "Fuck… Jacen… Shit… You said, but…" Jacen can feel Finn's eyes trailing over his back. He knows it looks like a collection of spastic snakes were frozen under his skin, except it's not really skin, not anymore. These days it's more like shiny pinkish-white leather. It doesn't hurt him, not anymore. He's numb from between his shoulder blades to the top third of his buttocks, but he can feel the pain Finn feels at seeing it.

Jacen turns around, and pulls his shirt back on. "They go down to just above the part of your ass you sit on. Like I said, my Granda was a good man. But he died in debt. So, they sold everything but the clothes on my back to pay those debts, and when that didn't cover it, they sold me." He offers Finn a bitter smile. "Apparently, the clothing came free, with me.

"They held me down and tattooed me. And I can feel what you're thinking. Yes, if they'd been people, I could have gotten myself out, even then, but they weren't. The Petrarchs of Anila figured out a long time ago that people have a soft spot for other people, especially children. The overseers were all droids. Couldn't be bribed, couldn't get fond of us, just… followed orders.

"Order the first." He taps the tattoo on his face. "It's a special pigment. You can cover it with makeup, but they'll catch it on their sensors. You can laser it so it'll fade, but enough'll be left for the sensors to catch it. Expensive, skilled slaves are always a flight risk, so every space port… You can't get on a ship without getting scanned. Can't get into the port without being scanned.

"There is literally no way off planet for anyone with this mark, unless your owner takes you, or you get to an Order recruiting station. And you've got to fight to get to Order stations. The Petrarchs won't risk a direct attack on an Order station, that's asking to get themselves killed, but they've got armed squads patrolling around them.

"I didn't… Settle in well. Took… persuading, to get into my role. But eventually, I was well-enough trained to be one of the stars of our circus. People'd line up for hours to get to chat with me. And I'm the best damn cold reader anyone's ever met. I can tell fortunes that'll make your blood freeze they're so fucking accurate."

Finn's nodding slowly, really looking at Jacen, seeing past him, younger him, and how he was _used._ "You just pulled what they wanted to hear out of their heads."

He smiles, it's not happy. "Not always what they _wanted_ to hear."

"Oh."

"That got more scars. People who get happy fortunes come back and tell their friends. Sons of bitches who tell slavers that their wives are cheating on them with their best friends, their kids aren't their own, and the ghosts of their nearest and dearest are rotting in eternal perdition because of their actions get burned." It's clear from the look on Jacen's face that he still thinks some of it was worth it.

"Shit." Finn's staring, and Jacen knows what he's wondering.

"No, I don't know why I'm not more dark. Possibly because, like Rey's talked about, if you need to, you can sort of pull your brain out of your head, and have the bad shit just happen to your body. You know it happened, but it's more like something you've read than experienced. Healing up still hurt like a bitch, but they were careful. It's _just_ skin damage, and they didn't ever let it get infected. Wouldn't do if I was too sick to work."

"Fuck."

Jacen nods at that. "Exactly. Anyway, I'm fourteen, and I catch a thought about the First Order coming. Ren hadn't changed it yet, so it still was the First Order then. At first, people are scared that they're going to destroy the place, and by that point, anything that'd fuck those bastards over is good by me. The First Order could burn that planet to ash, with me on it, and as long as _they_ died, too, I'd be fine with it."

"How I feel about the First Order."

"Exactly. Over the next few months I get more and more bits. Ask the right question here and there, make sure they didn't remember me doing it. But we're still a thousand klicks from a recruiting station. We move though, new city every week, and then we're twenty klicks from a station. Next stop, we'll start moving further away, so this is it. Get caught outside the circus without a pass, and we're looking at trouble, but… So close. All we have to do is get inside the walls around the First Order compound, and we're free.

"One day, everyone else at our circus decided that I had a cracking good plan, getting out, running away. We wrapped our show. Closed down for the night. Mr. S8O6 didn't know what hit him, or anything else, after Turnball, he was the strongman, got done with bashing him to pieces with a hammer. Himnar, the knife and ax thrower, took care of the guards. Hosia, the lead animal handler, took care of the City Watch by starting a stampede. Synthine, the pyromancer, burnt what was left. That gets more of the Watch at the Circus and ties up traffic with the fire response team. Then we ran. Most of us didn't make it, and I only got over the wall because I could fucking levitate.

"But I can say, even without my persuasion skills, every one of us who got over the wall thought it was worth it.

"So, I guess I got myself out. But Kylo gave me a place to go. So, like I said, I don't need _you_ to like him. I need you to stop holding it against me that I do."

Finn nods at that, too. "Look… You weren't there for the last part of our conversation, and… Probably don't need to know, and don't fucking look, okay?"

"I can read the big 'back the fuck off' walls you've got up."

"Okay. Fear is… real. Especially in the kind of work we do, paying attention to your fears and acting accordingly is a good way to live a long and healthy life."

"Okay."

"But… Fear you can't act on. Fear that… doesn't necessarily correspond to now. That's poison. And… Rose and I talk about it, okay. And I'm… trying. But it's not going to come fast or easy, and on top of it, I also just don't _like_ the man. Fucker was born with _everything_ and pissed it all away, and yeah, yeah, yeah, he'll tell you about _extenuating circumstances_ and some shit like that, but…" Finn rolls his eyes. "But all the extenuating circumstances in the galaxy don't justify what he did."

Jacen's just looking at Finn, thinking about the words he's not saying, and finally decides to ask. "'Bought his life at too high a price?' You're thinking it loudly, but I don't know what you mean."

Finn sighs a little at that. "Sometimes, you've got do to shit to survive. I _know_ about that. And I get that he got put in a bad situation. But there's a point where you roll over and let them kill you rather than keep saving your own life because too many people are dying because you keep saving yours. It's literal, you bought your life for too high a price. It wasn't worth the number of people who died to keep you going."

Jacen thinks about that. "If he'd done that, Snoke would still be in charge."

"Yeah, that's what I tell myself when I'm trying to be fair. But I'm not always fair, especially if you're pulling ideas right out of my head."

Jacen nods at that, too. "Okay. I'm not always fair in my head, too."

"Plus, it's not like he likes me. That man is not going out of his way to… anything, for me. Fucker cut me in half and hasn't even said sorry about, so…"

Jacen stands there for a moment, and then says, "For whatever it's worth. The way I am with thoughts. He is with feelings. So, part of why he's always so tense and pissed and on edge when you're near is he's feeling everything you are. And, it's not like me, where I'm aware of what's going on in an intellectual sort of way. He _feels_ it. So, he gets near you. Your defenses spike. Even I caught that when you walked into Poe's ship and there he and Critt were. He absolutely catches the wave of fear, anger, and disgust. Which immediately puts him on defensive. I can't get what he's thinking when that happens, because he actually can shield his thoughts and feelings, but I know part of what you're seeing when he's near is a mirror of yourself, and part of it is defending himself against those feelings."

Finn rolls his eyes at that, and mutters something Jacen decides not to be aware of about Force users.

Jacen shrugs a bit at that. "Like I said, I don't need you to love him. I need you to understand why he's not the boogeyman in my closet, okay?"

Finn blinks.

Jacen realizes that kids raised by the First Order didn't have stories of monsters in the closet or under the bed. "It's a monster that—" Wrong direction, he doesn't want to spend hours going into how it's not really a thing, as opposed to some sort of wildlife native to where he grew up. "He's not my nightmare."

"Yeah, that's clear. He's really not carrying the lightsaber?"

"Not around the settlement. The last time I saw him armed, when we weren't training, was when Critt's parents left. He had his saber for that. But Poe had his blaster, and Chewie had his bowcaster and you… Where were you?"

"Here. In the gunner's tower. That ship wasn't getting Critt off planet unless he wanted to go."

"Oh."

"Unarmed?" Finn asks again.

"As much as a guy who can kill with his body and mind ever is unarmed."

Finn sighs. "That's the point now, isn't it? Assuming he's awake, he's always armed."

Jacen shrugs at that. "He's at least attempting to make an effort to be peaceful when he's home."

Finn looks thoughtful at that.

* * *

3/22/2

Sleeping isn't coming easy.

Jacen doesn't like it, but he's gotten used to the feel and sounds of Critt on the other side of the room. His current bunk is too narrow, too hard, and too… alone. He's almost in danger of seeing if one of the Porgs will come in and join him, just so he's got some company in here.

He gets up, pulls on a shirt, and heads into the main room. He can hear the faint murmur of Finn chatting with Rose over the holo in the cockpit as Chewie lounges back, smoking a cigarra, reading a newsie.

 _Can't sleep?_

"Apparently." He eyes the gameboard, sees how to beat Chewie in three moves, and decides not to do it. He makes himself not focus on Finn and Rose talking. "You got a family?"

 _Once upon a time._ Chewie shrugs a bit, smokes a bit. _Found some new family. Lost them. Makin' do with another new one._

Jacen sniggers a bit at that. Then he thinks. "How old are you?"

 _248._

"We're like your pets, aren't we?"

Chewie laughs, long and loud and hard. After he gets his breath back, he says, _I suppose so._ Then he ruffles Jacen's hair affectionately.

Jacen rolls his eyes at that. But… well, he probably is a pet to someone with a four hundred year expected lifespan. "Is Kylo family?"

Chewie looks like he's going to try to answer that, and then doesn't, not with words. He just lets himself _feel_ it.

Jacen knows what he's doing, but can't really get it. The shape, the idea of it, but not the details. And on this one, the details matter. "Wrong Maji. You need an empath for that. You need Kylo or Rey or Xanth, not me."

 _It's complicated._

"You know, I've met a lot of people, who when asked questions like that, say, 'It's complicated,' and mean, 'I don't want to talk about it,' but you, that's genuinely complicated."

Chewie sniggers at that, too. He puffs out a cloud of smoke. _Is Kylo your family?_

Jacen gestures for the cigarra, takes a puff, coughs horribly, feeling like his entire insides are on fire, and hands it back. His Granda had liked a good pipe in the evening, and this is not, on any level, that.

Chewie smirks at him sputtering away. _Not quite the weeds most humans go for. This is a taste of home._

"Ah…" Jacen says with another cough. When he gets his breath back, Chewie's still watching him, waiting to see what he says. "Good question. I'm not used to having one, you know?"

 _Yes._

"And, besides Rey, he's not used to having one, too."

Chewie rolls his eyes. _Ben had a family._

"Uh huh. Yeah. _Ben…_ Tell me about that family back in Kashyyyk. The one you never quite fit in with and haven't visited in decades, as you go roaming around the galaxy with your human pets. It's not a family if you peel it off as soon as you can."

A long, thoughtful inhale followed by, _Oddly certain for someone who isn't used to one._

"But I had one, once. My Granda. I remember what it was like. I'm out of practice, but I remember."

 _Well then…_

"I don't know. I probably could wrap my head around having an older brother, or good friend, or whatever we'll end up being when the power differential minimizes."

 _You planning on being his equal one day?_

Jacen's turn to smirk. "One day. And I know he's looking forward to that, too."

 _And what does he see you as?_

"You could ask him that."

 _I'm asking you. You know, right?_

Jacen shrugs a bit. "Yeah, I do. Nephew, younger brother… A kindred spirit, maybe. That's probably more Critt than me. He's trying to be a better mentor for me than Luke was for him."

Chewie thinks about that, too. _That won't be hard._

Jacen's eyes just about fall out of his head as he senses what Chewie's thinking about.

 _Fuck. You didn't know that, did you?_

"No. Like I said, Kylo and Rey can shield their thoughts. He's really bloody good at it when he wants to. He's shit at keeping them off his face, anyone looking at him will have a pretty good idea, but in his head he's fucking silent. I mean, when he's working at it, I can't read him at all. Luke really tried to kill him…"

"Wait… what?" Finn says, stepping out of the cockpit. Apparently, he finished his conversation at exactly the right, or wrong, time. "Luke tried to kill who? And are we talking about Luke Skywalker?"

Chewie looks annoyed. _Yeah, we're talking about Luke Skywalker._ Chewie gets up, he fetches a bottle, and three glasses, and pours each of them one. _Okay, let's talk about complicated, and about families._

* * *

At the end of that story, Finn's just sitting there, blinking. He opens and closes his mouth a few times, ideas for things to say coming to the front of his head and then running away. He pours himself another drink and shoots it back.

Jacen's feeling pretty similar. The drink isn't making his head spin nearly as much as this revelation. Even in his neck of the galaxy, Luke Skywalker, the man who blew up the Death Star, killed the Emperor and restarted the Jedi, is a hero. More than a hero. He's… larger than life, the epitome of good… He's… flawless.

Chewie looks at both of them and nods.

Jacen finally gets his wits together enough to say, "You know what, with a track record like that, I'd probably stick with pets, too."

Chewie laughs, but it's kind of sad. _Yeah. It'd be easier if you guys were my pets._

"We're your pets?" Finn says.

"What would you call a small companion you take care of that you're going to outlive by decades if not centuries?"

Finn's way more comfortable with that than anything he just learned about Luke and Kylo. "We're not fucking porgs!"

"Of course not, the porgs are livestock," Jacen shoots back. "You don't eat the eggs of _pets._ "

Chewie's growl kills that conversation. _I don't know if the rest of them were family, but I do know Han is. And it's not like the two of us making bad decisions was anything new or different. Oh look, Han and Chewie are making a bad decision, must be Thirday. But that's the one that hurt us the most._

"Shit," Finn says.

"Yeah." Jacen agrees.

 _It's late. Sleeping time. We're up and about tomorrow, so…_

And when Chewie says go to bed his… family, pets, companions, whatever they are, go to bed.

* * *

But, just because they get told to go to bed, doesn't mean they fall asleep.

Right now, Jacen really wants to be home, in his bed, Critt on the other side of the room in the dark, telling him _everything_ about today.

He's thinking about that as he notices something _weird._ Spine-tingly _weird._

Jacen can feel Chewie talking, to Han, who… is supposed to be dead. He pushes his senses further, makes himself focus. Who is dead. That's absolutely not a living person. _That's_ what ghosts feel like, and he finds it distinctively shivery and uncomfortable.

He pulls his senses back. If Chewie's having a heart to heart with his buddy, that's… nothing he needs to be snooping in. He wouldn't want anyone snooping into his conversations with Critt.

Plus, he is genuinely getting tired, and tomorrow starts soon.

* * *

Going to a tavern to sit around, drink, talk, get up to date on the local and not-so-local gossip, while reading up on everything and looking for a good route and better jobs is a hell of a lot less entertaining than Jacen had expected it to be.

Probably because he's not doing any of that. (Besides slowly nursing a drink. They're all doing that.)

No, Finn and Chewie are doing all of that. Though at this point it's mostly just reading. It's early enough there aren't a lot of other people in the tavern right now, so there's not a lot of conversation to be had, or listen to, in Jacen's case.

Jacen, on the other hand, is sitting with a datapad, stylus, and a navi chart. And an assignment from Chewie. Plot the orbit of Lirium and the course to get there. He wants to see the whole orbit mapped out before lunch, and the course by supper.

"Okay, I get it, the navigator might not always work, but, really… Do I _have_ to do this?"

For a second Chewie's almost ready to say, "Nope," but then the blinks, glares and cuffs Jacen upside the back of the head.

"I wasn't doing it! I swear to the Force, being persuasive is a thing. If any other Maji were here, they could tell you, I'm not doing it."

He's never heard that particular curse word before, but he tucks it away for future use.

"I really wasn't. You just also know that this is a one in a million shot to be useful."

 _I also know that one in a million shots show up a hell of a lot more often than they should. Do the math._

Behind the pad that he's so dutifully reading, Finn's smirking. Jacen can feel math wasn't his favorite job, either.

Jacen rolls his eyes, turns on the pad and stylus, and goes to work. He's muttering about "We're going to be here all year," as he goes through it, because while he can do the calculations, he's _not_ fast at them.

But, eventually, he's looking at them, and plotting the coordinates, and looking again, and glaring at the chart because that just _can't_ be right…

"Chewie?"

 _Yeah._

"Check my math." He just hands over the calculations. He doesn't want the chart to influence anything.

Chewie's nodding along. _Slow. Not perfect, but right enough._

"What's not perfect?"

 _You're a few hundred thousand klicks off. Not so much you'll miss the planet, but if you try to come out of hyperspace too close you're gonna be in for a bad surprise._

"Great. Here." He hands over the chart.

Chewie looks at it and growls.

That growl makes the hair on the back of Jacen's neck stand up, and Finn puts his pad down, fast. He looks at the chart, too. He and Chewie are both looking at a very long, narrow ellipse. "Is that… Lirium?"

"Yeah," Jacen says.

"Shit."

"Exactly."

"How did we not…" Finn's asking, staring at the chart.

 _I never checked. Had the navi do it, and it's not like it knows that an orbit is trouble for the people living on the planet._

"Fuck," Finn says. _That_ sort of orbit is _trouble._

Jacen's nodding. "So, spring's not coming anytime soon." As best he can guess, looking at that orbit, spring isn't coming this century.

Finn just stares at the orbit, which is not, in any way shape or form, a circle, and says, "Only in terms of geological time."

Chewie's already packing up their gear. _We've got to get home, get a plan set. You get an orbit like this… Weather's shit now, but it's gonna get_ bad _soon._ "

"What's bad?" Jacen asks, also gathering up his stuff. Finn's already at the bar, paying their tab.

 _Temperatures get so cold all the moisture in the air freezes. Then you get 500 kmh winds whipping the snow around. It'll go so fast it'll peel the paint off the walls, and then the walls off the studs._

"Shit. What's soon?" Jacen asks.

 _Not today, probably not tomorrow or next month, but next year? Year after?_

"Exactly," Finn says. He pulls his credit stick out of the order pad on their table. "Okay, we're paid up. Let's get moving."

Notes:

So, I don't know if it's intentional or not, but Team Resistance tops out at 5'9" with both Finn and Poe. Maybe that makes Kylo look that much bigger. Maybe they just liked mid-sized actors. I don't know.

Jacen's canonically full grown at 6 feet tall. So, yeah, he's got a few inches on both Finn and Poe.


	37. The World Didn't Stand Still

3/22/2

There wasn't a great disturbance in the Force.

Jacen feels like there should have been. His world. His entire, literal world is… Well, doing exactly what it's always been doing. He just knows about it now.

Still… It feels… shattering, or like it should be shattering, or…

He glares at the pad of calculations he's packing up as they're getting moving.

* * *

Finn's in research mode. He's actually really good at it, which is part of why Chewie likes having him around. He can find deals no one else can see, because he's better at getting deep into the data. Right now, he's looking for any mention of Lirium with coordinates.

Jacen't never really thought of Finn like that. Most of how he deals with him on Lirium is that Finn's the guy who teaches basic hand to hand combat, some baton work, and keep them on track when he's around and Rose isn't in charge. Quiet, steady back up for Rose or Rey. He tells good stories, is fun to hang out with, is the kind of Dad most of the kids wished they had, and gets on really well with Poe.

But when they'd been talking, he'd mentioned working hard, studying, officer material, and right now, on the job, Jacen's really _seeing_ it for the first time. The adults talk about working on things, and learning, and studying and whatnot, and he knows they _think_ about it, but… Besides when Rey works with him, this is the first time he's actually seen one _do_ anything that looks like learning-type work, and the idea that they aren't all shitting about having to keep doing this stuff is somewhat novel. (And somewhat off-putting, apparently this _working_ thing _never_ ends.)

And it's also a distraction. Home isn't going where it should. Jacen rolls his eyes at that. Home is going exactly where it should. If the Force is real, if it matters, then Lirium is doing what it needs to do.

Home isn't going where they'd like it to go, that's the actual truth of that statement.

Yes, he's done the math right, or right enough, but the more points they can add, the better the image of what's going on they can get. So, studying. Research.

Chewie's in the cockpit, finishing up a conversation with Threepio. He's got Rebellion and Resistance databases in his head, and right now he's transferring any data he's got on Lirium, too.

When he wraps that, Jacen says, "When we get home, we're going to talk, right? Figure out where we're going next?"

Chewie nods.

"Can I be part of that conversation?"

That brings Chewie up short.

Jacen waits, patiently, because he knows that if he pesters and makes a list of why he'd be good for that conversation, he'll look more like a child, and less like someone who belongs at the table.

Finally, Chewie shakes his head.

"Chewie…"

 _Look, kid, it's not personal to you. This is… gonna be tense. To the extent this is our family attempting to make a decision together… We've never done that. Finn's had_ one _conversation with Ben. I've had_ none. _Just being in the same room with him is tricky._ _And now we're going to try and hash things out and come to some sort of agreement. Together?_

"Last night… You said…"

 _I know Han and I fucked that kid over. I know Luke did worse. He still killed my…_ Chewie pauses, which Jacen finds interesting, because usually, when people do that, it's because they're looking for the right word, or discarding ones that say too much, or trying to get the right spin on the issue. But the word Chewie's thinking means nothing to him, it's… feelings mostly. He's got an okay idea of what he thinks those feeling should be, but he knows that he's, at best, looking at an out of focus, black and white picture of a full color 3D holo. He knows that Chewie also understands that word means nothing to him, so he just continues with, _Han, in front of my face. Got it?_

Jacen nods. "Got it."

Chewie looks thoughtful. _Whatever_ _Ben comes up with, Finn's gonna want something different. That's just… How it's going to work. I'm probably going to want something different, too. Just… Because. But I'm a grown up, or, at least enough of one to admit that I know Ben can actually talk and plan a good deal. The fucking Order would have imploded by now if he couldn't. And I'm just being a contrary old cuss, because that's who I am. So, if the rest of the crew likes_ _Ben's plan, I don't need Finn thinking you swayed 'em. He's already going to be wondering that about Ben, and I don't need the extra complication of adding you to the mix._

Jacen nods at that, too. _That's_ a good point. "Okay."

* * *

Rey's with the kids when her comm buzzes. She's expecting Ellie Kinear, because at some point the two of them, and likely Kylo, possibly Jon, probably Mirina, are going to talk about this… wedding… thing.

So, she's not expecting Chewie on the other line.

She's expecting _We're heading back, and once we get here, we're gonna need to talk_ even less.

 _Bring Ben._

That's got her fear response starting to spike. She can think of exactly _nothing_ good, that they're going to want to talk to Kylo about.

"Why?"

The next bit is quiet, for Chewie, but it's loud enough most of the kids around her get it. _Working on training Jacen up. Had him plot the orbit of Lirium._

She takes a deep, calming breath. Both her fear response and Critt's just spiked _hard._ She seeks out Jacen, and feels him, flashes Critt a quick, _he's okay,_ thumbs up. Whatever happened as he was working, he's alive. "How bad?"

 _Best we can tell, spring's gonna be in ninety-three years._

There's a moment of no response, because she was expecting, _something bad happened to Jacen while he was working on coordinates._ Not, the coordinates are bad. But once she switches gears, "Nrghs!" or a sound very similar to that comes out of Rey. She swallows, and sees the kids all staring at her. "Okay. How far out are you?"

 _Eight hours._

"We'll be ready."

When Chewie comms off, twenty-three sets of eyes are all staring at her. She raises her hands. "I don't know. You all know exactly as much as I do about it. We'll talk—"

"We'll, all of us, or we'll, the grown ups?" Critt asks.

"We'll, the grown-ups, talk. Then we'll talk with you."

"We're going to have to leave, aren't we?" Savarah asks.

Cassie's got her eyes closed and is feeling the weather. "Not right this second." But knowing that things are going to get bad, she's feeling deeper than she usually does, and Rey catches that, along with the worry it brings.

"Nothing's going to happen right this second," Rey says.

"Are we going to get any say in what happens next?" Marrok asks. Rey can feel how nervous he is. He's the reason all of his friends are here, and so far, it's been pretty good, better than Canto was, but if it's about to go wrong, it's on him for saying yes to Poe.

"I honestly don't know," Rey replies. "If you guys want to stay, and it's going to get too cold, then no, you're not going to get a say. If you've got ideas of where next might be, we'll listen. But… I don't know what comes next."

Her voice is shaking. That gets the attention of the kids. "Rey," Xanth's next to her, holding her hand. "It's going to be okay."

She nods. "I know that." She blinks a little. "I… uh… don't get up and move easy. Tend to settle in deep and well, and… This…" She breathes in and out. "This is my first home, and… I don't want to leave." She didn't want to leave when she was in the wrong place for the wrong reasons. Pulling out of here, the right place, for the right reasons, her whole body and mind is recoiling at the idea.

"Then we stay!" Rugh's very certain about that. If something's making Rey sad, then obviously, they shouldn't do it. And, in Rugh's world, that's that.

Rey offers up a sad smile. "Maybe we will. But maybe this isn't a good place for people to stay." Because, recoiling or not… If spring's that far off, it means that this is just the beginning of winter, and… Like the Kennas said all those months ago, when they noticed that there were no above ground animals native to this planet, no trees either, it's going to get _cold._

* * *

Kylo checks his chrono. And his schedule. He's got a half hour free, which he should probably use to hack through another file or two on his data pad. (C8's 'just send the bloody reports on the internal messaging system' went out, and he no longer has his full body weight, times two, on his desk in datapads. He does have an inbox with a number so large he thinks it's an astronomical designation next to his 'unread messages' tab. The one thing that bringing pads in person did was cut down on the number of messages. People who didn't feel like schlepping a pad to him often just let things sit. Now they send them electronically, and they send _everything._ ) He glares at the pad and gets up.

He's got time to get the blade for Jacen and run it home. He's not sure why he didn't just yank it out of his wardrobe and take it home yesterday, but… He didn't.

And right now, the in-box is a sarlac pit of unending details, and a mono-molecular blade and training Jacen sounds a _lot_ more fun.

As he thinks about what he's trying to teach Jacen, it's occurring to him, that if he's working with Jacen to improve his empathy, maybe he'll be able to figure out how to get a better control on his own. He likely wouldn't mind being able to just _know_ what people are feeling, instead of having to steep in it whenever he's too close to them.

He opens his wardrobe, and reaches for the bundle in the back. He wrapped the blade in one of his pillowcases when he took it from Hux. He did clean the blood off of it before he hid it away. That's a very clear memory, though most of the rest of that day is getting hazy. He was sitting there, in his conference room, before he called for janitorial to take care of the mess, the hem of his shirt untucked, one of the few bits with no gore on it, carefully wiping blood off the sheath. That seemed important at the time. He had to get it _clean._ He couldn't take it if it wasn't _clean._ He didn't know why he took it, let alone why it needed to be clean when he was covered in gore. Just that that, too, seemed very important at the time.

He'd sat there, in his conference room, almost two years ago now… more than? He's not entirely sure. Changing the dates over makes it more difficult to track time, but right now he thinks that might be a good thing. He does know he was listening to his commanders blather on and on, knowing which ones were intending to kill him, and who they were working for and with. They weren't nervous, not until he told the six of them to stay, and then instructed one of the others to fetch Hux for a "Succession planning meeting."

None of them knew, what, exactly to do as they waited for Hux to get there. They knew, given who was there, what he had to have figured out. But… run, fight, try to talk their way out, play innocent? They didn't _know._ One… he doesn't remember her name, tried to get out. Made an excuse about how she was due for… Something. She didn't get to finish that sentence. He froze her voice and pushed her back into her seat.

As he did that, General RX-4868 started reaching for his blaster. Kylo froze him in place, too. "We are not all yet assembled. It would be rude to start before General Hux gets here."

The door opened and Hux entered. And he knew. Probably before he opened the door, certainly after when he saw who was in the room with Kylo.

Kylo froze him dead, looked Hux in the eyes, and said, "General, good of you to join us. I understand you have plans for the succession of the leadership of the First Order." Then he shut the door, locked it, released RX-4868, lit his saber, and the fight was on.

He kept Hux immobilized, made him watch from the doorway. The other officers in the room were fighters. Killers, too, but mostly fighters. But Hux…

Hux knew himself, his strengths, and weaknesses, and he knew he'd never be a fighter, so he didn't even try. After all, why bother with brute force when you could design weapons that could destroy entire systems?

And when the fight was done, Kylo stood amid more body parts than he, or anyone else wanted to count, and he pulled Hux to him, wrapped his hand around his throat, stared him in the eye, felt Hux's hate and rage and pain. No fear. Just blue-green-grey eyes so mad they'd come back round the other side to sane again, and a mind screaming at the galaxy that _this_ wasn't how it was supposed to end, and what a fucking waste it all was. Before his vision slipped to black, Kylo ran him through with his saber. He hadn't withdrawn the blade when he dropped Hux, and it cut through most of his torso as he fell.

He landed in a pool of blood. Kylo doesn't remember who's it was. Not Hux's. His blade doesn't leave the kind of wound that bleeds, and he's the only one who hit Hux. Some of it may have been his own. He knows he left that fight bleeding, with a few broken bones. And, in close combat, some of his commanders hit not just him, but each other as well.

Then he knelt at the corpse's side, yanked off his coat, and took the blade off of his right wrist. And spent the next hour, probably, very carefully cleaning it with the hem of his shirt.

And now, it's here, in the back of Kylo's wardrobe, still wrapped in the black pillowcase Kylo had tucked it into.

He unwraps it, and flicks it open.

Like the dark lightsaber, he can only see the hilt. But the blade is there, he can feel it. Mono-molecular blade, the sharpest edge in the galaxy. Sharper than his lightsaber. The blade you can't defend against. No armor, no shield, no other weapon can deflect it. It cuts… anything.

Hux was the only person he'd ever known to choose to keep something this dangerous on his person. He holds it up, in front of him, by the wrist sheath. Breathe wrong, let your focus waver for a moment, and it'll cut you to the bone and clear on through. Your limb would be off before you even knew you'd been hit.

He looks at it in his hand, before hitting the button that pulls the blade back into its wrist sheath. A tiny 'snick' sound is the only way to tell that it's retracted. It's designed to be triggered from outside of the sheath, or inside.

All Jacen will have to do is pull his hand up, give his forearm a little squeeze with his other hand, or Force, or make a fist hard enough to cause the muscle in his forearm to bunch up, and the blade will trigger. Squeeze again, and it settles back into its sheath with a tiny snick.

This is the only blade Kylo ever feared. He saw it in action, once. Hux was in a snit, and… He didn't see the hit. It almost looked like Hux had slapped the man on the back. But he didn't, and the man was on the ground, bleeding out, heart sliced half, paralyzed from the lungs down, before he even knew he'd been hit. He literally never knew what hit him, and died before he could figure it out.

There is a reason, beyond their eternal jockeying for status, that Kylo _never_ let Hux walk behind him, unless he was focusing, intensely, on what Hux was doing. There was nothing in his arsenal that could stop that blade, but he could stop _Hux._

He'd knelt there, next to what was left of Hux, no longer the pretty boy of the First Order, not after Kylo finished with him, and took the blade.

He didn't know why, not really. There was… maybe a shape of a hint that there would be a time he'd want it, but… Mostly he was high on the endorphins, crashing fast, not sure of anything, cold in the knowledge that he'd just killed a quarter of his high command, probably three fourths of the competent ones, and manically laughing, probably sobbing, too, amid the corpses and pieces of corpses, at doing more damage to the First Order than his mother had ever dreamed of. While he very carefully, with a minute attention to detail, cleaned that blade.

It wasn't a good day.

He looks at the blade.

He sees Hux… before. Before he ended him. Sees… a million meetings, and walking through the decks with him. He sees Snoke petting him, but only to rub his triumphs in Kylo's face. He sees Phasma behind him, feels her loyalty to _him._ He sees crowds of soldiers, adoring _Hux_ , cheering _him._

Hux was the face of the First Order. He was what Snoke couldn't be and Kylo wasn't: presentable, attractive, desirable. A good face and a good voice, and the ability to rally people together and make them feel like they were on a holy mission to cleanse the universe of filth.

If he'd been even a centimeter closer to…

"Oh, stop it," Hux says, appearing behind him, casual disdain on his face. "For all your power and mind reading, you never saw anything other than your own image of me."

Kylo startles slightly and almost drops the blade. "You're back."

Hux steps over and looks at the blade in Kylo's hand. "And you kept a memento of me. I'm touched."

"It felt right."

"That's disturbing."

"Everything about us was always disturbing."

Hux half inclines his head in agreement. He looks at his blade. "I built that. Designed it from the hilt up. Built the condenser to create the blade. You can't forge a mono-molecular blade. They're crystals, not metals. You have to grow them."

"I didn't know that."

"Of course not." His face is warm as he looks at the weapon. "It was before you joined us. Technically, before I joined us. Father was…" he's debating his words, picking carefully, "stepping beyond the acceptable bounds of normal familial cruelty. When he got out of surgery with two artificial kidneys, he decided I was old enough to leave his company."

"Why didn't you kill him?"

Hux looks genuinely surprised by that. "I did… or at least Phasma did on my orders, don't you remember?"

Kylo shrugs. He did know that. "Why didn't you kill him _then_?"

Hux half smiles, half winces. "He was still useful."

"To you, or Snoke?"

Hux's expression is mild, bored almost. "Was there a difference?"

Kylo smirks a little at that. "Loyal servant of the First Order."

"About as much of a servant as the child you intend to give this to."

Kylo acknowledges that. Hux was only a servant in as much as he was planning to take over one day. "I'd say he's as much a child as you were the first time you used this."

"Likely true." Ghostly fingers hover over the wrist sheath. "It's the blade of a man who knows brute force will never be his ally, of a 'mere slip of a boy who'd never amount to anything.'"

Even dead, even long past the hands of Brendol Hux, Kylo can feel the rage, hate, pain, and, unlike when he snuffed Hux's light clean out of him, _fear_ in those words. "You should have killed him a lot sooner than you did."

"Yes." He glances to the stars burning outside Kylo's viewport. "There are a lot of people I should have killed that I never got around to."

"Cyanide tubes throughout the air processing?"

Hux's smile is sharp, and a little surprised to see Kylo knows about that, now. "Well, it's not like I was ever going to get the chance to cut him in half with a lightsaber, now was I? And it's not like _he_ ever checked any of my plans. Finest weapons engineer in the galaxy and he acted like I was a tinker with a few beat up tools and no vision. A few orders, and my people would have been out, I could trigger them remotely, and then space and refil the atmo. A coup in a few simple moves with the _Supremacy_ still intact and ready for me to take over."

Kylo's eyes narrow. He thought that was part of the _new,_ post-Raddus attack, air processing system.

Hux rolls his eyes and sits next to him on the bed. "The first time."

Kylo holds up the blade. "Not planning on putting this in my back?"

Hux barks a short laugh. "What could have possibly given you the idea that I was stupid? I've have gassed you. Even you, with all your magic, have to breathe." Hux looks genuinely amused by that. "If you hadn't done it for me, I'd have gotten all of your little Forcelings. Wipe you wizards and your sorcery clean from the First Order. Consolidate power. Destroy those who are defiant. Any planet, any system... A hundred million billion trillion others." He snaps his fingers. "Gone in a heartbeat. No fear, no pain, one second existence, the next, nothing. Mine the atoms, and build more."

"Why? What would you have left to defend?"

Hux laughs, this one long, cold, and genuine. He's _amused_ at Kylo's question. "Never, ever saw me." He shakes his head, and gently, as if explaining to a child, "You don't build a weapon like Starkiller because you want to _defend_ something. I would have built thousands of them and burned the whole fucking galaxy to the ash."

"Even Phasma?"

Hux's eyes go soft. "I would have danced through the embers with her and run us both through with that blade."

Kylo swallows, hard, feeling those words, and the perverse content ripples of dark Hux's shade leaves in his wake.

He looks at the blade in his hand, and feels a long, cold pull to space it. The sense that… anything touched by Hux is… corrupt and tainted.

He glances up at himself in the mirror, and remembers… Not training fights. They didn't fight. Never, not even that last time. Hux was a killer, too dangerous to even try to fight, so he killed him. But they never fought.

But… They did touch. 'Careful, Ren,' and a hand on his wrist. 'Watch yourself, Ren,' that hand grown tight, angry. He didn't generally say anything when he smacked Hux around. No warning, no threat, just brute force and ringing ears.

He looks at the blade, built by Hux. And at himself. Shaped by Hux. By Hux and Snoke, and Luke, and his parents, and…

Hux is dead. The past is dead. Maybe not gone, but it's dead.

Just like Hux.

And shaped he is, and shaped this blade is, but neither of them are… stained, corrupted… ruined by it. He's getting a better sense for why it mattered so much that this blade was clean. And, looking at it now, it is clean. He did a good job of it.

He re-wraps it. It's a tool. A very good tool. Made by a man who was very, very good at making extremely dangerous tools. Made for a man who will never be the master of brute force. For a man who has to survive by his mind and his tongue.

He knows the scars on Jacen's back. Though they haven't talked about them. Maybe one day they will. Maybe they'll talk about his scars, and how he got them, how they shaped him, and Jacen's scars, and the fact that, at least once, he couldn't talk his way out of trouble.

This is the weapon that makes sure he never gets another one.

His comm chirps at him. Rey's voice, and he listens, nods, listens more, and says, "I'll make sure we've got supper for… seven?"

Rey replies, "Sounds right."

Kylo places the knife on top of his table. Apparently, it'll be in Jacen's hands a lot sooner than he'd anticipated.

* * *

Rose flops onto her bed, limp and frustrated.

It's _normal._ Sometime around a year old, babies go from two shorter naps, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, to one longer afternoon one.

And at a week shy of eleven months Paige is 'somewhere around a year old.'

Great.

 _Normal._

Of course, like all the rest of the _normal_ stuff, like teething, like moving onto solid food, this appears to involve a lot of crying, massive tantrums, a baby in a tearing bad mood, and Rose counting the minutes until Finn gets home so she can drop this child on him and vanish in the _Falcon_ for as much of a full day as she can.

She loves her daughter. She loves her husband. But some days she wants to get the fuck away from everyone else and have some time on her own. Granted, Chewie's piloting, but he's pretty good about dropping her off at one of a handful of her pre-married days hangouts, and letting her have a few hours where she can just have a decent meal, a good conversation with people who don't know Finn or Rey or the rest of her life, on her own, without having to deal with anyone else's needs.

She closes her eyes and sighs, making herself calm down. As of this point, she has put a _very_ tired little girl down three times, and each time said little girl _does not want to go down, at all_ and there has been _much fussing_ as a result.

With any luck, this time Paige is really down, and she'll have a full hour to get a nap of her own, and then, hopefully in a better mood herself, they can go to the kitchen, have some lunch (she 'supervises' the kids as they make lunch/eat, and they generally do a good job of entertaining Pagie, who _really_ likes crawling around after the bigger kids), do some work in the farm, and then, please, hopefully, afternoon nap and another two hours of on her own time.

Hopefully.

Five minutes pass without a peep. She's down.

Rose sighs with relief, and lets herself rest.

Her eyes are getting heavy, muscles loosening, breath slowing, and then her comm chirps.

She's going to _kill_ Poe.

"What!" bites out.

"Bad time?" Finn's voice, and now she's awake and confused. He knows it's nap time, and if he's calling now, it's a _big deal._

"Not great," she says. "What's going on."

"More not great," he says. "I'd have called later but…"

She can tell by his voice he's rattled. Rattled enough to call now. "What, love?"

"Uh… So… You remember how when we were living with Chewie he had both of us plot a planet course and figure out the orbit, and how to get there?"

She's nodding, not understanding what _that_ has to do with anything, let alone why he'd be calling her at nap time to talk about it, but, she can feel how off he is, just by his voice, so… "Yeah, Finn, I remember."

"He had Jacen do it for Lirium." She knows the expression that goes with the long half sigh, half growl that comes next. "The orbit's a fucking oval. And not the two degrees off a circle oval that most habitable for human planets have, this thing's as long as my arm, and just as wide, too."

Rose winces. "Fuck!" she mutters it. "How bad?"

"We've got, maybe, if we're lucky, two more years before we've got to get out."

"Fuck!" This time it's louder. She sits up, looking around their bedroom, and the home they've been setting up for the last year and change. They've been tinkering with it, bringing in new furniture and art and adjusting things and… Okay, this… probably isn't their forever home, but it's a good place to rest and get things into motion to be able to get that forever home, and… "FUCK!"

"Yeah. It's not…" he laughs, but it's a bitter sound, "I almost said, the end of the world, but, really, it's the end of our time on this world. We can't stay."

"How long is winter?"

"A hundred and ninety more years, give or take some. It's just… I mean… I guess underground, like the fucking turtles, is an option, but…"

"I'll look into it, but…"

They don't have to say it. It might be an option, but neither of them like it.

"What next?" Rose says.

"Uh… I think we're getting together, tonight, at Rey's to… talk."

"Talk?" Rose asks.

"Yeah. I mean. I'm not saying we're going along with what the rest of them say. We can bug out with Chewie and go wherever, but… I guess we're going to see if we can sort of keep something like this going, for the kids if nothing else."

Rose and Finn really hadn't intended to half adopt two dozen kids when they decided to move here, but somehow they did, and… while the option to leave is on the table, the inclination, especially if the kiddos aren't properly settled, not so much.

But, if it's leave the kids or freeze to death… Actually, she knows that's not how it's going to go. If it's leave the kids or live on the _Supremacy,_ because if they're talking with _Rey…_ no _at Rey's_ that means this is bad enough Finn's aware that might be the answer, even if he doesn't want to say it out loud. "I wouldn't mind being on the _Falcon_ again," Rose says.

"Yeah," he sounds resigned. They've talked this through and through. "I know." They don't get in fire fights as often as they used to, but just the idea of Rose in a firefight ties Finn's guts up, and putting Paige into one is the sort of thing that wakes him up from a dead sleep into a heart-pounding nightmare. He'd rather go one on one, unarmed, against Kylo than experience the idea of Paige in the _Falcon_ while they're dog fighting their way into or out of something.

"We could go legit, and…" Rose starts. They've had this conversation before, too.

"Starve." They've been tucking away as much as they can of what they make from Finn's runs, and have a fairly decent nest egg right now, but that egg's not going to be getting much bigger if they go legit.

"That's not true."

"Might as well be. Especially if Jacen's actually signing on. Splitting a legit commission two ways hurts, three'll mean we really are at the edge."

"Is he?"

"I… don't know. He looks like a fish just dropped in a pool he's so happy here. Flexing away, and swimming with the current, and… If Chewie offered, he'd take it in less than a heartbeat." He's quiet, and she can sense him looking around, checking to see who's nearby. "If he's serious, I'm going to push him toward Poe. He's… shit, probably a better pilot than I am already, and… He'll be useful for getting and keeping jobs once he knows the ins and out, but… our bottom line… We really can't take a third partner, not if we're going to pay him, and certainly not if we're going to do legit work. We just… The credits don't spread that far."

She wishes she could hold him right now. "Especially, if we have to go somewhere we pay rent… And not if we're saving up for a ship of our own." Legit work, if they have a ship of their own, one that isn't as fast, but is better on fuel and maintenance, and aren't splitting the cut with Chewie… That's the plan. The forever home. They save up, get a ship of their own, do safer, less lucrative work, and stay together. Lirium would be the home base. The place they'd go back to to regroup, do fix-it work, spend some time on the ground, but home, that'd be the ship. Like Poe and Chewie. That's the _plan._ That's the promise that makes being stuck here, on her own, with Paige, waiting for Finn to get back, bareable.

And the idea that it's about to go sideways makes both of them very nervous.

* * *

Critt knows that Jacen can do it. And Rey. Kylo drops words into his mind sometimes when they're training. Savarah does it sometimes, too. They'll be joking around or something, and she'll glance at him, and add a comment in his head, and he'll bust up, and everyone will _look_ and the only really good part about it is, unlike when some sort of weird Force thing would happen back home, everyone here more or less knows what happens, so Rey just says, "Savarah, comments are for later," and then back to the lesson they go.

But Critt can't do it. Not… as of yet. He's a shit empath, worse as a telepath, and sometimes the others joke about that, about how even _Magiit,_ who's got no Force at all, has an easier time picking up on other people's thoughts and feelings than he does, but…

But Rey got that call.

And everyone is tense.

And… And he _hates_ this. Moving. Not so much. New place, new experiences, new… everything. Okay, bring that on.

Except… they can't find him if they leave. He hates that that matters to him, but… If they go, his parents can't find him. (He mentally rolls his eyes. They could. It's not exactly like Kylo Ren is hard to locate, and they know that he knows where he is, but… They'd rather he was gone than deal with Kylo. He knows that.)

So, as they move onto the next lesson, and for Critt that's an hour in the farm, weeding, which means he's up to his ears in quiet time where he can, should he so desire, focus and think, and, maybe, if he's lucky, master, or at least not fail too horribly, at a new skill.

Standing between the omelt and lettuce troughs, plucking the tiny sprouts of fralla grains (being digested by Faviers seems to have _no effect_ whatsoever on their ability to sprout) he mentally quiets himself, lets the world around him slip into the background, and focuses on finding Jacen.

He's out there, heading here, getting closer. His light getting brighter, steady… _JACEN._

He's not sure if it worked. For everyone else who can do this, it seems so easy, but…

 _You're screaming in my head, Critt. Just think normally._

 _Aren't you too far away for that?_

 _Apparently, not. I'm thinking of you, you're thinking at me, it's working._

 _So, what's the deal?_

 _I plotted the orbit of Lirium. It's very much not a circle, and if we stick around we're going to freeze, and then the blizzards are going to snow blast the skin off our bones, and the scour the bones to dust._

Critt lets out a long, loud breath of pain. _That's a fucking lovely image._

 _Isn't it? Why there's no above ground animals is suddenly making a hell of a lot more sense._

 _Fuck!_ His parents had been worried about that. He remembers that. The lack of trees made them _nervous_ , and apparently those nerves were warranted.

 _Yeah._

 _So…_ Critt leads.

 _Don't know, yet. Chewie and Finn are collecting data points, getting a better idea of how bad the orbit is. Chewie's muttering a lot about how the Rebellion never did the bloody homework properly. Threepio got all upset about that and shot back with none of these hideouts were supposed to be used more than three or four times over the course of one decade, and Lirium was just fine for that, and…_

 _Fussing?_ Critt thinks.

 _Lots of fussing,_ Jacen replies.

 _We going to Kylo?_

 _I don't know. That's the thing Chewie and Finn are trying not to think too much about. They aren't. I can feel that. But they're not set to take us, and they know he is. That seems to annoy the shit out of Finn. There's a_ lot _of stuff going on with him right now. They are planning on having the 'adults' sit down and chat about what comes next, so…_

 _Not us. They just going to make all the decisions for us?_

 _They're going to talk. We, me especially, are not invited to this conversation. Chewie doesn't want Finn thinking the Maji ganged up on him and swayed opinions. That said, if we don't like the decisions… Well, wouldn't be the first time I got people I cared about out of a bad place._

Critt thinks about that for a moment and decides that's not a terrible plan. Especially if Kylo's going to be at this thing. _Okay. We're listening in, right?_

 _Of fucking course we are! Holy Force, why wouldn't we? If we're really lucky, they'll bring Paige along for the conversation and I can just ride along in her head. If not, Rose is usually pretty good to listen through._

Critt nods at that. He knows that the more telepathic Maji will occasionally, when feeling curious, hitch a ride in a non-Force sensitive head. (In the beginning they'd try with Rey, and found out, fast, that not only was the snooping unwelcome, but that other Force sensitives find it really easy to tell when someone is paying too much attention to what they're paying attention to. So, as much as the Maji have 'rules,' it's against them, but absolutely no one is going to say a peep about Jacen spying on this conversation.) And Rose, who has really good focus on whatever it is she's focusing on, and doesn't appear to get the 'shivery' someone-stepped-on-my-shadow feeling when there's an extra mind using her as a ride, is their favorite one to peek into.

 _Good._ Critt thinks. _Home soon?_

 _Six-seven hours._ He feels Jacen grin. _Oh, and when this dies down, I've got some_ hot _gossip for you._

 _Really?_ Critt is beyond intrigued. He likes good gossip, and out here on the edge of nowhere, it's hard to get.

 _Really. Kylo ever tell you why he's not Ben Solo anymore?_ Jacen knows that he hasn't. Critt would have told them, but it's a good way to start the conversation.

 _We get near it sometimes. He talks about how he wasn't ever, not really, Ben. Haven't gotten the full story, though._

 _Yeah, well, I don't, either, but I've got another chunk of it, and it's a doozy._

Critts eyes gleam with pleasure. _Oh boy!_

 _Yeah! Shit, gotta go do more math. Chewie wants me adding the extra points into the calculations, gotta go._

 _See you soon._

 _Yeah._

* * *

"You on Lirium?" Finn asks over Poe's comm.

Poe glances at Jon across the table they're sharing lunch at on the F-deck; they've got about another twenty minutes before he's got yet another meeting. Apparently, physical plant is already behind on the construction of the new diplomatic floors, and they're only two weeks into the job. Jon's getting ready to, as he put it, 'Go First Order' on them.

(Poe's enjoying the idea of that, and wishes he could watch it happen.)

"Not now, but I could be in like three hours, why? Aren't you supposed to be lightyears away?"

"Yeah, supposed to." They can both hear the frustration in Finn's voice.

"What's wrong?"

"Chewie got Jacen doing some math," Poe doesn't miss the way Jon's eyes widen just a hair at the mention of Jacen, "and the kid just plotted Lirium's course. Best we can tell, with the coordinates we've got right now… You wanna guess when spring's coming?"

Poe's got a cold feeling in the base of his guts. "Not soon."

"Ninety-three years."

Poe stops moving, his drink halfway to his mouth. "Fuck." Jon reaches over and lays his hand on Poe's, and Poe swallows and then nods at him.

"Yeah, and I don't mean sunshine, warm temperatures, and flowers in ninety-three years. I mean astronomic spring."

Jon doesn't know what that means, so Poe says, "When the planet gets to the furthest reach of it's orbit and starts to come back."

"You're not alone?" Finn sounds sorry.

"Got a lunch date."

"Hi," Jon adds.

"Shit, you're having fun. Look, we're not going to be back for another six hours, but… If you can get back, we're going to need to talk, soon."

"Yeah. No problems. Dinner at your place?"

Poe can imagine the look that goes with the next words. "Ren's got it. Rose didn't have dinner for all of us ready to go, and apparently he just waves a magic wand or something, and food appears from the ethers, so… his place."

Poe covers his comm. "Lots of backstory there. One day, we'll get into it."

While he's saying that to Jon, Finn's saying, "And… I mean… Sooner or later, we're going to have to bug out, so…"

That gets Poe's attention back on Finn. "Don't worry, I'll get my charts. Just like Chewie, I've got hide-outs scattered through the galaxy. I'll see what, if anything, we can use."

"Thanks, Poe. Sorry to interrupt your date."

"No problem," Jon adds.

Finn doesn't seem to know what to do with that, so he comms off.

"So, that's the infamous Finn?" Jon asks.

"That's the infamous Finn. He's… uh… normally not that rattled meeting new people."

"Because he's generally not meeting new people within hours of learning that he's going to have to abandon his home?"

"Yeah."

Jon tilts his head a bit, and then looks around the F-Deck. "Not like we're low on space here."

Poe's nodding, and also looking around. "And I'm certain Ren'll mention that when we get talking. And Finn will reply with something along the lines of over his dead body. And Chewie'll point out that the Ticos can go with him in the _Falcon,_ but there isn't room for all twenty-four kids, and… It'll be a mess." Then he grins at Jon. "Wanna come along, and join the conversation?"

"You'd bring a _friend_ to this sort of thing?" Jon asks with a spark in his eye. Poe knows what he's doing. Every time they get together this is part of the dance. Jon pushes closer to romance. Poe pulls back, reminds him he's looking for more than sex.

Poe looks him up and down, notices that Jon's hand is still on his, and flips his hand, so his fingers are against Jon's wrist, stroking lightly. "I'd bring someone I trusted to offer good advice, especially on decisions that might impact his future, too."

Jon takes a sip of his drink, licks his lips, well-reminded of Poe's longer-term goals, and then says, "Uh… Let's see, long, emotionally tense conversation with people who don't much like each other and aren't used to working together for a high-stakes outcome. Oh, and one of them is my boss. While meeting your best friend for the first time, who's already got a few things against me to start with. Hmmm… NO!"

Poe smiles at that. "Good choice." He tilts his head a bit. "Kylo's your boss?" It's clear that Poe's thinking that if he were to ask Kylo what he is to Jon, Boss would not appear on the list anytime soon.

"And friend, and… But, among other things he's my boss, too, so say your Finn pops up with a really good idea, if Kylo doesn't like it, unless Kylo's idea is monumentally stupid, I'm going to back him, you know? Order solidarity or something. I'm not… in a position to go into things like this neutral. Plus, meeting Finn's going to be stressful enough without doing it now."

Poe thinks about that. "Uh… Okay."

"That's not how'd you'd play it?"

He shrugs. "Two parts. Kylo first. In my experience, which isn't vast, and involves a mutiny, so… But, it does involve Organa wrangling, so… It's hard to find people who will stand up to you when you get to his level, and generally, having them around is valuable."

Jon inclines his head. "He's said some things like that to me, too. And eventually I'll get comfortable with it. But, for right now, unless he's coming up with something that'll bite him in the ass so hard it'll take his leg off at the hip, I'll probably go along with his plans, especially for something like this."

"Fair enough." Poe sighs. "Secondly, Finn. I mean… He can at least sit down and have a functional conversation with Kylo, who cut him in half once, so, assuming you're not in uniform, it should go… okay… enough." He hasn't exactly mentioned to Finn that he's pursuing this particular relationship, or where he thinks it might be going, or... anything about it, and Finn, having heard that Jon exists when they were talking about sex with the boys, has apparently decided to let it lie and wait for Poe to bring it up.

"Noted. Not today though."

"Okay." Poe's looking out at the crowd, starting to feel what's happening.

"Not looking forward to it?" Jon asks.

Poe shrugs. "I mean… For me, moving is just a matter of turning _Micah_ on. Same for Chewie. We're not bound to Lirium. But… It's Finn and Rose's first home. Their daughter was born there. It's Rey's first home, too." He shrugs at that. "First house at least. For a while there, she was living in a scavenged AT-AT."

Jon blinks. "How…"

"They were a bloody stupid design. Those legs were just begging to get knocked over. Someone knocked one over on Jakku, and of course, once you knock one over, they don't get back up again, so she turned the main compartments into a cabin."

Jon blinks at that, too. "That's…" He can't find the words for how he feels about that.

"Absolutely nothing in your understanding of how the universe works. Yeah. I'd rather not have to know that people live that way, too."

Jon nods. He's… sketchy, at best on Jakku. He read up a little after learning that's where Rey was from, but there really wasn't much about it, beyond the most basic levels. At one point it'd been a fairly functional planet, big war, lots of weapons, ended up a desert with most of the population dead. Far enough out to be difficult to get to, close enough to still be useful for off-the-books traders. The Empire popped up, and it became a place where people who wanted to skirt the Empire's trade laws would gather to buy, sell, and work out deals. Come the fall of the Empire, what was left of the Navy skedaddled out to there, and that was the location of the final battle of the Rebellion.

The Rebels won, but the battle was hot and hard enough that the whole planet ended up littered with refuse from the fight. And refuse bought scavengers, like Rey's parents.

And apparently scavengers live in and with whatever they can scrape together. Jon takes a gulp of his tea. "Makes me want to stick more recruiting stations all over the galaxy. Maybe I can't make local conditions any better, but I can try and make it easier to get away from them."

Poe nods at that, too. "Yeah. Which brings us to the kids. We don't exactly trumpet it, but… All but one of them are orphans. The one who isn't might as well be. His parents bugged out rather than deal with him not being a lightling. Anyway, all of our kids, they've had their entire lives uprooted at least twice. Once when they lost their original family, and then once when I grabbed 'em up and brought them to Lirium. I don't like the idea of uprooting them again."

Jon can understand that. He didn't exactly enjoy uprooting himself, either. "Should be a little easier this time, their people are going with them, and that makes moving easier."

"I really hope so."

Jon finishes his drink. "It's not my department, not really, but if you want, I can get a list of the planets under our control. Technically, we've got sixty-thousand of them in our territory, and more than a few thousand of them are out and out ours. At least some of them have to be able to support human life in some level of comfort."

Poe thinks about that. "I'd appreciate it. My guess is not landing in Order-controlled space will be important for this to work out, but it'll be good to have options."

"I'll send you some," Jon says, standing up.

"And you've got to go."

"A million and one meetings, and that's just this week."

Poe smiles up at Jon. "Then, I won't keep you from them."

Jon's fingers brush the back of Poe's hand. "I certainly wouldn't mind if you and yours crashed here while you're looking for somewhere new to go."

Poe smiles at him. "We'll see." He waits a few moments, and watches Jon walk off, great coat slightly swishing behind him as he cuts through the crowd on the F-Deck.

Out here, where everyone is an officer, and most of them are off duty, rank doesn't matter that much. But that doesn't mean that people don't notice Jon, don't straighten up a little when he passes, don't _watch._

Poe's watching, too. He likes watching. Then he rolls his eyes, swallows a long sip of his drink, and settles back to people watch and think.

He wouldn't mind landing here. Too much. Part of him lights up every time he sees Jon. Part of him knows that if he were to get his own access card to the F-Deck, and maybe C-D and E, he could… call himself a Morale Improvement Officer of the Maji or something, spread the good word, play enough cards to keep himself flush for the rest of his natural life, and have a very good time.

He rolls his eyes slightly, and sips his drink. He's already spinning 'the good word.' Irate people, annoyed at losing, ask him all the time how he's so good at this, and he taps his spiral, looks holier than everyone else, and says, 'When you're in balance, everything else falls into place.' And he'll grin, and then add, "Including the cards."

Sometimes people ask what he means by that, so he tells them. Sometimes they know that he's spinning pretty words. Either way, he wins enough to keep _Micah_ fueled up, and Lirium in nice bits and bobs, and the kids in occasional goodies, so… It's enough.

Except, apparently, the goody Lirium needs is a new orbit, so that's outside of anything he can possibly do.

He settles back into his seat. He really could live here. Easily. Kylo'd fix it for him. A permanent space for _Micah_ to dock. An apartment for him, though he's not sure if he'd use it if he had a permanent space for _Micah._

He's toured the currently under construction part of the ship that'll eventually be the diplomacy section. Getting a space for himself there wouldn't take more than a few words. Maybe they'd get around to that thing he's supposed to be doing for the Order. The thing Jon just mentioned, him going in and getting people out of places they don't want to be. They could get that set up, and… This… could be home.

Be easy enough to get the kids here, too. And… It might be better for them. More other kids around. More things for them to learn. Ren talks about making the _Supremacy_ a floating city, a real one, and real cities have kids in them, so…

Finn'd hate it. He wouldn't come here. And if he's not willing to come, Rose and Paige won't, either, not for more than a quick visit. And… He can't even begin to imagine Chewie setting foot on this ship. That's… Just not going to happen.

He sips his drink again, watching the line of people Jon vanished into. He'd see Jon more if he lived here. Their current once or twice a week might become once or twice a day. He doesn't know if that'd be good or not. Good because… because every time they get together he's just… more in love.

That's what this is. They are… getting to know each other… and he just… likes… what he's learning. He likes being with Jon, and being near him, and… And under that glove he knows that ring's just sitting there, glinting away.

Sometimes, when he's not paying attention, Jon'll rub his thumb against it. Poe watches people well enough to know that _most_ of the time it's unconscious. But _sometimes_ it's not. Sometimes, he's remembering Lane, or reminding himself of him, or… Sometimes he's sad. He doesn't like to let Poe see that. He'll say something, and Jon'll look away for a second, rub the ring, and then flash a bright smile at him, touch him, and change the subject.

Poe's pretty sure they aren't at the point where he can say, 'You know, you're allowed to be sad around me, right? It's okay. I'm not going to crumble under your sorrow.' He's not sure if he's at the point where he can admit that he sees it, yet. And he's not sure that if he said that to Jon, if Jon'd flash the pretty boy at him, and try to use his looks and sex appeal to shy away from it.

And he's not sure, that if they saw each other all the time, and he was constantly being blinded by the looks and the sex, if he could keep this up, where he doesn't just give into it. Right now, he can spend a few hours a week with Jon, and enjoy him, and keep learning him, and then go back to _Micah,_ and leave. And he can get his tool serviced, and go dancing, and blow off steam, and come back and be warm and charming and good to talk to and not get so wound up with sexual tension that he loses the ability to stick to the plan.

Granted, if he lived here, he'd still be able to leave. And if he popped over to Rey and Kylo's and reminded him about the whole, 'Hey, there was something I was supposed to be doing, too' bit, that he could likely spend a lot of time in little out of the way places, setting up recruiting stations and getting people out of places like Jakku.

After all, if he could recruit for the Resistance in places the Resistance wasn't supposed to be, he can likely figure out how to get Order cells running. All he needs it time, a good cantina, some decent cards, and an adequate expense account to cover the drinks, and he can get the good work started.

And then come back here, and charm his sweetie, hopefully have some good stories to tell, and see if that ring's come off, yet.

And see the kids, check in with them, see what they're up to. Give it another year or two, and Jacen'll likely be grown up enough to be useful for setting up cells, too. And maybe a good enough pilot to get people into and out of them, too… Be good to have skills like that…

This is… workable. They've just got to… sit down and talk it through.

He sips his drink again and then gets up. Might as well get home before the shindig's going to happen.


	38. The Family

3/22/2

When they land, Jacen makes a straight bee-line for Rey and Kylo's. He knocks, and Kylo opens the door. "Good, you're here."

Kylo's a bit surprised to see him. "Hello?"

"Look, I know Chewie's going to be here soon, and I'm not supposed to butt my nose into this, so—"

"Butt your nose into what? What happened?" Kylo's looking confused.

"Tonight. Big talk? Where we all go from here?"

Kylo relaxes a bit. "Oh, yeah. For a minute there, I was beginning to wonder if you'd done something with those transistors."

Jacen blinks. "Uh… No. I mean, I can tell you where they landed, but…"

Kylo waves it away. "Don't worry about it. Two million credits worth of goods is a big deal to Chewie and Finn, and a significantly smaller one to me."

Jacen looks surprised. He hadn't had any idea they were that valuable. "They just moved them. I know we didn't get that much for it."

Kylo's nodding. "Later. I've got something for you."

"Good, but…"

He's heading into his room. "But? You wanted to tell me…"

Jacen can see him rooting around in there. "Finn. He's not going to like anything you come up with."

Kylo comes out with a package wrapped in black cloth. "Amazingly enough, I had figured that out."

"Don't be a smartass, Kylo. If you've got something you want him to say 'yes' to, make sure it goes through Poe or Rey. He won't agree to living on the _Supremacy,_ but short of that, he'll at least listen to it if it doesn't come out of your mouth."

Kylo sighs. "Wonderful."

Jacen's eyes narrow a bit. He's _trying_ to be helpful here. "Look, planning. Making people do what you want them to. That's part of what you're working on, right?"

"Yeah."

"Well, you want to get into a fight with him, or you want to work this out?"

Kylo kind of wants the fight, if for no other reason than Finn appears to be wanting one, too. Rey and Poe won't like that, though. And if he gets into a fight with Finn, then that means he's in a fight with Rose, and… "Work it out."

"Good. Get his idea first, and if you hate it, have someone _else_ counter it. That's good advice."

Kylo nods. "Yeah, it is." _Not just for Finn. Any situation where people are prickly about me…_ His idea of who Rey is in the Order of the Maji continues to coalesce.

Jacen's nodding, and Kylo realizes he might have just as well said that out loud. "Can you project thoughts, well enough to—" Jacen starts.

"I'm fully telepathic with Rey, and not sure about Poe."

"Okay. If you need an assist with Poe, I might not be physically here, but I won't have to be." Then he looks at the black bundle Kylo's holding for him. "What's that?"

"A wrist knife. Your future last-ditch weapon. Mono-molecular blade. Like I said, this is _dangerous._ " He unwraps it.

"Is that a pillowcase?"

"Yes."

"You have black pillowcases?" Jacen's looking up at him in amazement. Though there is a black blanket on the bed in the room behind them, from what Jacen can see, the sheets are light green.

"Obviously." Kylo holds the sheath, and wiggles it a bit. "Focus." He points the side the blade comes out of toward Jacen and down. He doesn't have to say to Jacen to stay back, he knows. "Blade comes out there." He hits the button and they both hear the snick.

"I can't see anything."

"Exactly. The blade is one molecule thick. No one can see it. But that also means it's sharper than you can imagine. This is the blade you, me, anyone else, cannot defend against." Kylo shifts his hold on the pillow case, drawing it over where the blade should be, and they watch it flutter to the floor cut in two. "To stop this blade, you've got to stop the sheath." He gives it a little squeeze, and they hear the snick again. "This is something you're going to need to be _extremely_ careful with. No playing with it on your own. I'll get you something like it to train with, but—"

They hear knocking at the door, and Kylo doesn't even glance at it, he just flicks a hand and it opens.

Neither of them were expecting Chewie to bow his head and enter Kylo and Rey's home.

 _Jacen…_ Chewie's growl has a bit of an edge to it.

"Yeah, I know, I'm not invited to this thing. Kylo had something for me, okay?" He gestures to the blade, that Kylo's rewrapping for him.

Kylo's fairly impressed at how smoothly Jacen's not exactly lying, but misleading. He's not sure he could, even now, pull that off without a single tell or straight face.

Kylo nods at him. "I do training stuff with the kids, too." He hands the blade to Jacen. "No fucking with it until we're together, okay?" _Seriously, neither of us want to explain to Rey why you need new fingers, got it?_

Jacen grins at him, and Chewie nods. He doesn't exactly buy this, but he knows at least the surface level is true.

"Ta, Kylo." Jacen flips him a ironic, two-fingered salute, and is off.

For a long moment, he and Chewie just stand there, staring at each other.

Kylo's almost tempted to try some sort of small talk, but he knows he'll be useless at it. He's wishing that Rey or Poe would show up, but the Force, or universe, or something seems to think he and Chewie need to be in the same place at the same time, alone, so neither of them appears.

 _Kid likes you._

Kylo almost startles at the sound of Chewie's voice, but it's not an attack, accusation, howl of rage, so he nods. "I like him, too."

 _He thinks you're a good person under all that black._ Again, the voice is calm, and a bit wary.

Kylo doesn't have to glance down to see he's still in his command blacks. He does run his fingers through his hair and bite back his first response. The thing that seventeen-year-old Ben would have said to start a fight…The thing seventeen-year-old Ben would have _felt_ with that comment _._ _He thinks; you don't._ He shrugs a bit and lets himself actually _feel_ what Chewie's trying to communicate, not just go blasting off at him in a defensive rage. "Trying to be."

Chewie's eyes narrow. He too was expecting some sort of insulted, angry flare in response. _I know. You're doing good by Rey, too._

Kylo takes a long, slow, deep breath, feeling his eyes burn. He swallows, hard. "Thank you." It's easy to see how grateful he is to hear that from him.

Chewie growls at that.

Kylo looks shocked that _that's_ what is bugging Chewie right now.

Chewie waves that away and shakes his head. Kylo can feel the disappointment, aimed at… everyone and thing. Mostly at himself, and Han, and Leia, and Luke, that Kylo could get to years past thirty and be that grateful for that mild of a compliment. Hell, that's not even a compliment, not really, that's just acknowledging reality.

Chewie sits down, in the big, comfy chair, the only one that really fits him. _He was talking about you. Trying to… make Finn understand, I guess. Or me. I… let what happened with Luke slip. Didn't mean to, but the kid reads minds, and he was talking about you wanting to be a better mentor for him than Luke was to you._

Kylo sits at the kitchen table, back to the table, facing Chewie and nods, slowly. "You… know?"

Chewie growls, and Kylo feels forced back by the amount of anger aimed at Luke.

He blinks. "Oh… He… didn't give Rey the real story. Only told the truth after she had it from me. And… even then… I don't think it was dead on."

 _You woke up from a dead sleep with a lit saber glowing a few centimeters from your head while he had a heart to heart with his own dark. That's the story we got. You think he was going to try to lie to Leia and Han?_

For a moment, Kylo's literally dumbstruck at that. When he can speak he says, "I… didn't think he'd have told you that… told you anything."

 _What did you think happened?_

"He ran away. One day… I guessed Mom or Dad finally noticed that even I got back to calls in less than six months, and they investigated and found… nothing left."

 _He came after. There was still ash in hair and smoke in his clothing. He told us he almost attacked you, was getting ready to turn the saber off, but you woke up right before he turned aside. You blasted in into next week, and then killed the other students. Your mom went dead white. Your dad punched him so hard he knocked out three teeth, broke Luke's jaw, and his own fist, and then I grabbed him because he was reaching for his blaster, with his left hand, and he couldn't shoot for shit with his left hand, and we left._

"To go where?"

 _To Luke's. To find clues. See where you'd gone. Took us a while to track you down. Almost a year. Then Lando. He had the largest force at his command of anyone we knew, and… If we were going to make a strike on the First Order, it was going to take a lot of manpower._

"Did you… Think I'd been kidnapped or something?"

Chewie snorts, because it's clear Kylo's asking, 'Why go after me?' And, of course, to Chewie, the answer to that is so blindingly obvious, it's not even worth asking. _Or something. We learned more about Snoke as time went by. He was rising fast by then. The dark voice… That started to make sense. Luke… That began to make sense, too. He'd likely been playing all of you since before you were born… Then we got rumors of the Knights of Ren hunting down other Force sensitives… It all sort of crystallized, and… If we were going to get you back, we were going to need a_ lot _of men._

Kylo rolls his lips together, and blinks very slowly. "Oh. I… Lando said, 'No?"

 _He only had five million guys under his command, and no combat ready navy._

"Not enough."

 _Not enough._

They're both very quiet, and then Kylo says, "I…" he rubs his lips together, hard, and makes his voice work, because he can't just feel this at Chewie, he's got to say it. "When the cabin blew, a third of them were sure I'd murdered Luke for no good reason. Just woke up in the middle of the night and murdered him. Another third of them… M'Gll… If Luke thought I needed to die, then I needed to die, and that was that. Didn't matter if I'd done anything or not. For them, Luke was _always_ right.

"And… I was screaming, at him, and them… And they were going to kill me. Try at least. I knew he wasn't dead… I wanted him to see it all… fall… die… burn. I needed him to see that, but… They… didn't know, couldn't feel him, didn't care if he was alive. However, it worked. I was too angry to really feel them.

"I got it enough together to start yelling about what happened.

"They didn't believe me. Most of them. We lived together, studied together, worked together, I'd trained with all of them, and trained more than half of them in… a lot of things… Saber forms to calligraphy, but… Luke was gone, my cottage was in ruins, and…

"I didn't kill all of them. Or most. Just… M'Gll. She was the only one good enough to require someone who could really fight to knock her down, though." Kylo doesn't know if he'd have killed any of the others if it'd been up to him. But it wasn't. By the time M'Gll was done, so were the others. "Kammun, Rona, and Mark… They joined me.

"After, we had a ship. I still couldn't fly then, but Kammun could, so he asked me, 'Where now?' and for a second, I almost said Chandrilla. But… I was covered in blood, had just killed M'Gll, and…" he's biting his lip hard enough it's bleeding, and the sting and taste of blood is centering for him, pulling him to here, and now. "People who saw me every day thought it was my fault. People who _knew me_." And again, he doesn't have to say that his parents, and Chewie, _didn't_ know him. "They would have… Mom would have thrown me out, and taken Luke's side and… If I'd showed up, covered in blood, with three friends… She'd have never believed Luke was at fault, not on my say so, or theirs. Dad would have gone along with her; Dad always went along with her, if it was about me. You know that.

"And the voice in my head gave me coordinates, and then we were heading to the First Order."

Chewie just growls. No words. A _lot_ of sorrow.

There's the feel of Rey followed by a moment of her appearing in their home, and a heartbeat of extremely confused emotions followed by her immediately springing over to Kylo and pulling him into her arms.

"What the hell did you do?" She's glaring at Chewie, who's also a few beats behind on what's going on and looks very startled to see Rey just appear out of nowhere _and_ put her physical body between him and Kylo like she's getting ready to fend off an attack.

 _Just talking._

Kylo doesn't mind snuggling into her embrace, but he does squeeze the hand that's on his shoulder, too. "Just talking."

Her eyes narrow as she looks at him, wipes the blood from his lip, and rests her fingers on it, healing the damage. "What kind of talking involves you chewing a hole in yourself."

He kisses her fingertips. _Hopefully, the good kind._

She raises a brow at him. _Really?_

He nods.

Chewie inclines his head, watching the two of them commune silently. It's clear he's getting ready to say something, but there's another knock on the door, and the meeting is on.

* * *

Slipping into the Ren house, Finn looks nervous, Rose looks wary, and Paige, who had a really lovely afternoon nap, and now gets to play with Daddy, is having a blast.

What Finn immediately wants to do is grab Paige and run out of the house, back to his own place, and spend the rest of the night there.

He grits his teeth and makes himself _not_ think about that. He busies himself getting Paige out of her snow gear, and trying to actually _see_ Kylo, who Jacen does not seem to think is nearly as much of a threat as he does.

His Highness and Mightiness the Lord Supreme Commander is in his blacks. Which, apparently, are not all black now. There's some grey on there. He's standing next to Rey, who's also pulling off her cold weather gear, and sort of looking like he doesn't know what to do next. His eyes flick to Finn, and then he sort of curls in on himself, hunching a bit, and… _Fuck._ Jacen might possibly know what he's talking about and…

Okay, _calm._ Finn makes himself breathe deep and slow. And focus on Paige again, because he's gotten one bootie off, and she's not loving the lack of attention to detail.

Rose is at the cooker. "Smells good."

Kylo says to her. "Uh, thanks. I didn't know what everyone liked so it's probably kind of bland, but…"

 _What is it?_ Chewie asks.

"Beef stew. I'm not sure what a beef is, but it's warm and looks filling," Kylo says, opening the cooker, and levitating a huge bowl of something brown and bubbling to a hot pad on the table. "Biscuits, too, and there's some salad in the cooler."

Rose looks over to him, and smiles, a little. "Cows. At home they were cows."

Kylo's eyebrows knit. "Beef is cows?" It's abundantly clear that he thinks that's a beyond weird name for the animal a beef comes from.

"Yeah, don't ask why, I don't know."

"What are cows?" Rey asks, once she's got her jacket hung up and boots off.

"Uh…" Rose has never tried to describe one before. "Think smaller Faviers, with hoofs, and horns, and smaller ears."

"Smaller like," Finn holds his hands out, about shoulder width apart.

"Smaller like, twice the size of Chewie if he were on all fours," Rose responds and Chewie flashes her a _look._ She shrugs, "They are!"

Rey takes Paige from Finn, so he can get out of his own cold weather gear, and nods Rose toward the bowls on the shelf near their door. "I'm thinking we just put everything on the table and serve ourselves?"

"That'll work," Rose says, reaching for the bowls.

Kylo being temporarily edged out of the supper business, decides that maybe this isn't a meeting for his command blacks, and sidles out to his own room to change.

As he's doing it, he feels Rey in the back of his mind, _Good plan._

 _Not looking like me._

 _Looking like you're relaxing at home with your family._

 _This is not my idea of relaxing._

 _I know, love. I know._

It's several hours later when he notices that he didn't challenge her on the family bit.

* * *

By the time he's out, in his Padme non-blacks, Poe's here, too, opening the bottle of whatever he brought to drink.

"No Jon?" Kylo says as he sits next to Rey, and Poe passes over a glass of what smells like some sort of wine.

"Shockingly enough, he decided that _this_ conversation might not be the one to get introduced to 'the family' with."

"We're _the family?_ " Rose asks.

"Aren't you?" Poe shoots back with a grin, handing her her glass.

Finn rolls his eyes, and mutters something about the Order under his breath. Paige is in his lap, and looking very bright eyed and interested in all of this. He takes one of the biscuits and breaks a small piece off. "Here, baby. Pre-dinner snack."

The smell hits him like the _Falcon_ going from a full stop to hyperdrive in under a second flat, and leaves him just as leveled.

He's never had beef stew before. It was never on the rations. But the biscuits. That's… memories. Hundreds of them. Breakfasts and suppers gulped down between shifts. Slow meals at the start of his eight off. Bitching with his buddies about commanders and jobs and equipment while chawing down on dinner. Hunched over a data pad, studying, studying, studying. He had to be the best, had to know everything, had to… He hasn't thought of one in years. Wouldn't mention having eaten them before. They were just a thing he'd grab a few of while walking down the line in the canteen.

Ren's staring at him, muttering something about he should have gotten something from the F-Deck, looking like a kicked puppy. How someone who's almost the size of Chewie and personally ordered the destruction of an entire planet can get away with looking mortally sorrowful about bringing the wrong breadstuff to a dinner is light years beyond Finn, but… It's fucking real. Ren's about to take the damn things off the table and go find something else, if he doesn't respond soon. And just to make matters worse, Finn, of course, hasn't actually said anything about this, Ren's just reading it off of how he's watching his daughter nom the biscuit on down and make grabby hands for more.

"It's… no… Don't." Finn grabs the bowl they're in and makes sure they stay on the table. "Fine," weakly slips off his tongue. "Just… memories. Haven't thought about them in forever. Didn't think about them even when I was eating them every other day, but…"

"Every other day?" Poe says, maybe a beat behind on what's going on, but determined to leap into position to help those two build some empathy.

"Uh, yeah… The canteen… It's a really long room. Lots of tables and chairs, but you don't have to eat there. At the far end there's a wall covered in food stations. Four main ones, veg, protein, starch, sweet, and then over and over and over again. Each station will have at least six options a day, and they'll change from day to day. You grab a tray, load it up, and then go eat wherever. At the tables, in your room, on the D-Deck, wherever." He glances up at Ren who's staring at the biscuits like he's never seen anything like them before. "Let me guess, that's not how it works in officer land."

Finn doesn't see, but he does feel Rey sort of poke Kylo to get him talking. "I don't know. Maybe? The first few weeks food got brought to us, and then… Hux and I never got along, and by a few weeks in he realized I wasn't leaving, so he started thinking about ways to get rid of me. I knew he'd had his father poisoned, so I stopped eating anything I didn't open for myself. Three protein bars, two vitamin mush packs, and water. That's what I ate. I'd go fetch it from storage, and make sure it was sealed, and…" He picks up one of the biscuits. "I think I had my first one of these last year?" He looks to Rey, and she nods. "We ate it together, so not more than two years ago."

"Kresh rations?" Finn's eyes are wide. "You lived on Kresh rations?"

Kylo nods. Then he shrugs a bit, pulling the bowl of stew toward him, and spooning out portions for him and Rey. "I like food, like eating, but it's not like it was a big sacrifice. I was coming off of fifteen years of eat to nourish yourself, not for pleasure, so it's not like I was going from carefully crafted delicacies to packaged nutrient bars. If Luke had known about Kresh rations… Okay, no. I'm sure he knew about ration bars. He thought having us nurture plants and run the farm was important, circle of life, and how the Force twines into everything, but… It wasn't like the quality of food suddenly dropped, just the variety."

* * *

Kylo feels like this is surreal. He knows he's home. In his house. With Rey.

And Rose, and Finn, and Paige, and Poe, and Chewie.

And, apparently, they're going to _talk,_ and make decisions, like… a family… maybe… if that's the sorts of things families do, about what's going to happen next. Granted, as best he knows, families don't do things like that. One of them makes a decision, and then the others yell about it for a while, and then they storm off to the ends of the galaxy and pout about it.

He glances around the table, and realizes that Poe and Rose might have the kinds of families that did things like make decisions together, but the rest of them don't… Or didn't.

But, Finn and Rose make decisions together. And he and Rey do. Chewie and his dad always managed it. So… They aren't doomed at this. Just… rusty… or unpracticed, with each other, maybe.

But, because this isn't a thing they do, or at least, have ever done before, none of them really seem to know where to start. Especially with that light and fluffy conversation about food to start this up. Kylo could feel the mood of the table drop like a rock, but he couldn't figure out how to get out of that bit of conversation without killing everything and…

Rey's holding his hand. _It's okay. Not everything has to be light and happy all the time._

He kisses her, and then looks, really looks, past his own stuff and sees her and… _Oh… Shit. Are you?_

 _I'm okay, enough. Later, we can talk about me, later._

And he knows that's a lightling distraction technique. He knows it's plastering a smile on a scream, but he also knows that she's not wrong on the timing.

He squeezes her hand. _Later._

So, right now, there's a lot of quiet chewing.

Poe's the one who breaks the silence, "I guess, first question is, how bad is this going to get? Are we talking about ninety-three more years of—"

"Ninety-three years?" Kylo asks, looking stunned. "I'm sorry. I just got Rey's comm about us talking about having to leave. Spring comes in ninety-three years?"

 _Only on the most literal of levels._ Chewie puts his holo-projector on the table. Everyone recognizes the two stars of Lirium's system. He highlights Lirium. _We're here now, just zipping out past the blue star. But we're going to keep zipping, for ninety-three years, and then ninety-three years back, and then there's a forty-year warm spot, followed by twenty-six years of much too hot where both suns are heating the planet, then another forty year warm spot by the green sun, and then another hundred and eighty-six of winter, and…_ They watch Lirium zip around in it's long oval.

Kylo puts his fork down and rubs his eyes. He's suddenly understanding why Rey said nothing beyond that everyone was gathering for dinner at their place, because a decision needed to be made on where to go next.

He kisses her temple. "Like Poe said, how bad is this going to get?"

Chewie throws up another planet with another orbit. _This is Hoth. It also has a long oval of an orbit, but its orbit doesn't go nearly as far out. Granted, it doesn't get nearly as close to its sun, either, but that's not exactly important right now. The Rebellion used Hoth because it was an extreme outlier planet that was so cold just about nothing could live on it. There were deep caves with some level of vegetation due to the hot springs, but on the surface… Things would crawl out now and again, but they didn't stay out._

 _We were there in what passed for summer, and it was so cold that if you were outside at night… Well… You've heard that story, right?_

Kylo's wincing, because Ben also winced at that story. Finn knows it, too. Rose, Rey, and Poe don't. And it's clear at how they're looking between Chewie, Finn, and Kylo that they want to know.

Kylo shakes his head. "It's… gross."

Finn's staring at him. "Gross?" Yeah, it's not his favorite story ever, but _gross_ isn't how he'd describe it.

"You got Chewie's version of it, right?" Finn nods. "Which is really my Dad's version, and that's big on swooping in and saving the day and the million to one shot coming up roses again. I got Luke Skywalker's, 'I woke up, choking, inside the corpse of a Tauntaun, with my body covered in cooling viscera, hands and feet and face on fire from frostbite, half frozen to death.' And if that's not enough, he could project that sensation, so most of us got to feel what it's like to wake up with a chunk of intestine in your mouth, gasping for air, freezing."

Everyone else winces, including Chewie, who mentions that Luke left that part of the story out when he told them, and Poe says, "Okay, yeah, that's gross."

"Dad cut the thing in half with Luke's lightsaber and tucked them both in so they wouldn't freeze."

"Uglh," Rose shudders. "And that was summer?"

 _That was summer._

"Dad talked about that." They're all staring at him in amazement. "Hoth, he talked about Hoth, not using Tauntauns as heaters. He didn't enjoy being stationed there," Poe adds. "Granted, Mom was on Yavin, and I was a year old, so that was part of not being happy about being stationed there, but the weather sucked, too."

 _None of us did. So cold any machine not rated for deep space would freeze solid. And even the deep space ones tended to get tetchy out there._

"He was a mechanic, and... so cold the lubricants would freeze. So cold the buildings were carved out of snow and ice. He had a mustache, and it was always covered in ice crystals because the moisture in your breath would freeze. And, like I said, he was a mechanic, so all of that was inside. Not like they were sending him outside."

That gets more wincing.

Finn's watching the orbit. "And we'll be there…"

"In a year," Rose says. "Colder yet the year after."

"So…" Kylo says, tentatively, not looking to start a fight, but feeling like this is the kind of thing someone has to say. "We've absolutely got to be out of here in two years?"

"Or go underground," Rose says. She scoops up the last bit of her supper, and then takes Paige from Finn. "Good girl, waiting for Mommy to finish eating." Paige, with smears of biscuit on her chin, grins up at her mom, and then happily settles in for her evening nurse.

Kylo, who's never seen Rose nurse Paige, isn't exactly sure if he's allowed to watch. It's not like he can see much, Paige's head is providing beyond adequate coverage, but this still feels intimate in a way that sharing a spoon of beef stew with their daughter didn't. Granted, no one else is looking at the walls, or away from Rose, but no one else isn't sure if they belong here.

 _It's your home, Kylo. You belong here._ Rey strokes his hand. He nods at her, and resettles to watch the couple across the table from him. Watching Finn stroke his daughter's curls as she cuddles in against her mama sets off a bright flare of wanting deep inside of him. The envy is hot enough that he might be projecting it, because Finn looks up at him with a jerk, but, for once, doesn't seem alarmed.

Chewie shakes his head, drawing his attention back to the conversation. _Underground's not good for anyone. But humans need to see the sun. It'd be one thing if we were going under for a year or so, but… This is the entire rest of your lives, and the kids' lives, and their kids' lives. Fuck, probably the rest of mine, too. That's…_ He shakes his head.

"Not tenable," Finn says.

"We've got… us… and twenty-four kids… to find a home for." Kylo's being intentionally vague with us, he could just mean him and Rey, or he could mean the six of them.

"And let me guess, you've got a plan for that?" Finn shoots back.

Kylo mentally thanks Jacen, because his immediate, first thought response is, _Fuck, yeah! I'm the one with the great big ship that can fit all of you in comfort and ease without even having to blink._ But what he says is, "The start of one, but plans can always be improved. How about you? Ideas, Finn?"

He can feel Rey's surprised by him doing that. _Jacen gave me a heads up before everyone got here. I'm trying to be… diplomatic._

Rey squeezes his hand.

"Comments, Rey?" Rose says, not having missed, at all, the silent conversation.

Rey sighs. He can feel her first thought, to just brush over it, slap that smile on her face, and look like this is okay. He squeezes her hand again. _It doesn't have to be okay. Not here, and not now._ She licks her lips, and then says, "I hate the idea of moving. I… It's just a place, but…" She's holding Kylo's hand, he bows his head, resting his lips on her shoulder. "Its our home, you know? And… I… years working on this, and giving it all up, and… I don't want to leave. But want doesn't matter, now, does it? Want isn't going to make spring magically appear." Kylo's stroking her back as she says it.

Rose has a soft look on her face. "I know. I'm not thrilled with the idea of packing up or leaving, either."

"Less thrilled at having to move underground," Finn adds. He looks discouraged by all of this, and for a moment Kylo's wondering how much Rey's projecting, or how much of this is everyone taking off the brave face.

"We're not moles," Poe says, and then notices that no one else knows what a mole is. "They're little rodents that live under the dirt back on Yavin. Anyway. Underground is off the table."

Chewie agrees with that. _Just a matter of where to go next. So…_

Kylo intentionally stays quiet.

Everyone is looking at him, waiting for him to offer the _Supremacy,_ but he holds his peace for another long beat, and then finally, when it's clear that no one else is going to say anything first, he says, "I know… it's not ideal. But, I have, literally, hundreds of square kilometers that are currently empty. I've got apartments that are still set up from the Last Night celebrations with no one in them. Say the word and… The Maji," he looks at Finn and Rose, who aren't wearing Maji pendents, "and friends, have a home."

Finn's not glaring. He wants to glare. He was prepared to glare. He had a mental script of how this was supposed to go, because there's a way officers behave, and Ren, who is not just _an_ officer, he's _the fucking_ officer, His Lordship the Supreme Highness, seems to be awfully good at just marching on in and ordering everyone around. And he was ready for that. Ren would order everyone to the _Supremacy_ and he'd draw his line in the sand, and they'd argue, and maybe he'd get the better of Ren, win a point or two and…

It would have felt good.

But no, the bastard gave him the chance to come up with a place first, then waited to see if anyone else had any other ideas, and on top of that prefaced his idea with the fact that he's aware of the fact that there are issues with it.

Which means Finn's got to play nice, too.

So, he's not glaring. He's… thinking.

Rose leaps in to the rescue. "Kylo, we're not comfortable on the _Supremacy._ Finn did not have a good time the last time we were there, and… It's one thing to visit for a bit, but Finn…"

"Were you stationed there?" Kylo asks.

"Yeah. At least some. Wasn't there the whole time. Don't wanna go back, not… to any of it."

Kylo nods at that, too. "I haven't been back to my rooms on the _Finalizer_ , either. Too much… everything, there."

Finn's not loving the common ground, but he does nod at it.

"What do we need, for a place to be home, for all of us?" Poe says, looking pleased that this hasn't devolved into a shouting match, or worse a shooting one.

 _Can't be anywhere with a warrant out for me._

"Does that cut half the galaxy out?" Poe asks, flip.

Chewie rolls his eyes, then says, quietly, for him, _A third._

"There are no open warrants out for you, any of you, in Order territory," Kylo says. "And, currently, we're not opposed to bounty hunters coming into our territory. Schiff decided that making them pay a small fee for a license to hunt in our space was an easy way to make some money, but…we make the price of going after an Order citizen exorbitantly high."

Chewie blinks. _I know you killed the warrants; you didn't make us citizens, did you?_

It never even occurred to him to do so, but Kylo says, "No. But C8 set Rey up as a full citizen in less than five minutes, I can't imagine it'd be any more difficult for the rest of you."

Chewie relaxes a bit and nods.

Kylo thinks about it for a moment… "Finn… uh… I didn't do it, but… I also never checked. Everything blew up less than a week after you left, so… You've got your five in, you might be a citizen."

Finn's got no idea what to do with that. "The warrant out for me was for desertion and treason."

Kylo shrugs. "Yeah, but… Like I said, I don't know how they did it, but I think everyone on the roll with five in got a citizen's chit. And since you can leave anytime after your five now, and still qualify, I don't know how they did it. You didn't have to be active duty when I changed the rule. Hell, I was encouraging people to leave at that point, just to get rid of old Imperials and Hux-grads. You just had to have your five in. I can… check… if you'd like."

Finn groans and rubs his forehead. "No. I… Don't want to know." He's got no idea, at all, what he'd do with the idea of being an Order citizen.

"Finn… if not for you, let me check for Paige. I get you don't want it for you, but… Anyone fucks with one of my citizens, the entire Order shows up and fucks them over just as hard, if not harder. Any one who did their five, and their children, became citizens."

Finn shakes his head.

Kylo nods. "Okay." But he doesn't miss the way Rose looks at him. He's got the feeling the two of them are going to be having a one on one conversation at some point in the future.

Finn lets out a long breath. "I can't… do Order territory." Then he bites his lip. "Not… unless there's nothing else. I…" He does glare now, but… He can feel, or at least imagine, Rose thinking at him, _compromise._ "If it's just us… Not Order space. That's… I can't do that. But, safe place for the kids, right? Hidden enough that people who want to weed out Force users can't find them. Protected for the same reason. So…"

He lets that dangle, and Poe says, "You don't like the Order, you've got good reason for it, and we're all fine with that, but you acknowledge that there might be a good reason for the kids to have a shit ton of guns pointing away from them to make sure they don't end up with more of them pointed at them."

Finn nods. "Yeah."

Rose says, "Are you… hearing anything like that?"

 _No one's talking about hunting for Force users. Not now. But if history is anything to go by, every third jacked-up dictator or Emperor wanna-be goes looking for them as a scapegoat or a weapon. And, even with you,_ Chewie looks at Kylo and Rey _doing this Order thing, there's something of a power vacuum starting, so… Soon. Three years, five tops._

Rey inclines her head. This is a more comfortable topic than them having to uproot and move. "That's in the Jedi histories. Part of why they formed the Jedi in the first place. Protection. People who can levitate or read minds in some backwater, tend to get burned alive."

Kylo quietly says, "So not… primarily Order territory, but perhaps, Order protection, and… If we have to move before somewhere else can be found…"

Finn nods. "Yeah, as a… stop gap. For the kids. If we've got to bug out fast…" He looks to Chewie, who nods. The Ticos always have a home on the _Falcon._

Kylo almost smiles at that, but decides not to, because he doesn't want to be seen as patronizing. He feels Rey give his hand a little squeeze.

 _Diplomacy huh?_

 _Apparently,_ he thinks back. Then he says, "The primary advantage of Order space is… we don't have to pay for it. And I don't know what planets cost, but I do know they aren't cheap, or if they are, it's because they're not suitable for humans."

"We don't actually need an entire planet," Rose says. "We probably don't need an entire continent, or… Honestly, a few thousand square klicks somewhere'll do."

Kylo doesn't want to budge on that one. "Security is better if we've got a whole planet, or moon, or something like that. It's easier to control the airspace than—"

"We can shield a space just fine," Poe says. "That's easy enough to do. And—"

"Get burned to a crisp when they bombard us from atmo. I personally command thousands of ships that will take a few thousand square klicks right off the surface of a planet like," and he snaps, "shield and all." Kylo replies. "A whole planet gives us a _much_ bigger buffer zone."

"You put the generators under the shields, Kylo, then you can't burn them from atmo," Poe says.

"You shoot the planet on the fault lines and the bloody thing cracks to pieces, Poe, and then it doesn't matter where the shield generators are, everyone is dead!"

Chewie's rumble shuts that conversation down. _And all of it's moot. The best defense is no one knowing where we are. A significantly motivated enemy is not going to be put off by a planetary defense versus city defenses._ He just _looks_ at them, and, well, given what they'd all spent the last five years doing, and what Kylo and Poe's parents did… They've got the point.

 _Subtly, through a series of buffers, buying a plot of land will work just as well as grabbing a spare planet somewhere, and likely be a shit ton easier than getting a spare planet, because planets that support human life, in any level of comfort, already have piles of humans on them._ Chewie rumbles a soft laugh. _You little scurgls are like mold. Once one of you touches down, the next thing you know the whole fucking place is covered with you._

Rey thinks about that for a moment, says, "Not always," and it's clear she's not sure if she should continue, but she does. "We know one that isn't."

Chewie blinks. They _do_ know a place where a human touched down, that didn't then immediately sprout thousands more. Then he slowly nods. _True. And, I guess, it's sort of yours?_ He glances to Kylo. _Maybe. Not sure how that worked._

"I think it belongs to the Jedi, not Luke," Rey replies.

Kylo shrugs. "I'm the last living Jedi in addition to the last Skywalker."

(Finn and Poe both roll the fuck out of their eyes. There's only so much pretentious bantha shit one guy can claim.)

"And you're a prince, too," Poe says with more eye rolling. "Your high and mighty-ness."

"Only she gets to call me that," Kylo fires back.

Chewie sniggers at that, feeling whiplashed by family history in this moment. _This_ is very much the sort of Ben he and Han had hoped for.

Rey sighs a bit, any other time, she'd probably like the teasing, but right now it's just annoying her. "It probably belongs to the Caretakers now."

"The… Where the cottage was?" Kylo asks, realizing he never found out where that was.

 _Ahch-To. It's way the hell out in the bloody middle of nowhere. It does have native sentient lifeforms, but they're local and from what I can tell don't have the tech to get off world. It's obviously stable enough in it's orbit we won't all die there. What happens if you try and put… this… on a Force hot spot?_

Rey thinks for a moment. "I think we'd look for a different island. I… The caretakers didn't like me, and… It's not like there weren't thousands, if not more, islands there. We could… See if there's one a little more hospitable for us."

"The caretakers didn't like you?" Rose asks, though Kylo's thinking it, too.

Rey rolls her eyes. "I might have… almost… accidentally, killed a few of them, totally by accident, and kind of broke a few things."

Kylo arches an eyebrow, remembering that second of clutching at himself, sure he'd been shot, and then realizing that the blast didn't touch him. "Did you, perhaps… shoot through something you shouldn't have?"

Rey almost smiles. "I might have, just possibly, shot through a wall of a building, and badly scared a few people."

Poe's looking from one of them to the other. "Okay, one day, you'll tell that story, but today is not that day. If we've got a potential out of the way, fairly well-hidden planet, all we've got to do is set a new place up, and then move."

Kylo rubs his lips together, then says to Finn, "Would I be correct in assuming, that, in addition to not being in Order space, you'd prefer the Order didn't bankroll this?"

Finn nods. The last thing he wants to see is a pile of Order transports show up and move them from point A to B. That completely kills the point of trying to do this secretly. "I get a lot of your personal funds are in this, and… appreciate it, but…" He's quiet, thinking, even just moving will cost them, and then setting everything back up again, and who knows what sort of new stuff they'll need for islands, and… Money. It always comes back to money.

But… they had an answer to money. They're still, supposedly, working on that, so… "Canto Bight. We haven't talked about that for a while. That was the plan, right? Work on our gambling skills, stick you two in… I don't know, a mask or something, so people won't recognize you, and then go off and fleece the parasites? We can still do that, and more than cover what'd it cost to set up a really nice neighborhood."

Poe grins. "We've got time. It's not like we've got to bug out tomorrow. We can get this planned up right, scout out a really nice island, set weather satellites so we've got some idea of what we need in a place to land, actually get our homes built before we move… This is doable." He glances to Kylo. "And I for one wouldn't mind if some extra manpower showed up to help put things together. I can ferry them around so they won't know where they hell it is they went, but if you can provide people to do things like get us proper water treatment and power set up, before we begin to put houses down…"

Kylo's nodding at that. "I just might be able to find someone to do that. Especially if you're providing transport…" He glances to Finn, making sure he's okay with that.

Finn nods. "I'm still… uneasy… about your people knowing where we are. Back in the day… If Hux had had a little hidey-hole, I could think of a lot of people who would have paid well to know where it was and then use that to end him."

Kylo inclines his head. "Yeah, I know. I wasn't one of them because… Not my style, and I was under direct orders not to kill him, but I knew at least a hundred who would have paid you very well for that, and ninety of them likely would have stabbed you in the back before you left the room so how they got the information couldn't leak. If it's any comfort, most of them are dead now, and a few ran away." He doesn't mention the one who's the highest ranked officer of the Order, technically his second-in-command, the Grand Admiral who runs his entire fleet, or that Kinear would have just… known.

Finn blinks. "I'm… not sure if that is."

Kylo nods. "So… scouting trips? Looking for… what? A place with a decent beach, but… big enough hurricanes aren't a problem? We're probably going to want the settlement inland, but… I don't know, something near water, for… fun or something."

"We get a decent dome over it, the kind that retracts, or the ones generated by a field, hurricanes won't be a problem," Poe adds. "We could be right near the beach, and just put it up if the weather looks like it's taking a turn for the worse."

 _Those are_ really _fucking expensive,_ Chewie adds.

"Well, if we leave Canto with less than fifty million credits, I'm calling it a bust, so…" Poe replies.

Chewie nods. _That'll cover a field-generated dome, at least one of the size you're likely thinking, and the start of a decent settlement._

That gets nodding. Finn's looking at Ren curiously. "You just… like beaches, or is this a Maji thing?"

"Yes?" Kylo answers. "I like beaches, and," he glances to Rey, who nods, "There's something about the place where water meets earth. It feels… right."

"Warm," Rose says. "I don't mind a place where we can go visit snow if we like, but if I never have to dig out again, I'd be thrilled."

That gets some chuckling.

 _I like trees. They make everything more expensive, though. Gotta cut a bunch of them down for a landing place, and cut more of them down, or build in and around them._

"Home had a lot of trees," Poe adds.

"Is that a good thing?" Rose asks.

Poe shrugs a bit. "It's not a bad one. Unless you're trying to land a bird that's dead at the stick. Then it's bad."

They're quiet for a moment, the Poe says, "Rey… Thoughts?"

She looks bleak. "No good ones. Once we get moving, I'll be okay. I'll probably like looking for a new place, and doing the work to set it up, but right now…"

Kylo's rubbing her back. He can very much feel the difference between his dark and her light right now. He's perfectly fine with picking up and heading off, and is rather looking forward to finally seeing the place he's only glimpsed through the Force. Meanwhile, Rey's mourning a lost home, and fighting her desire to be settled, to stay put, in order to get up and move.

"Is there anything you want in a new home?" Finn asks.

Again, she shrugs. "Probably not a desert. And I know we're talking about Ahch-To, and… It's a planet, so the whole thing can't be like Luke's island, but that was cool and damp and… Remember fall? When it was the cool, rainy damp?" They all nod. None of them liked that. "I think it's like that year 'round where Luke was."

"Try to find somewhere a bit more comfortable," Finn says. "I mean, the entire planet can't be one climate. Any world with enough liquid water for form oceans has to have multiple climates. We've just got to find a nice one."

"I've got…" Kylo realizes he doesn't, not literally, have, weather satellites. "Okay, I assume I've got to have, or at least can get, weather satellites. If I can get them to Poe, he can get them orbiting Ahch-To, and… if we've got a year or so, we can take the time to find out what the different biomes are."

"Can't we just look this planet up?" Rose asks.

"By the time Luke was looking for it, it'd been scrubbed from the records, and once he found it, he hid himself away there," Rey adds.

Chewie thinks about that. He scratches his chin. _Do you have Palpatine's records?_

Kylo blinks. "Uh… Some of them. I don't think we have the whole thing, but I know some of his people brought their equipment with them. Schiff defected wholesale, brought his whole armada and equipment in, if he had copies, I can ask."

Chewie shakes his head. _Don't ask. Run it through R2. If it's in your files, he can find it, without you getting your slicers wondering what you're looking for and why. And without… Schiff? Admiral Joshia Schiff?_

Kylo nods. "Grand Admiral now. He… uh… runs my entire navy."

Chewie growls deep and low at that.

"He's good at it."

 _I wouldn't be growling if he wasn't. Han and I spent a year-and-a-half spearheading the expedition to try and bring that bastard in. Couldn't do it. Slippery fucking nerf and lucky as sin, too._

"Oh. Uh… probably."

 _Can you get a copy of his navi charts?_

"Uh…"

 _He knew the outer rim and unknown regions better than anyone else. That's why we couldn't catch him._

"And you wouldn't mind knowing, too?"

Chewie's got a very satisfied smile on his face. And Kylo knows that the _Falcon_ has one of the most complete navi charts in existence, and if he can offer something to make it even better… _Not at all._

"I'll put the question to R2, and he'll get what he can get, okay?"

Chewie looks pleased at that.

Rose says, "So, scouting Ahch-To. Maybe we all go, do our own recon, see what kind of places look good. If we're lucky, we agree. And, if we aren't… Well, we don't have to live right on top of each other." That's likely a nice way of saying that the Tico branch of the family may decide to be on an entirely different island than the Ren branch, which… Actually… Might be a good solution.

Close enough to visit easily. Far enough away so they aren't tripping over each other.

"And, once we've got some sites… I can start to get estimates for putting in a functional settlement," Kylo says.

And Poe finishes, with a gleam in his eye, "And then to Canto Bight, where we'll fund this endeavor."

That gets a collection of satisfied smiles.

* * *

Jacen looks to Critt, Magiit, Elias, and Savarah.

"Ahch-To?" he asks.

The rest of them just shrug.

"No… Jedi stories?" he looks to Critt.

Critt shakes his head. "Nope. Beaches and weather that's not constant blizzards sounds good, though. It's been too damn long since I had a swim."

The others all sort of nod. "Wouldn't mind heading back to the _Supremacy,_ especially if you all were coming with," Jacen adds.

"Gonna flounce around and make us salute you?" Elias asks with a grin.

"I do not _flounce!"_ Jacen sounds appalled.

"Oh please, you'll be wiggling your bum around looking for Grand Marshall Wet Dream," Critt says, smirking at him. He _knows_ how Jacen reacted to Jon.

Jacen rolls his eyes. "Yeah, well, according to Ren, Poe's got a claim on Grand Marshall Wet Dream, and that I'm supposed to keep my bum to myself on that one."

That gets some very surprised looking kids. Finally, Magiit says, "Wait, Poe and the Grand Marshall. Like… really?"

"That's what Ren's saying, and he'd know, I'd assume," Jacen says. "He's close with the Grand Marshall, and apparently friendly with Poe, so…"

"Why is Ren saying that to _you_?" Savarah asks.

"Because he's the fucking empath, right? Apparently, everyone on the bloody deck, not just you all, noticed me noticing him, so…"

"So he…" And Elias is sniggering at this. "Set you down for a _talking to?_ " That's got all the kids giggling.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah…" Jacen rolls his eyes. He takes a sip of his cocoa. "You wanna talk spit about me and Wet Dream and what isn't going to happen, or you want to hear the real story I got while I was with Finn and Chewie?"

"Real story?" Critt says. " _Real?_ We've got you and Ren, and we've got we're all bugging out in the next year, what's more real than that?"

"You ever wonder why we aren't Jedi?" Jacen asks.

"Because they were flaming twits when it came to this dark/light stuff," Critt replies.

"Probably that, too, but… Ren's training with Luke Skywalker, back when he was like, our age, and Luke tried to cut his head off for being dark."

That's so shocking the other four of them go silent for a long moment, followed by four voices, all at once, clambering for more details.

* * *

Once it's just the two of them, Kylo says to Rey, "Well…"

She sighs at that.

He steps up behind her, drapes his arms over her shoulders, and lies his chin against the back of her head. "Moving. It'll be good."

She exhales long and slow at that, looking around their home.

"And, we'll get a chance to actually set up a home, together. This is your place, and there's my place on the ship, and this new one, it'll be our place."

He's not getting a sense of wild enthusiasm off of her.

"Space for both of us, and maybe a kid or two?" He floods her with a version of the mental image of the Ticos having dinner together, but them, with their baby. "Put it near the water… Maybe have that wedding, the one for us, as part of celebrating building a home, for both of us, for our family."

Another long exhale. He can feel her just _ache._ He holds her near, lips pressed to the top of her head.

"Do you just need some time to be sad about this?"

Rey nods.

"Okay. Does it bother you too much that I'm not?"

Rey finally speaks. "You don't have to be sad about this. Like you said, this is my place, not yours."

He looks around their home. It's white and cream, and there are a few bits and pieces he's brought over with him, but… "That's… not… exactly true."

"Yeah, but it isn't wrong, either. You never really liked this place."

That gets a sigh from him. "I didn't love it at first because it was a place where you were that I wasn't, and I was still kind of afraid that one day you'd just run away." She leans her head back against his chest. "I liked the fact that you liked it. I liked that it made you happy." He half turns her, half turns him, and kisses her. "My home is with you. And I'm looking forward to building a new one, for both of us. But… here, there, in the _Supremacy,_ as long as you lay your head there at the end of the night, it's my home, too."

She gives him a little half smile, and lays her head on his shoulder. "I'm probably not going to like packing."

He shrugs. "Win an extra hand or two at Canto, and we'll buy new stuff."

Rey looks scandalized at that. "Just… leave it?"

He turns her to fully face him and kisses the tip of her nose. "I'm not exactly joking, but I'm not dead on serious, either." He glances around. "I mean… do you actually love any of this stuff, or are they just useful tools?"

She rolls her eyes a bit. Sometimes, it's abundantly clear that Kylo has never, ever wanted for any _thing._ He draws her closer for a tighter snuggle.

"It'll be good."

She sighs a bit. "Tomorrow or the day after."

"It'll be good tomorrow or the day after."


	39. Simple As A Wedding (Affair of State)

3/23/2

"I take it you had some excitement yesterday," Ellie says as she joins Rey in her… their… "Oh my… Well, it's certainly not black any longer," room. She's engaging in a very slow twirl as she looks over the newly painted private chamber of Master and Mistress Ren. Her eyes settle on the flower on their table. "Nice. Is that a Rhindra orchid?"

"Yes." Like K'Oanan said, they do seem to thrive in a happy home, and sitting there on the table, it almost glows.

"Gift from Kylo?"

"No."

Rey's watching Ellie go to the flower and gently pet one of its petals. Her fingers glance over the glass-like surface before she looks to Rey and says, "You seem tense."

Rey rolls her eyes a little. "I… am. Yes, yesterday was exciting. I'm sorry I had to break our appointment."

"Things happen. Are you okay?"

Rey sighs at that. "Eventually. Do you want… tea… coffee… That's how this works, right? I invite you and offer snacks."

"That's how this works. Coffee, due to it's cost, is for extremely esteemed guests, but if you want to make people feel special, or decide that we've got quite a bit more in the accounts than we actually do, it's good to offer it."

"Oh. Uh… We usually have it with breakfast, and I know Kylo has a few cups a day."

"Yes. That's been… noted."

Rey catches the way Ellie says _noted._ "Is that a bad thing?"

"The Master of an empire…" Rey's eyes narrow slightly, this isn't supposed to be an empire, "Organisation… this size is allowed his expensive pleasures. As long as his men aren't starving, no one will blink. Expensive luxuries to the top only matter when the bottom isn't getting by."

"Ah…" Rey waits.

"Right. Tea would be lovely. I never developed a taste for coffee myself." Ellie smiles gently and sips her tea. "So, are we just working on your socializing and small talk skills, or…"

"I suppose… I should be doing more of that, but… That's not today. Kylo and I have talked, and thought, and… researched, I guess, and… We'll be the Handsome Prince and His Lady. Bring on the big sparkly wedding, and the Master and Mistress, and… the… spectacle."

Ellie smiles at that, too, but this time it doesn't quite get to her eyes. She drops her hand to Rey's and gently squeezes it. "Honey, you look like you're being dragged in front of a firing line. What's going on? Do you really want to do this? Because… I mean… I understand, to a degree, you and Kylo are producing an image to make people want to be part of this. The Handsome Prince and his Lady are not, really, you. But the idea isn't to get drug kicking and screaming into something you loathe."

Rey stares at Ellie's hand on hers, not sure what to do with that.

Ellie keeps going, "Unless you can muster at least some genuine enthusiasm, this isn't going to work. We're trying to polish you up some, not transmute you into an entirely new thing."

Rey sighs at that, and pours herself more tea. "I'm… It's not the wedding stuff. I'm not this… flat… on it. Parts of that might be fun, and…" She's not sure if she should tell Ellie about the private, family wedding, so she leaves it out, for now at least. "Jacen was out on his first training run, and Chewie had him plot our planet's orbit, basic math and navi training, and…" She's wary about saying it, but… Not like they're going to be there much longer. "None of us are enjoying winter, but apparently, it won't be spring, real spring, snow stops falling and the plants grow, spring, for another hundred and eighty years."

Ellie winces. She doesn't say, _you settled somewhere without a full eco scan,_ but Rey feels it and rolls her eyes viciously.

"It was a _Resistance hideout,_ and before that a Rebellion one. There was no reason to think it hadn't been scanned. Though, apparently, Threepio tells me that, no, that wasn't standard procedure for anywhere they didn't intend to settle full time on. Apparently, the only thing they were looking for in hideouts was stable enough to not immediately kill anything that landed on it.

"Anyway, winter is just going to get worse. So, we're moving. And… I get it. We've got to go. Staying does not work. But…" Rey looks miserable.

Ellie lays her hand on Rey's, again, giving her a little tug, closer. "Come here."

Rey looks a little confused, but she scoots a bit closer, and then Ellie hugs her.

For a moment, Rey's very stiff. Ellie's hugging her, and petting her hair, and it's almost confusing for a moment, then she relaxes into it. Ellie's _comforting_ her.

"You don't want to go."

It's not a question.

With her forehead on the older woman's shoulder, Rey quietly says, "It doesn't matter if I want to, or not. We've got to go. It's go or freeze, and… So, we're going."

Ellie gives her a little squeeze. "Do you know where you're going next? Here?"

"Not here. And, more or less. We've got an idea of where we're going next, but… Still have to find a place, and start over, and…" She's letting herself feel sad. "Thousands of hours of work, just… abandoned to the cold."

"I'm sorry. If it's any condolence, sometimes, you really do just have to scrap it all and start over. They'll tell you the Captain goes down with the ship, but they're wrong. If the ship is sinking, a wise man gets himself, and his people, off of it. Only a fool doesn't jettison when the alternative is ruin."

"Is that… joining the First Order for you?"

Ellie inclines her head a bit. She's not exactly saying, yes. Rey has the sense that going in after the fall of the Empire, allowing themselves to be captured, and trying to get along with the New Republic was jettisoning the sinking ship. What Ellie says is, "When we left, we got to do it on our own terms and time, but… a lot of what we had just had to be left. People notice if you begin a massive liquidation of funds and property. So, one day, the entirety of Clan Kinear vanished. A _lot_ of the grand kids did _not_ like that."

"Uprooting their entire lives for something that they didn't understand?"

Ellie nods at that, and sips her tea, and then says, "Or did understand, and hated, because it wasn't _their_ fault we'd been on the side of the war that lost. And they couldn't tell their friends what was happening. That was the hardest part. It wasn't likely that the New Republic would go after them to hunt us down, but it also wasn't certain, and that was a risk none of us wanted to take. Your children?"

Rey shrugs a bit. "Freezing to death is a very concrete concept. Our youngest is five or six, and even she gets the idea of, 'it'll get so cold we'll all die.' They understand why we're going. And, since we've got an idea of what we're looking for next, a lot of them are excited by that. Most of the fussing we're getting is going to be over who gets to decide where we go. Who gets to go on the scouting parties? And what sort of things we're going to rebuild with. With a side of, 'And we're not living on the _Supremacy_ , why?"

It's clear Ellie's curious about that, too.

Rey shakes her head. "You didn't put your whole family on Pat's ship when you ran, right?"

Ellie nods.

"Exactly. It'd be one thing if we had to get out tomorrow, but we don't, so…"

Another nod. "I really am sorry to hear about that."

Rey sighs. "Yeah. Anyway, that's coloring everything else right now."

"As well it should. I'm here, so I'm guessing you still want to talk about weddings and whatnot?"

"Might as well distract myself, right?"

"It certainly won't hurt." Ellie sips her tea.

"So…" Rey starts. "Uh… Do we need Kylo for this, he's…" she focuses on the far side of the door. He's reading more reports. "not so busy he can't join us."

Ellie's amused by that. "Grooms aren't exactly superfluous in weddings, but they generally aren't deeply involved beyond the level of showing up. This… Part of this is showing off the Order to the galaxy. Part of this is enticing people to join us. And part of this is a show of feminine power."

"You've talked about that idea, before."

Ellie nods. "Power is eternal. It's also gendered. At least, among human and humanoid societies that have sex."

Rey blinks. She's fairly shocked to see Ellie just lay _that_ out in front of her.

"Sex as a noun, not a verb. Sex is… biological reality. What's between your legs and in your genes. It's… without a lot of medical help, generally immutable. You are male. You are female. You are something in between or none of the above, but whatever it is, that's pretty much it."

Rey's never run into the idea that anyone would, with medical help or not, seek to change their sex, and it's clear on her face.

Ellie offers a bit of a smile at that. "Not everyone's outsides match their insides. Sometimes, you need some help getting them to line up." She pauses. "Kylo couldn't be Ben, no matter how much people tried to shove him into a Ben-shaped mold, and no matter how hard he tried to shove himself into a Ben-shaped mold, it just wasn't going to happen. Some people are like that when it comes to their sex."

"Oh." That's a concrete idea for Rey.

Ellie nods at that. "But that's… not what we're talking about. Sex is not gender. Gender is how, given the way your society works, that sex is expressed. In many ways, it's how you let other people know what sex you are, and what sex you're interested in. It's… usually… highly correlated with what's between your legs and in your genes, but it's not a one to one ratio. And what's male-gendered on one world could be considered female-gendered on another."

Rey's pursing her lips.

Ellie nods at that, too. "If you saw a person in bright colors, tights, high heels, makeup, and jewelry, with fancy, poofy hair would you expect that person to be female?"

"Probably."

"And here, on the _Supremacy_ , in say, nine out of ten cases, you'd be right. But, if we were on Pyrithia, in nine out of ten cases, you'd be wrong, because that's local fashion for _men_ there."

"And fashion is how gender is expressed?"

"Part of it. That's probably the easiest, most readily visible layer."

"Okay, so this is… feminine power? All, fancy and bright and pretty?"

"Something like that. Masculine power is… easy. Big guns, bigger ships, carrying around even bigger armies. 'Do what I say or die.' There's not much finesse there."

"Biggest shaft wins?"

Ellie cracks a smile at that. "Well, the man who knows best how to use it wins, not necessarily the biggest one, but… Again, right general idea."

Rey giggles a little at that. "Finesse comes in how you use it, not just having it?"

Ellie grins. "Exactly. And… they're generally under the impression that they're absolute masters of finesse, but when it comes down to it, there's really only so many maneuvers to be used, and anyone with a slightly above average intelligence can figure out which one gets used when. So, right now, we're, metaphorically, sitting astride the biggest shaft in the galaxy."

Rey's biting her lip, staring at her tea, vibrating with giggles.

"And, just as when one is doing that on a non-metaphorical level, it's the job of a good woman to… guide the action to bring it to a… satisfactory conclusion. Just because he thinks he's got finesse coming out of his... ears... doesn't mean he can't take some help making sure everyone ends up happy."

 _Rey?_ Kylo's obviously curious as to what's got her so amused on the other side of the wall.

She's still laughing. _I think this is what Rose calls 'girl talk.'_

And Kylo's mind retreats from hers.

"All giggles aside. For a very long time, this galaxy has been primarily, and secondarily ruled by examples of masculine power. When the Empire had both the Emperor and the Senate, we had a balanced set of power. The big shaft _and_ a rider to guide it. Under the Republic… well, that was almost all rider and very little shaft."

"So, this… wedding… is us showing off we've got more to offer than a big army."

"Exactly. Kylo appears to be interested in moving in the direction of more balanced power. His idea of markets and places where people can make deals in safety means bringing some level of feminine power into play, and this is a good way to show the galaxy that, with the Order, you can have it all."

"Or at least, hire it?"

"Certainly. Traditionally feminine power comes in the flavor of communication, nuance, status. So, say, back in the days of the Republic, exceptionally ornate clothing, well above and beyond the level of what's fashionable now, was part of the game. It was about showing off status. Kylo's coffee is of a similar vein. The things we do to show off that we have great worth."

Rey winces. "I'm going to be terrible at this."

"No, you're not. You're going to study, learn the tropes, and then we're going to figure out how to bend them to your own strengths. You do not have to parade around in a billion credits worth of the fanciest jewelry ever to be forged in this galaxy to show off feminine power. You just have to understand that that's what the woman you're meeting with is doing when she does it. And then you've got to decide how to manage her expectations, because she's likely going to judge your status by the amount of sparkly things you wear."

"That I can do."

Ellie sips her tea. "I have… a few thoughts in this direction. One of the perks of power is the ability to define status. One king of old, in a very classic feminine power move, set up a court of staggering flamboyance and wealth, and then forced his courtiers to move there. In order for them to 'keep up appearances' and keep abreast of the fashion, they spent money like it was water—" Ellie backtracks on that. Rey's from a desert. Water _matters_ to her. "Spent money like sand. Let it just flow through their fingers, and for a while, they could do that, but money runs out, and it did, so he started loaning them money so they could keep up with the extravagance, and before too long, most of his 'courtiers' were busy coveting each other's tailors, planning expensive outfits and parties, one upping each other in fripperies, and in debt to him.

"In less than ten years, he bound them to him, and neutered their power, more effectively than any war could have, and did it without killing anyone."

"What happened to him?"

"He died old, fairly well-liked, in charge of a united empire, in his own bed, with a mistress who was seventy years his junior. Most men would say he played the game very well. Granted, it didn't last. He loaned money to his lords, and they spent like crazy. That loaned money wasn't enough. They needed more and more gold and jewels and status symbols, but they were broke. So they changed the laws; they could demand goods and services, but they didn't have to pay for them. Eventually, the men and women who made the fripperies that counted in the status game grabbed those courtiers and cut their heads off, but… Assuming you remember to pay your bills, that's a move that can be used quite effectively to neutralize your enemies."

"Ah…" Rey tries to begin to imagine Kylo dripping in silks and 'fripperies.' The image won't form, not the least because she isn't entire sure what 'fripperies' even are.

"That's not likely to be the version of that play that you and Kylo will try. But, eventually, it will be up to you to define status beyond a big army. Think on that, and what matters to you."

Rey nods. "And… a big lavish wedding is a way to do that?"

"Certainly. Though, for this first bit, that's the… summit of the mountain. Yes, fancy, lavish wedding is part of the Handsome Prince and His Lady story, but being out, and about, and seen is a bigger part of it. As you do that, you get to highlight what matters to you. And you get to see what matters to everyone else."

Rey raises an eyebrow. "By meeting a million people and…"

"Yes, that, but it's also traditional, when one is invited to a wedding, to send a _gift_ as well. You'll be able to see what matters to people, and how they esteem you by reading the gifts."

Rey's not sure how she feels about that. Excited at the idea of presents, daunted at the idea of decoding presents. She doesn't exactly shift the topic, but she gets Ellie talking more, "What were your other thoughts about status?"

"I was thinking about the Jedi. I… obviously didn't follow them too closely. And, I realize that, for obvious reasons, this might not be where to go with Kylo, but… Status doesn't just have to be about wealth. It can be about knowledge, or holiness, or… wherever you place it."

Rey thinks about that, and feels what Ellie's telling her. "The Jedi had a very balanced masculine and feminine power structure."

"The saber and the book, exactly. The Empire bound masculine power in the form of the Emperor and his army, to the feminized power of the Senate. In as much as the Republic had a military before Palpatine got his hands into the game, it was the Jedi Knights. They were the blade the senate used to enforce the Senate's will."

"I…" Rey's never thought about the idea of the Jedi and how their power base worked in the Republic.

"Mostly, they didn't need to use a blade. Why fight when you've got the mind trick at your disposal? It doesn't work on everyone, and… as I understand it, advanced negotiating techniques often involved lightsabers."

"Ah."

"But, I'm thinking… There have been states in the past where power balanced between the blade and the book. Between war and holiness. And… Is that something your Maji could do?"

Rey inhales long and slow at that idea. Then sips her tea. Then puts the cup down, still thinking. Her first, immediate, knee jerk reaction could best be summed up as an all over, full body _FUCK NO._ It just… feels _wrong._

A cold, visceral, all over, wrong.

It's a good two breaths before she reaches out with _And how closely are you following this conversation?_ Because, after all, that's a level of reaction that doesn't quite feel like _her._

She gets a sheepish thought back of _It's a really boring report._

 _You know, you could just come in here._

A minute later the door slides open.

"Kylo," Ellie says. She nudges the other chair at the table, and sees he's carrying his own cup of coffee in. "Well, on the upside, I'm going to assume you two had a little chat about this, but Rey, it didn't get to your face. I was thinking I'd just hit you _very_ wrong with the Maji idea."

Kylo sits down. "You hit me very wrong with it."

"Oh. You can… listen in?"

"Apparently," Rey says. "Granted, I didn't notice how closely he was listening."

Kylo rolls his eyes a little. "It was a _really_ boring report." He sets his cup down, and kisses his wife's hair before sitting next to her. _And you are not boring._

Ellie adds a splash more to her own tea, and then says, "Ah, well, tell me why using the Maji as a status symbol hits you wrong. It's your empire, we might as well tailor it to your liking."

"It's not my empire."

Ellie snorts, delicately, but it is certainly a snort, at that.

"Fine," Kylo's eyes narrow. He's about to leap up and pace, so Rey reaches out and takes his hand. He calms as she touches him. "I was the Jedi who could barely master the status symbols."

"I…" Ellie looks confused. "You… Your title was Master?" He can feel she knows that was his title and she's confused now.

"Yes, but probably not the way you meant it. Back in the Old Jedi, a Master was… on the council and… Yoda or so, right?"

She nods.

"Yeah, well, under Luke it was literal. I had mastered enough skills to pass them on and teach them. I was a Master of enough of the different Jedi skills, but not all of them, and I likely would have embarrassed the shit out of Luke if any of the old school Masters had been around." He doesn't say it, but Rey can feel him thinking, _and I had to fight tooth and nail for everything I mastered outside of fighting and empathy._

"Oh," Ellie says. "Well… It was an idea. It doesn't have to be how we do things."

Rey's chewing on her lip, and Ellie notices, because that's a very Kylo gesture.

"Rey?"

She's looking at Kylo. "If it's about balance, this… can't be a status thing. There can't be… Maji Masters. Balance moves and shifts and has to flow to where it's needed. It's a continual discipline that has to adjust as time and circumstance change. Maybe we get better at shifting as needed, but I don't think we master it. It's our master, and we serve it, not the other way around."

Kylo smiles at that, stroking her cheek.

Ellie nods slowly at that. There are things she could say to that, mostly along the lines of the fact that anyone who claims to be in the service of some greater power that cannot be independently verified rapidly ends up lying to themselves about who's calling the shots, but she figures that's not exactly important right now.

She's also rather pleased as she sees how quickly Kylo's attention snaps to her on that one. She's not sure if he's getting better at reading her, or if he's getting more comfortable with her knowing exactly how sensitive he is, either way, it's good to have a map of exactly how much of the unspoken conversation he's getting.

Just to confirm things, Kylo says, "With you, probably just about all of it."

"Ah…"

"So, just say it," Rey adds. She caught Kylo's attention to Ellie more than what Ellie was thinking.

"In my, vast, long, and extremely jaded experience, when someone says that they're acting in the service of something that's uncheckable, they're acting in the service of whatever it is they happen to want."

Rey looks like she just bit into something sour. The image of Cassie's Presbyter comes to mind so quickly and vividly, she winces. "That's not…"

"You, I know," Ellie says. "And, speaking of older and jaded, but where you are now, eager and earnest, that's generally where the people who end up serving their own desires started, too. Believe it or not, back in the day, the Emperor, when he was still a Chancellor, genuinely believed that he was doing the right thing to make the galaxy better, not just empower himself."

"Even better," Rey mutters.

Kylo perks up at that. "Ten years. Did we mention that? Eleven really. We'll stay for the first two election cycles then we're out of here."

Ellie's expression is cool. "You're hellbent on not being the Emperor, aren't you?"

"I think the entirety of the galaxy is better off with me not trying to be the Emperor, but even if it wasn't, _I'm… we're_ better off, so, we're not going there."

Ellie doesn't sigh, but she does think, takes a moment to understand what Kylo isn't saying, and then sip her tea, and then nod. "Okay. The fact that you're not trying to provide one version of the good life that supposedly fits everyone does help to limit the damage you can do with this. The time cap definitely will." Ellie sips her tea thinking further. "I suppose, that could be a status of sorts. Tolerance. Cosmopolitanism. The ability to flow with the mores of those around you. There were a few philosophers back in the day who wrote about the idea of the rights of man… The idea that you are a master who _serves_ his people. That one comes, does his job, and then goes home... That could be part of what makes status for you."

Kylo smirks a bit. "Our idea of status is the ability to offer a warm and generous welcome to anyone, no matter how low status they may be?"

Ellie offers a sharp smile. "Well, anyone who can pay the docking fee."

Rey inclines her head. It's crystallizing for her. "Status comes from being a sentient being. Anything else is the sweet at the end of the meal."

"Exactly. Though, generally speaking, it's the sweet at the end of the meal that people fuss over." Ellie sips her tea again. "It's certainly an idea. I'm wondering how we translate it into… images… for lack of a better word."

"Question for Jon?" Kylo asks.

"Mirina more likely. She's got an even better feel for how things look than he does. Plus, it's a good idea, at least on occasion, for him to do his actual job."

Neither of them miss Ellie thinking that Jon's job is not, in fact, just to lead them around and help them figure out how to look like rulers.

"Okay, so we're not entirely sure what, exactly, it is we're showing off with this, other than a general sense of…" Ellie lets that trail off.

Neither Rey nor Kylo picks it up with their own ideas.

"Grandeur? Opulence? Functionality? Hospitality? Aggressive egalitarianism? What are we doing to make this look like something people want to be part of?" Ellie says.

Rey doesn't roll her eyes. They've been over this, but she understands Ellie's trying to get them to condense the bigger ideas down into smaller, more easily digested ones.

"Tolerance," Kylo finally says.

"And what does that look like to you?" Ellie asks.

Rey tilts her head a bit, looking at Kylo. He bites his lip. He's said it to her, and they've been over the basic idea a bit, but saying it feels odd. "A market. Or a city… A grand floating city, where people can come and find the life they need."

Rey's nodding. "Where people can come and live and trade and… be."

"It's voluntary. That's a big part of it. People come to us. Not the other way around."

Ellie does't say it, but she doesn't stop herself from thinking _the unwanted child craves approval._ Kylo masters his face and acts like he didn't catch that. "Well, the wedding invites will certain go a ways toward that. We'll invite them, and they'll come. With any luck, the right ones will stay. We've got the space. Setting it up as an open festival, anyone who wants can come. Offer personal invitations to the ceremony and whatever the main after party is. Something for people you want actual one on one contact with."

"But… wander around and meet people the next day, or after… Like the First Year party?" Rey says.

"You actually want to do that?" Kylo asks her.

She shrugs a bit. "It's what were selling, or… trying to encourage, right? Join the Order, we welcome everyone. That's part of wandering around the F-Deck, not cloaked."

He nods a bit at that. "Yeah, but…"

"Maybe," Ellie says, "Set it up as a few days long festival…" She thinks. "Most… again, until you think of a better term for it, I'm calling it an empire. Most empires have some sort of annual celebration. Something to bring people together and give them a reason to have a good time, because they're part of the Empire. There was Empire Day, and of course, Concordance Day, and most planets and countries have something like that, too.

"We invite anyone and everyone to come. We welcome their culture and expression thereof, but we have an over culture, as well. We are the Order, and there has to be markers of that, as well.

"The First Year party, could become an annual thing. Order Day or Days. Some sort of major celebration. When people get their citizen mark, they get the upgrade in status on the day they hit five years, but they get the badge and stripes on Order Day. Huge party, major celebrations to welcome the new citizens, everyone who can be off duty is off duty, and anyone who does have to work that day or days gets major bonuses for it."

"And we do the wedding then? Part of the celebration?" Rey asks.

"That could be it." Ellie's looking at Rey's Order of the Maji pendent. "If we're becoming the Order of the Maji, cementing that earlier rather than later, and doing it on Order Day makes a lot of sense. If the Order of the Maji is a personal thing, it's less of a big deal."

It's clear she's asking where they're going with that.

Kylo and Rey watch each other. Rey shakes her head slightly. "The Maji is personal. People will join when and as they like, and… Honestly, I don't have the people to spread it too far and wide at this point."

Kylo lays his finger on her pendent, the Maji spiral ringed by the Order hexagon. "I have the feeling this mark is something for a very select few people."

 _Jacen?_

He nods at her. _Cassie probably, too. Maybe, eventually, Jon._

"If that's the case," Ellie says, attracting their attention back to her, "That mark you wear will become a status symbol, whether you want it to, or not. Something rare, that belongs to people who have power or are favored will automatically become a matter of status."

Rey sighs at that. She doesn't want to stop visibly being Maji. She doesn't want other people making a big deal about it, or seeking it out to gain favor. "Great."

"Well, on the upside, most people seem to think the Maji is some sort of orphanage or school, so you will have some leeway."

"That's good?" Rey asks.

"Until people start pestering you, wanting to teach your children. A lot of people will probably be very happy to offer lessons for the Maji, should they desire to learn from them," Ellie says.

Rey's almost put off by that, then she thinks about it. "Actually… That would be good. Lots of lessons, from lots of perspectives. Find the balance between them…"

"That goes along with the idea of the Order, the place where anyone can come…" Kylo adds. He calls his data pad to hand and jots down a quick note about this being a place teachers can come to offer lessons.

Rey lets him finish his note before saying, "Except that doesn't go well with the location of the Maji staying quiet."

"Classes could be here. Getting them back and forth isn't that big of an issue. Especially if not all the kids sit in on all the lessons."

Ellie can feel that the two of them could probably go planning away with this for quite a while, and it's true that she thinks they'll do a better job of getting the Order set so that they can actually, enthusiastically, jump headlong into being the Handsome Prince and His Lady if they get this stuff worked out, it's also not something she can, or probably should help with. Not this level of it.

"How about back to wedding planning? Do it at the second year festival?"

That gets Kylo and Rey back on her. They glance at each other.

"Will Jon look at me like I've just stabbed him in the back if I suggest doing both at once?" Kylo asks.

"Not if Mirina does most of the heavy lifting. And he's hoping to have diplomacy done in six months, not nine."

Rey squints. "That's cutting it closely, isn't it?"

Ellie shrugs a bit. "We'll make it work."

She and Kylo glance at each other, and also shrug.

"Now for the next bit of this, if we're hoping to do this as way to draw people to us, it also involves both of you being out and about more. I know for a fact that Kylo routinely gets invited to diplomatic sorts of things, and, as best I can tell, right now, the Order sends out polite refusals, indicating you're just vastly too busy for that sort of thing."

Kylo blinks. He didn't know that. He's now wondering if Jon's in charge of that, or if it's being fobbed off on someone below him, and if so, who does that?

"But, if you two were to start to attend them…"

"Wait, is this… different from the Alderaan thing?"

"Good question, Rey. Yes, it is. The 'Alderaan thing,' as you put it, is a formal envoy where we'll offer them a specific treaty. These gatherings are not informal, but the main reason for doing them is to get to know people, see who is out there, and build a stable of allies you can call upon should you need them. When we go to Alderaan, everything will be heavily scripted, and planned. We'll know every beat of the dance before we go, and we'll be in position to take over the tune when and as needed as well. With these sorts of meetings, you're mostly going to be seen and be known. There will be some sort of plan in place, but it will be a list of things one does, not a list of things one intends to accomplish."

Both Rey and Kylo blink at that.

"Alderaan and the like are the sorts of meetings one attends _after_ going to the sorts of parties I'm talking about. You'll begin to get a sense of who is out there, what they want, and how to offer our own skills and services in ways that will bring them into our sphere."

"Parties?" Rey asks.

"Well... Sort of. They'll likely have a name like 'summit' or 'collegium.' And people like Jon won't identify them as parties. But... Situations where you and other powerful people gather together, generally in a relaxed or playful sort of way, and get to know each other better. Important conversations can happen at these things, but generally they exist to get people into place so they can have important conversations, later."

"Dinners?" Kylo asks.

"Yes, much like what we did here. Some of them will be much fancier than others. Many of them will be built around 'fun' things, because the 'fun' thing is the draw, but the real reason to attend is to meet people and be seen. Some of them exist to talk and meet with people about pressing problems in the galaxy and how to solve them. So, you go, sit, listen in on different lectures and presentations, and then talk and mingle. If you're looking to get into the problem-solving business, those are likely the sorts of things you'll want to attend the most of."

Kylo and Rey don't exactly wince, but neither of them look enthusiastic.

Ellie thinks for a moment. "Before, when I was talking about balancing the book with the saber, I was talking about religious books, what about… art, literature, knowledge in general? Could that be part of your ideal of the values of the Order?"

Kylo and Rey glance at each other. Rey nods a bit, and Kylo does, too. "That could be, what's got you thinking in that direction?"

"Well, they're not _all_ pressing problems of the galaxy. We can send you off to summits on art, music, literature, and the like. You can visit libraries and temples to information."

"Cinema?" Rey asks.

"I'm sure there has to be things like that. They have festivals for food, wine… Culture. Is that more the sort of thing you two can go to, be seen, and not look like someone's holding you at blaster point?"

Kylo quirks a bit of smile. "It's significantly more likely."

"That would blend well with the everyone is welcome at the Order idea," Rey says. "We go, soak up other cultures, invite them to come and join ours."

"I like that," Ellie says. "We can arrange for that to be a good deal of you being out and about, but it likely can't be all of it.

"Part of the idea of the Handsome Prince and His Lady is both of you being walking advertisements for the Order. Which means people need to _see_ you. That sort of festival or function can take care of that.

"However, from a straight diplomacy sense…" She sips her tea and back tracks. "Okay, there are several ways to deal with problems. Previous to you taking over, Kylo, the First Order dealt with problems by shooting them. This is effective but not necessarily where you want to go. Since then, we've dealt with all of our problems in house. This can, also, be effective, but it's limiting. The best mind to conquer the job may not be wearing an Order uniform, and if that's the case, right now, we're just out of luck. So, part of why you go to these things is so you can meet people, so when problems arise, or opportunities, you know who to call to see about fixing them."

"Networking?" Kylo remembers his mother talking about that.

"Very much so."

"And this is the sort of thing the Prince's Lady specializes in?" Rey asks. "And… we're selling solutions, or at least a place and security so people can come to their own solutions, so we show up at things like the all the problems in the galaxy meetings and… make it clear that we can… fix things?"

"Often. How are you with languages?"

Kylo winces, but Rey looks pleased.

"She's amazing." That pleases her, too. "I'm…" he rolls his eyes, "okay at reading and understanding a half dozen common languages, but only accomplished in Galactic Standard, and mediocre at speaking anything else."

"Good, Rey. The ability to speak in whatever the native tongue is, and blend into the mode of their cultures, that, too can be a status symbol. A sign of feminine power. Part of tolerance and welcome, is that we'll put the effort in to make ourselves match local mores." Ellie smiles a bit. "And of course, like you did with the K'Aran, you can… offer your own particular twist on the situation."

"Balanced power?" Rey asks. She may have looked like a K'Aran woman, as much as her body could, but she didn't exactly act like one.

"If you so desire. There's nothing that says you have to be a paragon of _just_ feminine power. It's… Well, Kylo's not exactly the image of feminine power, at least not how most of the human societies in this galaxy understand it, and he's done such a good job of burning the ideal of Master Ren, who will come down and personally eviscerate anyone who attempts to hurt him or his into the conscious of the galaxy, I don't think it's ideal to try and temper that by having both of you seek a balanced power position. That said, there's no reason the Order can't or shouldn't be primarily masculine power coded."

"Or that's part of why Jon's got an actual job," Kylo says.

"Or you can fob more of the job of feminine-coded power plays toward Jon. He'll be good at it."

"Except the parts he won't be?" Rey asks. "You said…" Rey remembers Ellie talking about the bits of feminine power that Jon couldn't get into by virtue of his sex and rank.

"Yes. There are parts he's not ideally suited for, but that's nothing we need him to do. And that's not really part of what we're talking about here. This is, how we build an image to give people an idea of what it is we're doing." Ellie taps her cup. "Everyone is welcome, sentients are the only thing in the galaxy that really matter, we're here to provide anyone who wants it a chance at their good life…"

Kylo and Rey are nodding along with that.

"At the rate we're opening them now, just for starters, every single recruiting station should get visited by at least one of you. That's where you get people, so that's where you should be going. Eventually, they'll be spread too far to effectively do that, but right now, that's a bedrock sort of thing.

"You should be regularly visiting the training camps, and your other ships."

"Schiff says that it annoys people to have the Boss on ship," Kylo adds, the idea of touring all of his ships is something he's toyed with in the past, but didn't move on.

"It often does, so you make sure they've got a lot of notice ahead of time so they can spruce everything up. Still, go. Talk to people. Be interested. Don't kill anyone unless you're certain everyone around them wants them gone."

"Visit all of the planets under the Order?" Rey asks.

"You have the idea, but that's not doable. Any new ones joining up, absolutely go to," Ellie adds.

"Why not doable?" Kylo asks.

Ellie blinks slowly, and then it's her turn to rub her lips together, looking embarrassed. "Kylo, do you… know what we've done to probably at least two thirds of the planets we control?"

Both he and Rey wince, hard. _Hays Minor._ Neither of them knows for sure which of the two of them thought it first.

"C8?" Kylo calls out.

A moment later the droid is in their room. "Yes, sir?"

"I need a report listing the all the planets that have ever been under our control, and what we've done with and to them, and… probably some sort of suggestions for how to… apologize for it, if possible."

Ellie's shaking her head. "Don't even try. Focus on the ones that are still habitable. You killed the person who gave the orders that destroyed the other planets, that's all the apology that needs to happen."

C8 waits patiently. He doesn't take orders from Ellie.

"Just get me the list of planets and what we did to them."

"Yes, sir. I'll put it on your desk when I get it."

"Thank you, C8."

The droid's almost out of their rooms, when Rey's got an idea, "C8…"

"Yes, Lady."

"Make sure that report covers how people are treated there, and if they're part of the Order citizen class…" She looks to Ellie. "You said as long as his men aren't starving, the man at the top is allowed his pleasures. Are the people living on those planets considered part of Kylo's men?"

Ellie's mouth opens, and then closes. "If you'd be willing to copy Pat on that report, C8, I'd appreciate it."

C8 looks to Kylo, who nods.

"Done, Lady Kinear."

Ellie nods, and then turns to Kylo and Rey. "It's likely a good idea to do the research, see what's going on on those planets. We're so… focused on your ships, that they tend to get forgotten. I know they pay taxes, and… I know that the reason why so many of them aren't habitable any longer is that they were mined to their cores for supplies."

"Great," Kylo says quietly. "Mined to their cores for supplies, and then blown to molecules when you and yours took out StarKiller."

Rey shrugs. "Not my fault Snoke let Hux build something big enough to suck all of the power of a star and turn it into a weapon. No sane person could let something like that continue to exist."

He kisses the back of her hand. _You aren't wrong._

Ellie adds in, "Visiting the habitable planets, and doing what we can to get them back to functional is another opportunity to show the galaxy how you aren't Snoke. How you and the Order are different from the First Order. It's a way to make people want to be part of this. The First Order came in and ruined things. The Order returns and puts them as close to back to right as possible."

"And somehow, we've got to pay for this. That's the boring report I was reading. Income projections for the free trade lanes." Rey raises an eyebrow, and Kylo shakes his head. "We make more on it than we spend to keep them up, but not as much as I'd like. Schiff tells me that the price we've got is the sweet spot, though. Raise it higher, and it makes running the blockade worth the risk. Which increases the cost of maintaining the blockade. Which means we make less money on it." He sighs, long and loud.

She and Ellie nod. "Yes, paying for all of this is always going to be an issue. So, perhaps, first and foremost, we aim for getting you to as many places where, first of all, they pay the expenses, and secondly, you get to meet people with problems, and offer them ways to fix those problems. For a price."

"How many of these things are there?" Rey asks.

"Smaller local ones, for say individual planets, we could probably hook you up with twenty a day, every day, for the rest of your life. Bigger ones, say for systems, or system alliances, there are likely a good two a month, and we'll see what we can do about getting you to all of them. Galaxy-wide ones are one to three a year, and you _will_ attend them."

"And we…"

"Go to them, look pretty, listen, and offer a place and time to make problems go away. Let them know that you have the biggest sword available, and by hiring yours they can put theirs away. Next year, when our diplomacy wing is fully into play, we'll see what we can do about hosting a few of these." Ellie sips her tea. "Especially if people see you starting to attend things like these, once those wedding invitations go out, people will also consider this an opportunity to see, be seen, network, and seek out alliances new and old. It'll be _good._ "

Kylo and Rey sort of look at each other, and back to Ellie, and back at each other. Finally, Rey says, "Good?"

Ellie nods, certain. "Good. Now, fun stuff, the book to go with the sword, how often do you think you'd like to do things like that?"

"How often could we?" Rey asks.

"I'm sure that we could set it up so that you did nothing but go to things like that. However many you want to attempt, we can get you to."

"Maybe we could… try a few… see if we actually like them, and then figure that out?" Rey asks.

Ellie's expression indicates that she thinks that's wise. "We can set that up. We can also see if we can cross-reference fun gatherings in places where you've got recruiting stations opening, and see if we can mesh that sort of thing together." Ellie taps her comm and records a quick note to make sure that gets taken care of. Then she makes another note to meet with Jon at some point to talk about putting 'fun, art stuff' on the diplomatic floors. She glances back to the two of them. "After all, if we seek it out, we should also offer it. This mammoth pile of metal could be a place of art and science and learning."

Kylo quietly says, "I think I'd like that."

Ellie offers him a gentle smile. Then she says, also quietly, "Was… Ben… a scholar?"

Kylo shrugs a bit. "Maybe. Sometimes. He liked books and plays and poems."

"Calligraphy," Rey says.

That triggers a memory for Ellie. "I haven't thought of this in a long time, but the Shoikan Knights… They were swordsmen and horsemen. Literal metal swords and…" It's clear neither of them know what a horse it. "Large quadrupeds that humans can ride. And, to be a properly accomplished knight, a man had to have mastery of the sword, of non-armed combat, of riding, philosophy, poetry, history, and at least one visual art. Bits of pottery and calligraphy survive, and are considered highly sought after collector's items."

Kylo pulls his datapad over and makes another note for himself to read up on that. "They balanced their fight with… making beautiful things?"

"That was the idea. I think. There was a fairly complicated philosophical grounding about balancing destruction with creation but I don't remember much of that."

"What happened to them?" Rey asks.

Ellie offers a tiny, tight half smile. "Horses and metal swords were no match for Stormtroopers. They fought long and hard and bravely. And they kept the Imperial Army busy for month, but in the end the Empire won. They worshiped a God-King, and he was executed by Imperial decree a decade before either of you were born. There were rumors that his grandchildren got out, and took the heart of their culture with them, but rumor's all that's been found of them. All that's left is ruins, books, a few bits of art, and the stories of survivors."

"Like Alderaan," Kylo says.

Ellie nods.

"Why did the Emperor go after them?" Rey asks.

"Because they would not bend to him. They didn't join the Republic, which wasn't an issue. Not really. They were willing to trade with members of the Republic, and allowed safe passage through their space. Then they wouldn't join the Empire, seeking the same deal. The Emperor was not impressed with that deal. He wanted it to be clear that there was no power above him, certainly not a self-named GodKing."

They're quiet after that, then Kylo says, "I don't want that." He's shaking his head. "I don't want it. I don't need it. That's… the exact opposite of who and what we're going to be. Whatever we need to do to make it clear that that's not us, that's what we're doing."

Ellie nods at that. "I'd say, the easiest way to make that clear is to, just, not do it. Don't conquer." A slow smile spreads across her face. "That said, I suppose, if we really do move into the sword for hire business people will wish to buy our services to conquer for themselves. I suppose it's possible that, for a small but appropriately sized fee, one could buy a contract from us guaranteeing that we won't take a contract from anyone else to engage in conquering for hire."

Rey and Kylo don't even have to check in with each other. That one's a no-go. "I'm pretty sure we don't take contracts to conquer for hire," Rey says.

Ellie's smile is gentle. "Of course not, dear. Trust me, they will never, ever come to us and say, 'We covet our neighbors lands and wealth, we'll pay you well to take it for us.' Any and everyone who comes to us will have good justifications. They always do."

Kylo sighs. "A place to negotiate, the ability to escrow goods, security for meetings, contract enforcement, and defensive military force."

"And as soon as you draw that line, someone will hire us, have us on their borders, attack the hell out of their neighbors, and then retreat behind us. They will find ways to manipulate you, or the situation. Either we take contracts from everyone, highest bidder gets the might, or we might as well not do it, because no one, not even you, have the brains and power to figure out the right side of every, or often, any conflict."

Kylo grits his teeth. "The Qualee."

"Exactly. Every action will ripple well beyond any possible way to see. People can buy our security. They can buy our neutrality. They can buy our forces if you like. But if you start picking and choosing who to work with things are going to get out of hand very quickly. Highest bidder wins may not be the most ethically pleasant situation, but it is clean. It's true that everyone can't get credits, but it's also true that _anyone_ can, and especially if you offer a good price to not take contracts against people, that'll be the easiest way to sort them out. If they need us badly enough, they'll find the credits."

"This is not where I expected our afternoon to go," Rey says.

"I think it was useful, though," Ellie says. "We've all got a somewhat more concrete idea of what the eventual Palace of the Order looks like, so that helps. And we've got more of a plan in place to make sure that when those wedding invitations go out, getting one will be a status symbol, and attending an even bigger one."

"So, what happens next?" Rey asks.

"Next," Ellie replies. "I have a feeling we'll be meeting with Mirina to get more of an idea of how this looks. We'll make sure Jon's got a heads up to start getting you two out and about more. And, of course, you and I, and General Threepio, I think, will be attending Alderaan the week after next, so we'll be getting ready for that."

"And… I'm not part of any of that, right?" Kylo says.

Ellie nods. She also checks her chrono. "I don't mean to rush, but…"

"Go," Rey nods to the door, and Kylo, vaguely remembering something from childhood, stands up and walks her out.

When he's back, he sits next to Rey, and says, "I don't mind not really being involved with the formal wedding stuff."

She rolls her eyes. "Were you just hovering in the back of my head listening to everything?"

" _Really boring._ And… sort of. You're vastly more interesting to me than income projections, especially ones that aren't as high as I want them to be."

She smiles at that. "What if I want you to be?"

"Then I will, but… I have a feeling Mirina and Ellie will just glare at me for being somewhere I don't belong."

"And you've had enough stern women glare at you for a lifetime?"

"By the time I was seven." He squeezes her hand. "I do want to be part of whatever it is we do for our family. That one matters to me."

She nods at that. "Good." They're both quiet for a beat. "When do you want to do it?"

He opens and closes his mouth. "Uh… Shit. I…" A small, long ago thought wanders into his mind. "It's customary for people to take some time off after a wedding. Go off, do fun stuff. How about we get the monster out of the way, take a few days to collapse and recuperate, and then do the one for us?"

She thinks about that, and then kisses him. "Nope. Let's put ourselves and our loves first, do the fun one when we're fresh and rested and then take a few days, rest up, and go take care of the monster."

He grins at her. "I like that."


	40. The Queenmaker

3/22/2

Technically, General Threepio is not on the list of diplomats getting a copy of the New Alderaan Non-Aggression treaty.

That lasted exactly .00098 seconds, which is the amount of time it took him to find out that he was not on the list of diplomats getting a copy of the New Alderaan Non-Aggression treaty. Then his name went to the top of the list of people not just getting a copy, but who had to sign off on it as well.

Which is a good thing, because some idiot, and he's got an awfully good idea of who the idiot in question is, formally relinquished the use of the name Ben Organa-Solo as a bid to sweeten the deal. Likely because said idiot, hating that name, didn't consider letting it go to be any sort of issue.

But said idiot is bloody well keeping a hold of that name, at least if Threepio has anything to say about it, and since he promoted him to General to do things exactly like this, he's damn well got a say in it.

* * *

3/24/2

"Master Ren."

Kylo is beyond surprised to see Threepio in his office. He not only can't imagine why he's here, but he also can't read it off the droid. His thoughts are moving much to fast for Kylo to get a sense of anything beyond annoyance.

"General…"

"I've modified the treaty Rey taking to New Alderaan."

That's… well, he likely should have expected something like that. New Alderaan is the sort of thing that would have gotten Threepio's attention.

"Okay… Modified it how?"

"Struck the paragraph formally rescinding your birth name."

Kylo blinks at him, and the annoyance coming off of him now mirrors the annoyance coming off of Threepio, but he tries to rein it in. He has Threepio here for a reason, so… "I don't want the name. It's not mine… It's… not me. And she thought so little of it, she bargained away my birthright claim, so… why keep the name?"

Again, Kylo can't, or at least shouldn't, be able to feel Threepio, but he gets a sense of exasperation off the droid.

"Do you know when your mother signed that treaty, the one where she relinquished her birthright and supposedly yours?"

"No."

Threepio fiddles around with his datapad for a moment and then pulls up the agreement. "Check the date."

He's pulled up a copy of the document where Leia Organa, Princess of New Alderaan gave up her claim to both the throne and her, and more importantly for this discussion, his, royalty. There is a date on it, he recognizes it, but… It doesn't mean anything to him. It's just a day, shortly after the Concordance celebrations of ABY 23.

"I don't get why it matters."

More exasperation off of Threepio. Kylo can feel that if he could roll his eyes, he'd have them so far back he'd be looking at his brain... central processing unit… whatever is in the inside of his head.

Which is annoying Kylo to no end. "Look, pretend for a moment that you are aware of the fact that my mother tossed me aside like her democratic principals as soon as I became inconvenient, and that I did not spend my childhood learning how to do this political stuff, and that this date doesn't mean anything to me. It's not my birthday. It's close, but… Three days after my eighteenth birthday on a treaty I wasn't consulted about," and he's still angry about that, because it was his fucking birthright she signed away, "means nothing to me."

"She did not throw you away," Threepio hisses.

Kylo wasn't aware Threepio could even make that sound. "Uh huh… You know what I've noticed since I've let people know what my birth name is? Ben Solo didn't vanish at the age of twenty-two; he vanished at the age of eight. Poe, her personal security, didn't know who she was visiting. Barely knew I existed. These Organas… They didn't know I was still alive because the last time they heard anything about me was when she signed that paper, five years before I defected from Luke. So, don't give me any bantha shit about not being thrown away."

"She was protecting you!"

Kylo slams his fist against his desk, glaring at Threepio. "Not from anything I needed to be protected from!" He's about to leap up and push the droid back, hit him, too, because there's so much of his mother coming off of Threepio right now. But Threepio won't stand for that. Do it once, and he'll leave, and he needs what Threepio can offer. Like useful advice on fucking New Alderaan. Kylo bites his lip, makes himself look away, makes himself settle back into his chair. His voice is sharp, hard, but calmer when he continues, "Now, because her idea of 'protecting' didn't involve me being trained in skills I'd sorely need, like, for example, whatever the fuck it is you're trying to draw my attention to without outright saying it, I don't know what you want me to see. So, stop being a shaft and just tell me."

He absolutely knows that Threepio would blink if he could. He just stands there for a moment, shocked.

"Stop looking stunned. You're fluent in over six million forms of communication, I know for a fact you understood what I just said to you."

"No one's ever called me a shaft before."

Kylo snorts. "Stop acting like one, and I won't do it again." Then he sniggers, quietly, and thinks to himself, dildo.

Do I really want to know what's going on? Rey thinks back to him.

Probably not. I didn't mean to project that.

Ah… I'll let you get back to it then.

Thanks. If I remember, I'll tell you about it later.

Uh huh… Dildo jokes…

Yeah… Just another day with General Threepio.

He feels her giggle a little, seeing how he must have come up with that, and then her mind recedes from his.

"If you're done communing with Mistress Rey..."

Kylo mentally glares at himself. He has not, as of yet, apparently mastered not making it clear when he's chatting with Rey. "Yes, I am. What's the point of this date?"

"It is, as you noticed, close to, but not your birthday."

He nods. "Yeah. Three days later. Was she tied up in some Concordance celebration, couldn't get out of it, so signed this after? Her last to-do as Princess Leia?" He really wishes that less sarcastic vitriol colored that last sentence, but it did, and he can't take it back, so…

"She certainly explained it like that. And they certainly understood it that way. Likely because they didn't know your birthday. If they had, they would have demanded she sign immediately."

"Great. I still don't get why the fact that this was signed three days after I turned eighteen is important."

"It matters, Prince Ben, because, on Concordance Day, ABY 23, you turned eighteen, making you, by the laws of Alderaan, legally an adult. Which meant, that as of Concordance Day, ABY 23, your mother was no longer your legal guardian, and no longer had any standing to sign anything for you, let alone relinquish your right to the throne of Alderaan. The day you turned eighteen, you were legally the second in line for the throne of Alderaan, and when your mother abdicated her position, it was after you were legally an adult, meaning you are legally the legitimate heir to the throne of Alderaan, and she bloody well did it intentionally."

Kylo blinks at that. "I… didn't know."

Threepio's more or less vibrating with well you should have but he doesn't say it.

Kylo feels his eye twitch. "Really? How? I didn't know about that treaty until after it was signed. She certainly didn't mention it to me. Luke kept us away from the news. You knew about it and apparently never thought to wander over to Luke's and say anything to me about it. Snoke told me about it, and you can bet he enjoyed that. And on top of that, again, no one ever thought that it would be even remotely useful for me to learn things like when you legally became an adult in Alderaanian society, let alone what that might have had to do with me." He's glaring again, at the mental image of his mother, who he finally, after three days, got on the holo, so he could righteously yell at her about this. She's looking annoyed at him because he was yelling at her about it. Then concerned. That's utterly obnoxious, deep, anxious concern when she realized that there was no way he should have been able to know about the contract, because no one within a light year of him knew about it.

He looks up at Threepio, annoyed at him, too. For acting like he wasn't part of this. Not like he was some sort of innocent bystander. Chewie at least owns up to the fact that he had a hand in the disaster that was Ben's childhood. If Threepio's even aware of the idea that he had a hand in it, he's keeping it hidden. "I've never seen New Alderaan. Remember? Not like it was my summer home as a child. She kept me so far out of things; I didn't know I was Prince Ben until I was eighteen. Until it was gone. All those years… I mean, I knew she was Princess Leia, and I knew she was from Alderaan, but that was ancient history, and… It wasn't anything real. It didn't matter. She was Senator Organa, and that was that, and Alderaan was just… a thing that died a long time before I was born. And suddenly, it's not, I'm actually Prince Ben, and there's this whole planet I should have a birthright too. That I should have memories of. That I should have known. A history and culture and life that never more than brushed against mine, but it should have been mine.

"And it was gone before I ever got to even get to know it, and the only thing she could muster when I was angry about it was annoyance and fear that I'd somehow found out about it."

Threepio cocks his head a bit. "How did you find out?"

"I learned it because Snoke was in my head, taunting me about how my mother didn't think I was good enough to be trusted with that. How I was too dark, too unstable, too evil for it. How she denied me my birthright, because she didn't think I was fit for it. And, maybe if the bloody thing hadn't been hidden from me my whole life, I might not have believed it, but you know what, when no one ever tells you anything, it's really hard not to believe the one person who is saying something." His teeth are gritted, and he's breathing harder than he'd like. And he almost, almost wishes Threepio would tell him that he had it wrong, that that's not why she kept him out of things.

But he doesn't. Instead he says, "Then I'm saying it, now. Monarchs in Alderaan are chosen from a collection of people with a blood claim, who then go on to complete the Day of Demand trials. As of right now, you have the strongest blood claim to the throne of Alderaan of anyone living. Your claim was not relinquished when you were eighteen, and you are not giving it up."

"Why not? I don't want it." Eighteen-year-old Ben wanted it desperately. He craved the idea of a place that wasn't Luke's school. Somewhere he could maybe be good at something. But Ben is, as much as he can be, dead, and Prince Ben isn't so much dead as something that never existed, so... He sees no need to cling onto it.

"Too bad. Names have power. Blood has power. You never know when this may come in handy, and if not for you personally, then for your children. So, you will bloody well keep your name and your title, and we are going to make it clear that you are the legitimate heir of the Alderaanian people."

Kylo blinks again. "You're angry."

Threepio steps a bit closer and leans toward Kylo. And right here, right now, sitting at his desk with Threepio standing over him, eyes wide and unblinking, he's almost imposing. "Of course, I'm angry! They stole it from your mother. They had no right, no cause, no… anything. But because of the poison that was your grandfather's name, they neutered her ability to do any good. Once they smeared her with the taint of Vader, claimed she was a fraud and a liar for using her own name, hinted that she wasn't stable enough for the job, she lost her power and credibility in the Senate. They used him to take her down, and to make themselves more powerful. And before three years were out, Snoke was rising, rising fast and steady, because she was no longer in a position to rally people to take him out."

Kylo inclines his head. "Sounds like Snoke. Whispered the right bit of intel in the right ear. Added a bit of motivation to the right people. After all, he never forgot Vader and who his children were."

Kylo's fairly sure that Threepio would narrow his eyes if he could, but he can't, so that's that.

Kylo nods to him. "Strike the paragraph. Now tell me this. I'm sending Rey in with a non-aggression treaty, that's apparently also cementing my formal claim as a—"

"The"

"legitimate heir to the Alderaanian throne, while at the same time refusing them proof of my parents. This feels like I'm making things stupidly complicated for her."

That appears to be a concern that Threepio thinks may be warranted. He straightens back up, thinking about it, before saying, "I'm going with her, and so is Lady Kinear. By the time we get into orbit, Rey will be ready for anything and everything."

Kylo nods at that, and spends another minute just feeling Threepio. He's been a person so long; he really is starting to feel like one. Eyes closed, Kylo would know he's not organic, but… He's certainly, at least on any level that matters, alive.

And living things have wants and needs. What is Threepio trying to do with this? It's not just… holding onto the past. Names have power.

"You want my daughter on that throne."

Threepio's head jerks in a way that tells Kylo he wasn't expecting that comment. "I want the throne of Alderaan back where it belongs, in the hands of the Organa line."

There's something else there, deeper, less well formed, moving too fast, and Kylo can't grab it, so he moves with what's on the surface. "Why? We're talking about a child who doesn't even exist. Who might never exist."

Threepio just looks at Kylo, and it's clear that he absolutely believes that one day there will be a dark-haired baby girl who will go by the name of Ren, though he'll call her Princess. "It's the least I could possibly do for your mother. Give her back what was stolen."

There's an image, and for a moment, Kylo thinks it's Leia. Young, dark hair, fine features… Curling hair… Loose, curling hair… Fine, resplendent gowns… Not Leia.

His eyes narrow. "Are you thinking of… That's my grandmother, right?"

"Are you actually reading my thoughts?" Threepio sounds very startled at that.

"Are you actually thinking of Padme Amidala?"

"Yes."

"Then, yes, I must be. Congratulations, you're a person."

Threepio looks unsettled by that.

Kylo would be unsettled by Threepio's image of Padme, but the possible future for his child matters more than whatever's going on with the droid and his dead grandmother. "I don't want people scheming behind the scenes, using my children as puppets."

Threepio looks relieved to be on the future and off the past, too. "Then you best not have any, because that's going to be the only way to avoid that fate. Since I put the odds of you and Mistress Rey not having children at one in 3,756,383,027, I might as well scheme in a direction that's to their benefit."

"Would it be? You have no idea where this child might come up. It's possible I'll be stable and well-adjusted in comparison."

Speaking of sounds Kylo wasn't aware Threepio could make, the little snort of derision that prefaces: "I doubt that highly. Between the lack of Snoke and Rey, your children should be stable enough to at least figurehead a functional government," is at the top of the list.

Kylo blinks at that. "Is that supposed to be reassuring?"

"I'd assume you'd find it so."

Kylo thinks about that for a moment, too, and then says, "You're really quite good at subtle insults."

Threepio's voice is Tatooine dry as he replies, "Most people would have found that about as subtle as your shaft comment."

"Ah." Kylo sits back. "Anything else?"

There's a pause, long for an electronic mind. Not for an organic one. Then Threepio says, "Not now."

"Good. Before you head off to New Alderaan, have Jon set you up with a uniform. If you're going, General, you might as well look the part."

Threepio nods, and heads off.

* * *

"Are you still in your office, Jon?" Threepio asks over his comm.

Jon looks at the pile of datapads in front of him before saying, "For the next twenty years, General."

"Ah…" Threepio responds. "I've been told I need to talk to you about laying hands on an Order uniform before joining the New Alderaan delegation."

Jon does not grit his teeth or moan at that. "Technically, no longer my department, but I'm on very good terms with the person whose department it is."

"Yes, of course." Threepio did in fact know that, but he was ordered to see Jon, and well… He's not exactly proud of this, but he's still annoyed at Kylo and his attitude toward Leia, so, like any sentient droid with an attitude, he's perfected the art of following orders exactly, and annoying the shit out of people by doing it.

"Come on down… up? I'm up from you, aren't I?"

"Yes, Jon."

"Great, it'll be a long night, bring food for three… You don't eat… two."

"Any specific sort of food?"

"Em and I are easy. Surprise us."

Threepio isn't thrilled by that idea, but he figures he can 'surprise them.' He's less sure about it being a pleasant surprise. "It might be a better idea to hold off on surprises until you are talking to someone who does eat?"

"Just make sure you buy it from somewhere on the F-Deck, and it'll be fine."

"That's not wildly reassuring."

Jon smiles. "You'll do fine." Then he pauses, and thinks. Threepio doesn't eat. "Have you ever… bought anything before? I mean, like at a stall, not signed an order to get 50,000 tons of plastcrete delivered to the right place at the right time."

"I've never purchased anything at a food cart before. I have organized and paid for entire banquets in the past."

"Do you have a credit account with us?"

"Yes, I am fully set up as a member of the staff here." It's not like Threepio actually does anything with money, but… He's a General so he's being a general and Generals get both paid and good accommodations. He's got a very nice apartment that he makes sure to go visit at least once a week, though he doesn't exactly have a very good idea of what to do when he's there, and an account that's piling up credits rather quickly, because he doesn't buy anything.

"Great. Your treat then. By the time you get up here, Em and I'll have at least the start of an idea of what we need to do to make a uniform work for you." Jon thinks for a moment about that, too. "Do your ankle joints bend?"

"I have a forty-five degree range of motion in my ankles."

"That's a yes, but not well. Okay… Uh… toes?"

"I do not have toes. Why would that be important?"

"Just figuring out what I've got to do to cut trousers so we can get them onto you."

* * *

He's staring at the bag with the food in it. It's looped, awkwardly, over his wrist. That's pretty much the only way he can carry it. His fingers don't do well with holding things that are heavier than a few hundred grams, the metal surfaces mean that most things don't have enough friction to stay put, and the strength he can muster will crush most delicate things if he's trying to keep them from slipping against his metal finger tips. (Attempting to use his credit stick is a trial unfit for any sentient. He can hold it, but it's made of a perfectly smooth plexiplast that's thinner than he can easily get his fingers together. Luck was with him, and he didn't drop it, and did get it into the payment slot, but it wasn't easy. Artoo's extendable dataprobe makes a lot of sense to Threepio right now.)

Threepio sighs at it. More and more these days, as his job evolves and shifts, and he does… people stuff… the physical limitations of his current body are becoming more annoying.

Artoo tells him to just chuck it and upload himself into a new body. It'd likely take less than an hour all told, and then he could be… Well, depending on the body, almost indistinguishable from the humans around him.

Given the resources at his current disposal, he could have the highest tech, most secure, most lifelike chassis on the market. No one even audits his account statements, at least, not so much as he can tell. (Not that that matters, his accounts are scrupulously kept, and when he's found people under his command who haven't done so, they've rapidly left his command. It does make him mildly uncomfortable that he doesn't know what happens to them after he's called the Order Security Services on them for embezzling, but… Not so uncomfortable as to check.) But, if he wanted to, he could requisition the funds for a really good upgrade, and it's likely no one would ever notice.

Except, of course, when he walked into his next meeting, and… well… walked. Instead of his current jerky shuffle.

He's idly wondering about how much processing he'll have to add to have proper locomotion. He'd definitely need to upgrade his primary processing cores if he upgrades the body. Just keeping all the parts moving the way he'd need them to would completely shoot his current processor to bits.

But… again… He could do it. It's not like he's got to stay tied to this body.

* * *

This ship is too bloody big.

That's the primary thought going through Threepio's mind as he's gotten himself (slowly, with a lot of grumbling from some of the passengers behind him) seated on the tram, and is running across the deck.

The secondary thought is that, yes, higher functionality of knees and hips and whatnot really would be useful if he's stuck in a job that requires multiple daily commutes over and over and over.

Which brings up the tertiary thought, And, since he's not planning on leaving… (His eyes would narrow at that if they could, and speaking of odd thoughts to be having within one's head, the ideas of what expressions he'd be expressing if he had a face that could express, is on the top of the list.) because, apparently, when he wasn't looking, he got fairly comfortable doing this General thing, and now he's sort of attached to it, and while he might enjoy being able to tweak Ben with the idea of leaving, he's not, actually, going to. At least not if the status quo remains.

And under, and behind, all of those thoughts, is Kylo's comment about being too dark and too evil and the extremely open and begging look on his face. Even Threepio could read how badly he wanted to be told that he misunderstood the situation.

Threepio certainly can lie. He's not particularly good at it. But, if needs be, he can spin a whopper. But, in this particular case he didn't see any need to layer a comforting lie onto Ben's psyche. He was too dark, and too unstable, and too prone to temper fits to be allowed anywhere near the idea of Prince Ben. Snoke, apparently, got that one dead on.

There was no way a woman who lost her world, her literal world, to a Force-mad darksider would ever let her own, potential, Force-mad darkside within a lightyear of any real power. And New Alderaan, in the years when Prince Ben could have been the darling baby boy and the poster child for the image of a new start, would have adored a new little mascot to rally around and hang their future on.

They would have lapped up the whole thing, if Leia could have been roped into it. An actual royal family, again. Their Princess, now a Queen, a hero in her own right, and maybe not the image of her mother, but the feel of her, calm, collected, working for the good of Alderaan. And maybe they wouldn't have known, exactly, what to do with Han, but… he was, when he worked at it, charming, and people will forgive a charming rogue, especially their charming rogue, a whole lot. Add in a pleasantly tempered, plump and adorable toddler with black curls and big brown eyes… Yes, the image of it… The fiction.

New Alderaan would have adored it.

Prince Ben, if he'd been… more stable… Less likely to burst into fits of temper… More… Less… Kylo. If he'd been Ben… They would have, as best they could have, given him all the power he could have wanted, and he could and maybe would have turned that, like his mother, into a Senate seat, and from there, maybe like Palpatine, he might have turned that Senate seat into trouble.

And until Luke could fix Ben, there was absolutely no chance of that happening, and that was that.

But Ben wouldn't fix. The dark didn't go away. And…

And now he's here, in the service of Master Ren, on a ship that's too bloody big, in search of a General's uniform, because…

Because maybe the universe needed someone really dark and twisted to actually fight Snoke.

And maybe if there had been a Prince Ben, one who took that power and used to to make a new Empire, the Hosnian system would still be around.

Because, and of this Threepio is sure, if there had been a Dark Prince Ben, and if he had shaped the senate to his will, there would not have been a shattered population scattered among the galaxy, waiting for Snoke to come and scoop them up.

And that's a line of thinking that Threepio finds distinctly uncomfortable.

* * *

Uniforms are, distinctly, uncomfortable, too.

Dinner has been supped. Sketches have been made. Jon does appear to really enjoy shucking off his reports and job responsibilities to sit back with Emily, and begin playing with this.

There are practical considerations to think of. Mostly, his arms do not fully extend. And they have the stabilizing pneumatic on each elbow bend. He cannot, on his own, do up the traditional hooks and eyes that are used to fasten Order uniforms. Likewise, he cannot, on his own, tie anything. His hands do not have the dexterity for that. Most fabrics will, unless fastened somehow (Em's thinking zippers or hookmesh pads) slip right off of his body. Anything they manage to keep on him has to keep his midriff clear, or else it will mess with his heat exhaust systems. And trousers need a wide enough pelvis and leg to get his feet through.

Jon's idly sketching something Em looked at, laughed, and then said, "Booty shorts and a midriff baring tube top, really?"

"I'll stick a giant Order hex right on the ass, put his general's stripes vertically on the hips, and it'll get the point across."

And both of them are practically rolling around on the floor they're laughing so hard.

Threepio knows there's got to be some context on that outfit, which, actually, looks the most functional of anything they'd sketched yet, but he doesn't know what it is. (Though, given the way they're wiping laugh-induced tears from their eyes, he assumes it's got to have something to do with sex. Humans only laugh like that when they're thinking about sex.)

* * *

Later that night, as they're settling into bed, Kylo says to Rey, "Apparently, Threepio's decided he wishes to be a Queenmaker."

She raises an eyebrow.

"The New Alderaan treaty. I'd tossed in a paragraph about formally giving up Ben Organa-Solo as my name, and he just about had a conniption. Apparently, my mom very carefully timed signing my birthright away so that I still have a birthright claim on New Alderaan, and Threepio very much does not intend to see us lose that."

"Because he wants to put… one of our children on that throne?"

"Apparently."

"Is that why you were calling him a dildo?"

Kylo smirks at that. "I was thinking that earlier, but… I told him he could strike the paragraph where I gave up my name, but… If you don't want our children to have that claim… I'm fully comfortable with calling him back in and putting that paragraph back in there."

She thinks about it. "I'm not sure I like the idea that some people are born kings or queens."

He nods along. "I understand that." Unspoken, but she can feel it, is the fact that he agrees, too. "I also understand that's part of the claim we're making with ourselves, prettying us up so we're not just the two people with the biggest navy."

After all, it's the Handsome Prince and His Lady.

"I know. And if we make too much of a stink about it, that undermines the story the Kinears are trying to spin for us."

"Yeah…"

"Why does this have to be so complicated?"

He stares at the ceiling. "I really don't know."

* * *

After the start of first shift, and even more designs, several of which that make the booty shorts and midriff baring tube top look like a respectable uniform for one of the highest ranked diplomats of the Order, Em says, "Gentlemen, if you'll allow me to be so bold," looking at the collection of crumpled sketches and half thought out ideas. "This is stupid as fuck. You may be a person, but you're going to look like an idiot in clothing designed for a human, because you aren't one. On top of that, we stick clothing on ourselves mostly to keep us warm and protected, neither of which you need."

"The Master told me…"

Jon's mid-waving that away as he presses the call button on his comm and keys in Kylo's code. A moment later they hear, "Jon?" Kylo's voice sounds sleepy, and it's occurring to Jon that maybe the Master isn't burning the midnight oil.

But, if he's got to burn it for this, then Kylo might as well, too. "Yeah. Okay, a uniform for Threepio, are you just pulling a shaft move and attempting to stamp a claim on him, or do you actually think it's important to try and stuff a 1.7 meter tall pile of gold into an Order uniform?"

Em's biting her hand, trying not to laugh, somewhat shocked at how Jon's asking it, and Threepio's about to have a mental breakdown at the idea of someone talking to Kylo like that.

They hear rustling, and the sound of someone, likely Kylo, shifting around. "He was annoying me. Bad idea?"

"Flamingly terrible. I can probably get some sort of badge of office and an Order Hex on him somewhere. Honestly, I'm thinking a nice, respectable arm band with the Order hex over his stripes. But he'll look… just… stupid… in a uniform."

"Yeah, fine. Great." They can hear Kylo fiddling with something on his end of the comm. Rey's voice, softly in the background, and then he says, "Do you think it matters that right now, no one going on this thing will be in uniform?"

"We will have an escort, Master," Threepio says.

They hear a sigh. "Threepio is with you, Jon?"

"Seems obvious now, doesn't it?" Jon's smirking a bit.

"You're an asshole."

"So, I've been told. Anyway, they'll be in an Order-branded ship, with Order-uniformed pilots, and Order-uniformed security, though none of them will be carrying weapons because that's part of visiting New Alderaan. That said, we will have enough City Killers just outside of the range of their scanners to obliterate anyone who tries anything untoward."

"Great," Kylo says, sounding mostly grumpy about being woken up. "General?"

"Master."

"As the only one of us who's been to New Alderaan, do you think it would be more impressive to go there wearing some sort of Order uniform, possibly an armband, or go there as you are, and as they remember you?"

That's a good question, and it's one reason why Threepio isn't immediately jumping for a new body. "I think, sir, that going as I am is likely the better course. Most anyone of any real power there will at least recognize me, and many of them know me, as well."

"Then do so. Likewise, you are allowed to tell me, to my face, if you think I've come up with a stupid plan, rather than following my orders to the letter, wasting the time of the people around you, and waiting for someone else to tell me it's a stupid plan."

"Noted, sir."

They hear Rey's voice again.

"Rey would like to make sure that the two of you are meeting tomorrow?" Rey's voice. "Today." Jon can feel Kylo glaring at him for waking him up in the middle of the night for this.

"With Lady Kinear, Mistress, to go over the particulars and set you up with the information you'll need to study beforehand."

They hear Kylo say, "You'll have homework, fun."

Again, Rey's muffled voice in the background.

"Anything else?" Kylo asks.

"No, I think we're set," Jon replies.

"Great. Good night. And Jon, unplug, call it quits, and take a break. It's late enough you shouldn't be in the office, either."

Jon rolls his eyes. "Yes, sir."

"Yeah, see, I already know you're lying to me."

"Yep. You going to do anything about it?"

"That's extremely unlikely. I could go ask Poe to check in on you."

"Now who's the asshole?"

Kylo laughs and comms off.

Threepio looks interested in that. It's starting to dawn on him what sort of interested in Poe Jon might be. "You asked me about Admiral Dameron before."

"I did." Jon looks nervous as he suddenly sees the trap that's laying at his feet.

"Dameron, is that short, dark, and handsome's last name?" Em asks.

Threepio chirps, "Admiral Poe Dameron, last commander of the Resistance. Second-in-command to Leia Organa. Hero of the battle of Starkiller Base. Black Leader. Formerly Commander Dameron of the Resistance, and previous to that Captain Dameron of the Navy of the New Republic."

Em's just looking at Jon, eyes boring into him.

Jon shrugs.

"Oh, do you fucking know how to pick 'em. Really?"

He rolls his eyes a bit. "Yeah, well…" He glares at Threepio.

"It would have come out eventually, Jon."

"Only if…" Only if they kept at this long enough for it to come out… Which certainly seems to be where Poe wants it to go, and… when he's not mentally freaking out at the idea, Jon does, too.

"Oh, it would have come out!" Em says. "I watch the way you moon around when he comes to visit. Your Dameron isn't stupid. He's figured out that this boy's middle name is 'love 'em and leave 'em,' so he's busy showing up to chat and have tea and play footsie under the table and then tease Jon into a puddle of goo and head off."

It's clear that if Threepio could blink, he would, but he can't, so… "That's likely more information than I needed on that subject."

"Stuff it. You were looking to stir up trouble, that's why you gave his former rank. While you're at it, Threepio, wanna tell where you're from?" Jon adds.

"Oh, honey, I know, remember? Film studies. Please, he's in a third of the propaganda videos I did my dissertation on," Em replies, smoothly. Having been born after the war, and well outside of any of the hot spots, most of this is… interesting… for her. It's something she could study. Not something she and anyone dear to her, lived.

Threepio cocks his head, and his voice makes it clear he's confused by Em's statement. "You studied… propaganda videos? And I'm in them? Wait… Do you mean the historic re-enactments?"

Em rolls her eyes. "Sure, you can call them that. Propaganda. That's the correct word. Anyway, you're in the background of a lot of the newsies footage, and in some of the re-created parts, too."

For once, Threepio's round, wide opened eyes are the right expression for the moment. "Propaganda!" he sounds horrified. "I'll have you know that—"

"Stuff it, General," Jon says. "Yes, I'm pulling rank on you. This is the wrong crowd to attempt to argue that all of your Rebels were pure as the light of the stars, and only in it for the good of the universe, and all the rest of that bantha shit. We've all seen the holos, and they absolutely are propaganda, designed to legitimize an illegal rebellion when a bunch of sore losers lost an election."

Threepio's livid. "That was not what happened. That election. Palpatine put the crisis into motion. He was behind the attacks that he then asked for troops to defend against, and then over the intervening years, he murdered most anyone who looked like they'd do a decent job of getting enough support in the Senate to take him out."

"That's not in any of the histories," Em says, sounding jaded. "And talk about missed opportunities for propaganda. That should have been in every history of the rise of the Empire, if it had ever really happened."

"I was there, girlie. I watched him do it." Which isn't exactly true. Padme was there. Anakin was there. He… meaning Artoo, overheard some conversations, and he's putting that together with a few things he does know about what happened later, and…

Em's supremely unimpressed. "And you didn't bring it up on the floor of the senate before the vote. You've got recording capability, right? So, boo hoo. If you've got information like that, and you sit on it, you're just as guilty as the guy who does the shit in the first place." Em is not at all uncertain about that in the least. "If you knew, and you did nothing, then it's as much on you as it is on him. So, you wanna try that story again? What did you actually see and know?"

Threepio's mentally cursing Bail. Artoo doesn't have proof. He's got a collection of overheard conversations and bits and pieces. And… He can see in Artoo's memories, based on where he is in those memories, that he's got to have more. He was there. But what he saw and heard is gone.

He does say, "After the vote. I knew it after the vote, not before. And by that point he had too much power."

"Oh, please! It's not in the propaganda films, or your historical recreations. It's not in your official Declaration of Rebellion. Your side did years worth of films of the injustices of the Empire. Any planet that looked even close to friendly to you got holovids of starving people being marched into slave labor on the farm planets, inter-spliced with fat, rich, slovenly Imperials chowing down on the food they produced. I've seen hours of footage of neighborhoods being cleared by fire to 'pacify the situation.' I compared and contrasted the top three Rebel filmmakers and how they built the images of the Rebellion as the moral high ground, but nothing, in any of those videos, is about the election being rigged. If you knew this, why isn't it in the footage? Your side figured starving people would win support but 'the Emperor was the guy who actually set up the crisis that got you all to vote him the power to put the crisis down' wouldn't? I don't know who fucked with your programming, General, but they did a number on you. If that happened, it would have been all over everything. That kind of scandal doesn't stay quiet, not if it's real." She's fiddling with her pad, not really looking at it, but keeping her hands busy as she talks, "Hell, just one defector from Palpatine's side could have made billions of credits by credibly showing proof of what happened. And you're saying none of them did it? Not one? Your Rebels couldn't turn a single one of them? Please. Even the Hux method couldn't beat people into perfect compliance, and Palpatine didn't have anything like that."

Threepio would be quivering with indignation if he could quiver. As it is, he's very, very still.

Em can… feel… probably, that she's metaphorically stepped on all of his toes, so she backtracks a bit. After all, the General does outrank her. "Look, I'm not saying you're lying, but you've got those memories, you did nothing with them, and no one else did, and that stinks like the garbage planets of the Rrelling Rim. The only person who benefited by none of that getting out was Palpatine, so you've got to wonder why it didn't get out."

Threepio bites out, "I do wonder that, all the time." Bail had… not proof, but two droids full of something very close to proof, and all the leads he needed to find proof. A… map to that one Imperial who could have been swayed with money and fame to break open the story. So, he blanked out the memory of one, and refused to use the other and…

According to Luke, no one is ever really gone, and right now he really wants to talk to Bail, to know… why. Bleeding, thrumming, screaming WHY?

Instead of that, he says, "I think the idea of the armband is probably a good one. When I get to New Alderaan, they will recognize me, but some mark of rank may be useful."

Em decides not to poke him further, and nods along. "Sure. A micromesh patch, we can use a mild adhesive on your arm, and that'll keep the band in place."

"That would be acceptable."

* * *

3/25/2

"Lady Kinear," Threepio says, as he comes up beside his… co-tutor… on all things diplomatic as they wait for the lift to take them from the F-Deck to Kylo's private suite.

"General," she says back to him as the doors open. She steps in first, inserts her ID chit, and he presses the button that grants them access to the AAA-Deck. She glances over to him. "I think, the thing I miss most about living on a planet, is weather. I can't just say to you, 'lovely day we're having' or 'I hope the heatwave breaks soon.'"

Threepio's never thought of that, though he does nod. "I have 78 million variations on the theme of that conversation in more languages than you can imagine in my databanks. It's a very common way of starting up a friendly conversation. So, are you hoping to engage me in friendly conversation?"

"It occurs to me that… our time with Rey will likely go more smoothly if she's not wondering if we're about to start fighting."

"We're never about to start fighting, Lady. I just don't trust you, nor do I think Rey should."

"Why? I know you have our records in your databases. There's nothing in there to make you unsettled."

"You and your husband owe primary allegiance to clan Kinear, first, last, and always. Anything and everything else can go by the wayside in the furtherance of your family."

"And that's different from your devotion to clan Organa, how?"

"Among other things, I didn't join Snoke, and I haven't personally murdered anyone to keep my secrets safe."

Ellie smirks a bit at him. "But would you? I'm sure you've got an override in there, that makes it so that not only won't you kill anyone, but you'll never even think of it. Try. Contemplate a murder, see what happens."

"I do not—" And now she's got him thinking of it… He wants to curse under his breath. He can't do it. He's mentally incapable of even beginning to plan something like that.

"Exactly," she smirks a bit at that, too. "It's easy to take the moral high road when you literally cannot even fathom setting foot upon the low one. In the meantime, me and mine… We keep them safe, no matter what, and these days, Kylo and Rey are part of mine."

"Until they decide to do something you don't approve of."

"Which should be a consolation to you, because if I don't approve of it, you likely won't, either. You are, after all, a creature looking to create a stable and functional governing body set to protect those who join it, correct? We want that, too, for our children, and grand children, and great grand children."

"You want to rule it."

Ellie shrugs a bit. "Not personally, and not this generation, and likely not the one after. In fifty to a hundred year, maybe. Besides, since when have you been against desiring to rule something. You've worked with a Prince Consort, a Princess, a Senator, and the commanding General of a Resistance. For the last fifty years, you've been next to power, and for most of it appeared to have no qualms about it."

Threepio's quiet for a moment, as they continue downward. "Not just functional and stable, Lady Kinear. I think that is the biggest difference. It's not enough that the borders are safe from raiders and the currency sound. There has to be more than that."

"Kylo is offering more."

"I know. I do not trust that a Kinear dynasty would, though. Not for anyone not named Kinear."

Ellie smiles at him, but her eyes are sharp. "How little you know, General. How little you know. But, I will point this out, it's only in a place where the border are stable, where goods and currency can flow without or with only minimal fear of raiders, where homes can be left during the day, their owners sure that when they come back, they'll still be standing, that you can begin to move onto bigger and better things.

"And, whether you agree or not with the side we backed, the Empire was all about getting that groundwork into place so they could move to bigger and better things. And yes, in your beloved Alderaan, which had been that kind of place for centuries, the work necessary to pacify those who would steal, rape, kill and destroy seemed barbaric, but in places where the locals could finally leave their homes and be sure they were still there when they got back—"

"You and yours burned a lot of homes of people who had nothing to do with the problems in your enthusiasm for 'pacification.' The Emperor wanted nothing more than power for himself and trampled anyone who got in the way, looked like they might get in the way, or were located near someone who might get in the way."

"The Emperor was not immortal, General, and we had plans for what came after."

"Which is exactly why I'm wary of Clan Kinear. Kylo and Rey are not immortal either, though apparently you and the Grand Marshall appear to be. Who knows where your plans will go once they're no longer in the game?"

Ellie laughs at that. "Fear not, General, we've got maybe a decade left, probably less."

Threepio is silent for a moment, checking his rosters. "You have twenty-two descendants in the Order now, or Order adjacent spaces."

"All the more reason to trust me, then. I'm motivated to make sure the Order thrives and survives." The lift slows its downward trajectory. "And we're just about here," Ellie says.

"Indeed."

* * *

Rey's in a better mood about… well, everything, by the time the meeting is getting ready. She's still not relishing moving, but the kids are enthusiastic about trying somewhere new (or maybe just not having to dig out from the snow again) and that helps. (Granted, she's also not fond of having to dig out, and this morning, with a fresh twenty centimeters on the ground, and temperatures so cold those twenty centimeters were sheer powder, meaning they just slipped right back onto the ground after being lifted up, resettling somewhere warm is tickling her fancy, too.)

She's in the not remotely a throne room right now. Right now, it's mostly just empty, though she understands there are plans to put some plants in there, and some sort of path, maybe a reflecting pool and fountain.

She'd been thinking of meeting in either Kylo's office, or their room, but he's in the office with the men he calls 'the numbers wonks' so she's out here, not disturbing them. (Or as Kylo put it, 'I have a hard enough time following the numbers when I don't have my favorite person sitting next to me chatting in my head. There's no chance at all of me following along if you're there to help me amuse myself.' That seemed relevant to Rey, so she's in the not-a-throne-room.)

She's a bit surprised to see Ellie and Threepio come down together. And they look a bit surprised to see her out here. They don't say anything though, and join her, overlooking the galaxy spinning around beyond them.

"Do you know where New Alderaan is?" Rey asks Threepio.

He looks out for a moment, running the images in his head against what's in front of his face. "We're not correctly situated to point New Alderaan out. It's behind us. Alderaan, though," he gestures to a bit of space that looks like every other bit of space. "Thirty-seven years ago, it would have been there."

Rey nods. "Okay. So… I go with the non-aggression treaty, where we formally declare that we've got no interest in doing anything remotely harmful to New Alderaan. Buried in that treaty are the seeds of you," she's talking to Threepio, "formally setting up a potential Queen Ren of Alderaan one of these days."

Ellie doesn't look satisfied or smirk. She doesn't let her pleasure at that get to her face. There or not, Threepio does not, for an instant miss how she reacts to that news. Nor does Rey.

"Am I correct in assuming that Queen Ren to be your daughter, and not you," Ellie says.

Rey nods. "All I've got to do is show up, look pretty, hand this thing over, and not embarrass myself or Kylo."

Ellie does smile at that. "In a nutshell. Though, like anything else shoved into a nutshell, you've only got the high points. The details are where this will get interesting. First of all, while it's true that you're going to hand this thing over, the way you do that is about making a warm, encompassing, welcoming entreaty. By the time we're done with this, we want New Alderaan to feel like we're… well, a long-lost child, coming home, and offering a new home to distant relatives."

Threepio sighs at that. Being wary of Lady Kinear would be so much easier, and more satisfying, if she weren't so damn good at the job. He says, "She's not wrong. Part of what I've added to the treaty is formal recognition of our two sovereignties, an exchange of embassies, and the ability for full joint citizenship."

Ellie glances up at Threepio, and again looks very pleased. "You've planned this well, haven't you?"

"I certainly hope so."

Rey looks between them, getting a sense of what they want, and aren't saying. "I'm… Oh… Kylo is the heir of New Alderaan, but not their king. He doesn't want to be their King either. But if an Alderaanian wants him to be their King, they come to us."

"Exactly," Ellie says. "But in five years, they don't have to abandon their Alderaanian citizenship when they become Order Citizens. Likewise, and this'll be interesting, if anyone who has already chosen Kylo decides that New Alderaan looks like a nice place to settle, New Alderaan, assuming they go along with this, won't force them to drop Order citizenship, or ban them outright from Alderaanian citizenship, or settling there."

"You're… tying the two societies together," Rey says.

Threepio nods.

"Will they go along with it?" Rey asks.

"That's the question, now, isn't it?" Ellie responds, looking at Threepio.

He'd shrug if he could. "I put the odds of them taking us up on this at two in five." Rey blinks, she's never heard Threepio come up with odds that aren't astronomical. "The question is, how closely do they want to be tied to the First Order," she's about to say the First Order is dead, but stops herself, and decides to listen to what Threepio is saying. "How much do they trust that the First Order really is dead, how confident is Queen Heloise in her throne, how well can she imagine the angles and options that come with aligning with the Order, and, of course, just sheer perverse human cussedness. The current terms are, of course, favorable to everyone. There's no downside on this, as it stands, on it's face, for either of us, now."

"That's a lot of qualifiers for one sentence, General," Ellie says.

"The situation warrants them. How this treaty may color and shade the future though, that's where the insecurities lie."

He just watches Rey, and she can feel she's supposed to glean something from what he's said. Ellie's waiting too, letting her suss it out.

"There are no agreements that are favorable to everyone?" Rey says after a moment.

Threepio would smile if he could, and Ellie nods. "The current agreement… Have you read it?"

Rey shakes her head. "No."

"Well, that's going to be the first homework assignment, then. But, unless The General changed it well beyond the last version I saw, this treaty shifts the status quo in ways so that Queen Ren does become a potential. In that Queen Ren is not only not yet born, but might never be, there is only potential here. That said, Queen Ren is destabilizing because she provides options that are not currently on the board."

Rey looks between them. "But that's why they came to visit us in the first place, right? Prince Ben came back into play, and that's making them nervous."

"Exactly, Lady Ren."

Rey wrinkles her nose at Threepio. "I really don't like you calling me that. I know, formal, whatnot, but…"

Threepio would side eye Ellie if he could, but again, he can't, so he just stands there for a moment, We are not in private radiating off of him strongly.

Rey grits her teeth.

"Fine, Rey. Because of the genocide of Alderaan, and how the monarch is chosen, people with the correct lineage are limited. Fifty years ago, there were twelve families the monarch could come from, and at any given time, at least a hundred people who could put forth a claim. As of this time last year, there were only two surviving lines that monarchs could be chosen from, and four people who could make the claim. Adding a third, even if said third is strenuously claiming he's got no interest in being King of Alderaan, makes the other two nervous."

"This treaty doesn't exactly calm their nerves," Ellie says, "but it does offer a superficial balm, and makes sure that for at least the next twenty years the status quo remains the same. Likewise, depending on local temperament, they should recognize that having a good relationship with the Order can come in handy on myriad levels."

"Among other things, New Alderaan is somewhat less secure in the trappings of peace than Alderaan was," Threepio says. "Its official positions are pacifistic, but given how badly 'we have no weapons' hurt them last time, it's likely they may not shun the companionship of an extremely well-armed friend who has… reasons… to be defensive of her."

"What happened with them during the Resistance years? Did Snoke have any interest…" Rey begins to ask.

Ellie shakes her head. "Too tiny to matter. New Alderaan has… ten million people? Twelve? If it were anything other than New Alderaan, no one would pay it any heed."

Rey spends a moment thinking about 'well-armed-friend.' "Is an alliance with someone who is explicitly non-pacifistic part of what may be making them nervous."

Ellie smiles, and she has the sense of pleasure off of Threepio. "That's where two in five comes in," he says. "A formal alliance with any combatant would involve a serious shift in their current attitudes. The question is, do they trust that Kylo has no interest in New Alderaan? If they think that he'll abide by what he's said, they may not take us up on this offer. They'll settle back, and rest assured that he'll be here, doing what he does, and it won't touch them."

"But that sort of thing didn't work out well for them in the past," Rey says.

"Exactly," Ellie replies. "So, do they choose to get into bed with us, hoping to control the outcome. Do they look at our treaty, and re-write it substantially, and hope that eventually, we'll work out a deal more to their liking?"

"And will that deal involve him formally dropping his claim, and the claim of any children we may have?" Rey asks.

"Probably," Threepio replies, "but that will be a sticking point for us. We're not going to budge on that."

"Even if it's a deal breaker?" Rey asks.

"Rey, they are maybe twelve million, mostly unarmed, people on the far side of the galaxy of us. There is literally no upshot for us by dropping Kylo's claim."

"I believe what the General is trying to say, dear, is that while we can enforce any treaty agreement we come up with, or break it, they cannot. And they know it. They don't have the manpower, let alone the firepower, to do anything to us, so to a degree this is bargaining with nothing but charm and the affections of the party in power in your hand."

"This is about image, Rey. The Talmasch and the Antillies, the two remaining royal families, do not want the Organa line resuscitated. They also don't want to look like they snuffed it out in the first place. Which is why they are not seeking to ban Organa from the line."

"Can they do that?" Rey asks.

"Any population that's motivated can remove a ruler, or potential ruler," Ellie replies. "That's how they got rid of the Emperor."

"But, image matters," Threepio says. "If Alderaan is to be Alderaan they cannot do certain things. Which means they have limited tools at their disposal. The best option for them is to discredit Kylo as an Organa. That way they never have to even touch any of the deeper issues."

"And we're going to just gloss over the whole Organa thing, and act as if it's so blatantly obvious that it cannot be challenged," Rey says.

Ellie grins at her. "You've got it. But they'll want the challenge."

"And that's where you come in," Rey looks to Threepio. "I know we can't do a DNA claim because Kylo's mother was adopted. I know we don't want to do a DNA claim because that'll… complicate… the situation. But you can… You can prove he's Ben Solo, right?"

"I can prove he's Ben Solo. Retina scans, facial recognition, I have family images in my memory banks, and R2 does, too. Between the two of us we can provide images of Ben growing up until the age of twenty-two."

"But we're not doing that because…" Rey says.

"Because it's not unfakable," Ellie says. "Because it's possible that there was a Ben Solo, but there isn't any longer. Because retina scans can be sliced. Because the Empire ran the register, and then for a while there was no register, and then the Senate had it, and then the First Order, and as the man who runs the Order, Kylo would have the access to shift the scan to match him, retroactively."

"But no one wants to make that claim, either," Threepio adds. "The galaxy works better if we believe the register is inviolate."

"This might be stupid, but… What are the odds that there's a man who just happens to look like Ben Solo, exactly, down to the retina pattern, and is Force sensitive? I know… surgery is a thing. I guess you could build a face to match Ben, but… You can't fake Force sensitivity, right?" Rey says.

"And that's likely why they won't attempt to challenge us on who Kylo Ren used to be," Ellie replies. "They don't like it, but everyone knows who Luke Skywalker was, and while images can be recreated, Kylo's skills can't be faked, so…"

"Knows Luke, but not Leia? She was Force sensitive, too," Rey says, and then sees the way Ellie responds to that. "Oh."

Threepio nods. "Most of the galaxy did not know that."

"Interesting," Ellie responds.

None of them seem to have anything to say after that, so Ellie turns to Threepio, "Do you know the current queen?"

"No. I knew her predecessor, of course. But Queen Heloise was still a child when I was last on New Alderaan. We have met, but I do not know her, on any functional level."

"And her predecessor…" Rey pauses, "was her mother? So…"

"Could be very similar, could be as close as Kylo and Leia," Ellie says, all but daring Threepio to expand on the idea of Kylo and Leia and how similar they may be.

He doesn't take the bait. If Rey had asked that question of him, privately, he might have been tempted to respond, but he's not about to give Ellie Kinear that information. He does begin briefing them on the Talmash family. He wraps with, "And here is the other homework assignment," he hands Rey a datastick. "History of Alderaan and New Alderaan. This should round out that last few minutes, and make it make more sense."

"So, reading? That's what I'm doing to get ready for this?" Rey says.

"For now. We'll get you properly kitted out closer to time, and when we have the schedule of events, we'll walk through them, but for now, read," Ellie replies.


	41. New Alderaan: Homework

3/26/2

Kylo comes home to Rey sitting on the comfy chair, data pad in hand, a dark, black, almost visible cloud hanging over her head.

He sits next to her and raises an eyebrow. "Problems?"

She _glares_ at him.

"Big problems?"

"Threepio and Ellie have me reading Alderaan history."

Kylo nods. His first feeling is a sort of rush of interest. His fingers almost twitch at the idea of grabbing the pad and doing some reading. "Okay. Can I…" Her eyes narrow a little. "Or not." He makes a mental note to look it up later.

"Alderaan history was written by sadists."

"Uh…" That's got him flatfooted.

"If this were technical specs, I'd read it once, and know it. If this was theology or philosophy, I'd have to walk around so I don't fall asleep, but I'd get it. But no, this is history, of a culture where the details are interesting, but everyone has one of six names. Do you have any idea how many Organas, Antillies, Corandas, and Durragas, there are in this thing? And they've all got one of the same six first names, too. There are seven Bail Organas in the last three hundred years. Your grandfather is, I think, Bail the Eighth."

Kylo winces. That would have killed him as a student.

"But they don't use numbers. You're supposed to know which Bail it is based on context. Oh, and there are two Bail Antillies and three Bail Corandas, and…"

"Context…" he says slowly. Lips against her head.

"I don't have because I'm reading this bloody thing for the first time."

"Ah…"

She's still frustrated with the work, and says, "You didn't miss out on anything by not learning this. It's… Shit… Okay, I'm sorry." She can see that comment hit him wrong. "It's just hard, and I know I'm going to mess it up, talk about the wrong Organa at the wrong time and…"

He rubs her back. "I spent today looking at trade contracts. Millions of credits slipping from account one to account two for parts and bits and whatnot, and…"

"Wanna swap?"

"Do you?" He's genuinely interested in that. Among other things, Rey likely actually knows what sorts of things he bought today, and why those specs mattered. And maybe he could just… write up the highlights on Alderaan history for her. Which Bail is which or something. He was a competent note taker back in the day.

She sighs. "I probably need to know this stuff." Then she kisses him. "You probably need to know what you bought for the Order." He makes a face at that. "I did learn _why_ Alderaan is peaceful."

"Big horrible war and lots of people died?" he says, gathering her close as she turns to face him.

"Shockingly enough, yes. Here's the fun part. The two main contestants for said war were King Bail Antillies—"

Kylo rolls his eyes.

"Yeah, this is only going to get better from here. So, Bail Antillies on one side, and King Renald Corada on the other."

"All right. Not too bad, yet."

"Nope. But Bail Antillies gets captured by Bail Organa, not your grandfather, who was the lead general in Renald Corada's service."

He sighs.

"So, Antillies' Queen, Breha Antillies, rallies the troops to go get him back. They fail, but manage to capture Renald. So, Renald's Queen, Breha Corada, takes the field against Breha Antillies. Her top general, also Bail—"

It's not that he thought she was exaggerating; he just didn't expect it to pile on like that. "Okay, stop, you're killing me, here!"

"It's just going to get better, there are three more Bails, and another Breha, and two Leias, and…"

He groans.

"And that's just the one war. Oh, and they're all fucking cousins."

"Of course. So, who wins?"

"No one. They fight for two hundred years, manage to kill off every direct descendant of both families, and then the crown goes to the Rollandsons, who, in an effort to soothe the allies of Antillies and Corada families name their oldest daughters as new starts to the two families, and then they destroy every weapon on the planet bigger than a hand blaster, stick both sides on different continents, and let a few hundred years go by where they only interact with each other to trade.

"By the time that was done, the Rollandsons were no more, the Antillies and Coradas were back up in numbers, and the Organas were the family in charge of keeping trade flowing.

"By the time they had the ability to travel fast and easy between continents they'd been trading so long, and getting rich off of each other so well, the peace looked like it was going to hold, so they started intermarrying again, and…"

"And peaceful, prosperous Alderaan began?" Kylo says.

"I think so. I'm just getting to the point where they've got faster than sound travel, which is making the planet small enough that anyone can go anywhere in a matter of hours. They haven't figured out how to get off world at that point, yet."

"So… no recent history?"

"Not yet. I've got two weeks to learn this stuff, though."

* * *

3/28/2

It amuses the kids to no end when Rey has 'homework.'

Granted, most of the time, she's reading up on different Force theories and ideals of balance, and philosophy and whatnot.

But, they know she's studying for this eventual visit to New Alderaan, and they did get Threepio to come back for a few hours to give them a brief history of Alderaan and why it's so important. And the few hours they spent talking about the Empire blowing up Alderaan, and the changes that came after, how that galvanized the Rebellion, and shifted it from a few people nibbling at the edges of the Empire into a full-fledged political reality, capable of manning a truly functional army and then taking out the Empire for good.

Right now, it's quiet study time. All of them have their different books, and are sitting (or in the case of Rey, Critt, and Opal, pacing around) while they read.

She's finally getting to the 'recent history' portion of New Alderaan. The parts that Threepio told her needed to be paid attention to.

So, reading, paying attention, re-reading… Thinking, re-reading again.

Threepio gave her this history. It's (she double checks) from a New Alderaan civics text book. Children on New Alderaan read this as part of their secondary education. (She half wonders if the small blocks of text interspersed with lots of pictures is Threepio trying to keep her interested in the subject, or if he's trying to give her a 'native' point of view.)

And it's not what she's expecting.

There's a whole chapter on Leia Organa, heroine of the Rebellion. It's a breathless, fawning, packed with exciting details and death-defying capers and… Well, if Han Solo or Luke Skywalker were part of what was going on, it was only incidentally, and mostly they were in the background. (Wedge Antillies, on the other hand, has four pages of his piloting exploits.)

She hadn't known that Leia joined the Rebellion in her teens, or that she was nineteen when Alderaan was destroyed. And the things in her chapter of daring-do during the Rebellion, a lot of it is new to her, but it's the sort of thing she'd expect.

It's the end of the chapter that's a surprise. In this version of the story Leia, knowing that she'd be more valuable to the galaxy working on the New Republic level, bows out of local Alderaanian politics. She gives up her birthright, and devotes her life to building a galaxy-wide governing body, and when the First Order rises, and the powers that be in the Senate refused to fight it, she re-took the mantle of Rebel, and started the Resistance.

Then follows several glowing pages about the daughter of Alderaan, the Heroine of the Rebellion going forth to fight the First Order. It ends… on a less glowing note. The author of the book doesn't know what happened to Leia, just that she vanished shortly after the fall of the First Order. The book certainly indicates that she, personally, took out the First Order, but it doesn't explicitly say that.

There's no hint that anyone besides Leia had anything, at all, to do with her ceasing to be "Princess Leia."

There are only a handful of mentions of Han, and he's referred to as her partner or consort.

There are no mentions of Ben. You couldn't find out that Leia ever had a son by reading this history. There's no mention of Vader, at least, in the sense of being her birth father. There's no mention of her being adopted.

She checks the date. It was written a few months ago, after Kylo publicly stated his birth name.

In these pages, Leia's family is Bail and Breha, and they cease to exist when she was nineteen. Her life was devoted to allowing people the power to chose their own paths, and the spread of Alderaanian-style self-governance and non-aggression.

She was the eternal glowing light. She was the human symbol of fighting oppression against all odds, and winning.

The last page is two pictures of Leia. The first is with her parents. She's young, seventeen, eighteen? Can't be past nineteen. It's probably taken just about the time she learned of her parent's involvement with the Rebellion, and joined them in it. All three of them are beaming at the camera. It's clear that she's at the point in time where life is exciting and filled with endless possibilities. The second is one where she's by herself. It's the Leia that Rey knew. Older, softer, hair brown and gray and wrapped in a utilitarian braid around her head. She's by herself in this one, and the smile is a little jaded and wry.

Rey re-reads that chapter again.

And it's not that it's _wrong,_ but it just isn't _right_ either.

* * *

3/29/2

It's a day later when she's got some time to talk more with Threepio.

"I got to the end of the book you gave me."

He nods slightly. "I take it you found it informative."

"I… did. Is this… Do…" He waits patiently for her to figure out how to ask that question. "Do they really believe that… about what happened with Leia?"

He'd smile, a sly annoyed one, if he could. "The ones raised on those textbooks do. It's possible that Queen Heloise might believe that version of the story as well."

Rey blinks. "But… that treaty, the one where she signed her and Kylo's—"

"Just hers. She no longer had the rights to Ben's."

Rey rolls her eyes. "The treaty that supposedly strikes her and Kylo from the succession. That's a… real thing… that exists, right? People could read it."

"They certainly could. I have a copy of it in my database. It's probably on display in the national museum somewhere. It's written to look like Leia had decided that she couldn't devote the time or attention to New Alderaan that it needed, so she formally removed herself and her son from the succession, allowing for Ania, the mother of Queen Heloise to take over. Three years ago, Ania died, and her oldest daughter took, and passed, the Day of Demand Trials, and became the current Queen of New Alderaan."

"And…" she takes a deep breath, "just to make sure, it… didn't happen that way?"

Threepio feels a surge of anger, and hits Rey with it. "It did _not._ "

"Ah… But… If she wasn't on New Alderaan and…"

"The monarch of New Alderaan is a mostly ceremonial position. Unlike Kylo, who spends most of his working hours most days on the business of the Order, it does not require that much time or attention. At least, it doesn't have to. There is a tricameral house of representatives, seven primary political parties, and a judicial branch. If somehow, there's ever a deadlock between all of those branches, the Monarch is the tie breaker. Though, traditionally, in cases of a deadlock, the Monarch will offer up a compromise position to vote on. As of this point, there's never been a compromise that didn't get the approval, but if somehow it didn't, then what the Queen says will rule. But, other than exceedingly rare situations, that happen, on average, once a century, it's a primarily diplomatic position, both in planetary politics, and galactic politics.

"Given what Leia was doing with the New Republic, she could have done most of what she needed to do as Queen Leia, too. And, given how, especially in the early days, most of what was happening with New Alderaan was building and maintaining the image of being undefeated and alive, Leia was doing everything and more than what she needed to do in the New Republic."

"Reminding the galaxy they were still a going concern," Rey says.

"Exactly. The first thing she did as Princess Leia, for Alderaan, after the Concordance, was get them a new home world. That was the sort of thing that took more time and attention than was easy to manage as a founding member of the New Republic, though, since it involved producing a senate resolution, and networking enough goodwill for the idea to get it passed, her dual position as Senator Organa-Solo and Princess Leia were helpful, but once that was accomplished, being Princess or Queen wouldn't have been untenable."

Rey thinks for a moment. "So, the current queen… Who I'm meeting, believes the nice story?"

Threepio thinks about that. "I don't know that for a fact. Her mother, Queen Ania Antillies, obviously, knew the real story. She was one of the architects of the fall of the house of Organna. Several of Queen Heloise's advisers were there at the time, and know the real story. Whomever sent Lord Organa to poke around to get samples from Kylo _absolutely_ knew the real story. I'd think, since they know we're coming, and since Organa met with me, they know that at least someone here knows the real version, that the odds of Queen Heloise knowing the real story _now,_ if she didn't know then, are better than even."

"Okay, so… They don't want Kylo popping up and mucking up their succession lines, and possibly more than that, they don't want the carefully constructed, everyone happily played nice and got together to find a conducive end to things story line damaged."

"Like I said the last time we talked, _image_ matters. And that's also why we'll get a warm… at least on the surface, greeting. Old friends gathering together to… reminisce, or something in that sphere."

"Ah… So?"

"So, we are leaving on the 10th for New Alderaan." Threepio hands over another datapad. "And this is _my_ version of what happened. And, unlike the one you just read, this is the unfiltered, uncensored, and, more importantly, _real_ version of what happened."

Rey takes it, thinking, and then says, "And it's how the… people who make the decisions about what happens with the treaty… Because the Queen is a figurehead, it's the people in the senate and judicial branch that actually make the decisions, right?" Threepio nods. "That's how some… most… of them understand it?"

"Certainly some, and the some that are likely higher up in the eschalons of power. Possibly most, though I'm less sure of that. It has been more than ten years since I was at New Alderaan."

"Not after Leia signed her name away?"

"Actually, no. We went several times after, there were still friendships and appearances to be kept up, but once the war began to get hot, the last place Leia wanted to draw attention to was New Alderaan."

That makes a lot of sense to Rey.

"Kylo's never been there."

"Not to the best of my knowledge."

"And… he's not in the history book." Rey can feel that Threepio would sigh silently, just the intake of exasperated breath, and the exhale, if he could.

"Rey, it is a recent history book, one designed to make everything about Alderaan and New Alderaan look good. The idea that Ben Solo, who eventually became _Kylo Ren_ , right hand of Snoke, would be in there… No. I believe earlier versions may have mentioned that Leia had a son, but since he's been using his birth name, he's no longer in those history books. It wouldn't do to have the son of an Alderaanian hero be the Supreme Leader of a group that exterminated and entire system."

"Threepio…"

"I know he was not in charge when it happened, but, you must understand the _look_ of these things."

The _look_ then. "And yet, you want to put our daughter on that throne."

Threepio doesn't exactly shrug. "I think that's a possible outcome with a high likelihood of happening which would benefit everyone involved."

"What's the likelihood of it happening if you do nothing?"

"Significantly slimmer."

"So, we're… clean enough to produce an eventual Queen, but not to rule on our own."

"I didn't think either of you wanted to rule New Alderaan."

"Neither of us do, I'm trying to understand how it _looks._ "

Threepio would blink, but he can't, so… "Fine. I understand you do not intend to continue ruling the Order for more than another eleven years."

"That's the plan."

"If, at the end of that time, you were to retire to New Alderaan, or possibly Naboo, and quietly, and then not so quietly, get involved in worthy political situations and organizations, in likely another ten years, you and Kylo could make a decent play for the monarchy of either of those planets, should an opening arise. It's, assuming the Order stays on the course it's on now, a possible play, and likely not too many people would fuss. Leia is and was popular enough on New Alderaan… well, you can see how her history is recorded. And Padme Amidala is still beloved on Naboo.

"It would look better if it were your child, because both cultures value youth and the supposed clarity of thought and innocence that comes with youth, but Kylo could make a blood claim for either throne, and if he had a daughter, put her in the running for Naboo, or make a play for her, or himself, for Alderaan.

"People will, continually, bring up the First Order, and likely Vader, and much of Kylo's past. If he were willing to do what his mother was not, rip the fragile alliance apart, and really fight for it, he could take, for himself, the throne of New Alderaan.

"In the case of a potential child, especially one who was mostly raised on the planet in question, an eventual succession is cleaner, less likely to cause strife, and should the right alliances and marriages be made, some, but significantly less fussing than Kylo would inspire, would occur. Does that give you a good idea of the _look_ of things?"

"I think so. And for what we're doing now?"

"We go, we visit, we socialize. There will likely be a gathering of people who knew Leia well. They'll tell pleasant stories of her. They will also likely ask vague questions as to what she's doing now, because, as you likely know, Leia Organa just," and his voice catches on this, "vanished one day. Some of them may have met Ben when he was a little boy. They may also have a few pleasant stories of him as a baby or toddler."

"But not as a child."

"No." Threepio doesn't say that after the age of three Ben didn't get taken out in public much. He doesn't have to.

"Han?"

"Unlikely. Though it wasn't widely publicized, people who were watching noticed that he and Leia ceases intimate relations about fifteen years ago. They absolutely noticed that she only went by Leia Organa-Solo for three years."

"Ah." Rey's almost tempted to ask about that, but decides that maybe she doesn't need that close of a view of Han and Leia's marriage.

"I'm sure they'll show you the capitol gardens and the Alderaan Memorial. There will probably be tea. There will definitely be supper. It will be vegetarian, and will show off the wide selection of fruits and wines available on the planet."

"Great." She sounds slightly put out. Threepio looks, as best he can, curious. "I don't… I get drunk really easily, and that's bad for something like this, right?"

"It is. You only have to have a sip of each, and there are medications that can prevent your body from metabolizing alcohol if you want to go in that direction."

"Really?"

"Yes, I understand that they generally don't recommend it unless you're going to a culture where the ability to drink everyone else under the table is a status symbol. The side effects can be unpleasant."

"What kind of unpleasant?"

"Hot flashes, uncontrollable sweating, tremors in the hands and feet, blurred vision, and drooling. Leia only used it when it was completely unavoidable."

Rey recoils at that. "It sounds a lot like being drunk."

"It is, but your head stays clear, so you get to remember it, and you'll stay upright and won't get alcohol poisoning, no matter how much you imbibe. I understand the hangover is just as bad as it would be otherwise, though."

"You're right; I'm not interested in doing that."

"Indeed, just a sip or two, and intersperse them with food and whatever else there is to drink. Likewise, since New Alderaan has an ideal climate for tea plantations, asking for tea will likely be perfectly acceptable. I'm sure you'll be fine."

Rey offers a slight smile. "Just kick me under the table if I'm going wrong, okay?"

Threepio sounds startled as he says, "I couldn't possibly—"

She holds up a hand to stop him there. If Threepio won't, Ellie will. "What else happens?"

"I'm not sure. We don't have the finalized itinerary, yet. We'll get that closer to time."

"Okay."

Threepio puts his hand on the datapad. "Read, Rey, and then think about the difference between what's in here, and what's in the text book. The text book is how New Alderaan wants to be seen. This is what it is. It's the job of a good diplomat to make sure they always know both of those things, and balance between them, keeping the host country convinced that you see the textbook version, while understanding what's going on under the textbook version."

"Do I ever let it slip that I know the real version?"

"Sometimes, to the right people, in the right situation. I would not be shocked if we'll have a private meeting with someone who is not the Queen, but is one of her high up advisers, and that'll be a person who will hope we only know the textbook version, but will, the moment they see me, understand that you know the real version inside and out, and possibly better than they do."

"Will that… cause trouble?"

"Only for them."

"And that private meeting, is that where we'll really talk about the treaty?"

"No. It's probable we won't actually talk about the treaty. After all, they won't have had the time to really read it. That's the meeting where they'll try to figure out if Ben is going to make a play for New Alderaan. That's the meeting where they'll see if the House of Organa is going to rise again. The treaty is… not unimportant, but it's a layer of shiny veneer over the real reason for going. They want to make sure Ben is not going to try and take over, and you're going to make sure they know that while his current plans are not aimed in that direction, if he were to ever decide it would be to his advantage to control New Alderaan he could do so without having to fire a single gun."

"And then…" she's thinking, "they'll get nervous?"

"Maybe. As best I can tell, they _should._ But, it's possible that whomever we may speak to may be interested in the House of Organa rising again. When Samath Organa came to call, I had Artoo do a bit of snooping, and not everyone loves the House of Talmash or the House of Antillies. Or, at least, not their current members. So, it's possible that plans within plans may be attempting to resurrect the House of Organa through this move.

"However it is, you'll suggest that in addition to non-aggression, that perhaps open immigration between the two populations, and a recruiting station or two, and maybe, if they're feeling… amenable, full free trade recognition would be in order. It won't get hashed out, and you won't demand it, you'll just… theorize, or possibly Ellie or I will, in their direction.

"One, and possibly more, of the three of us will paint an image of our two societies happily flowing along together, in a very peaceful, prosperous Alderaanian sort of way."

Rey thinks she's getting it. "We'll do that as a way of suggesting that's the sort of thing that makes sure Kylo Ren doesn't suddenly decide he wants to be King of New Alderaan, in addition to Master of the Order. But it's not in the treaty, and won't be… until a later draft?"

Threepio nods. "That is part of the idea, Rey. The other part is, it genuinely is to the benefit of New Alderaan to have extremely powerful friends who are armed to the teeth and desire their long and fruitful survival. Alderaan was able to be _Alderaan_ because by the time anyone outside of their system could muster a threat, they were beloved of much of the galaxy, and founding members of the Senate."

Rey's feeling… she's not sure. It's like being in the cave seeing a billion versions of herself stretching onto infinity. There are so many ways this could go, so many possible ramifications, and deals that may last hundreds of years, and…

Threepio lays his hand on hers. "You will do this, and you'll do it splendidly. You handled the K'Arans with grace and poise, and you will do this just as well. I'm not sure I believe in destiny, Rey, but if such a thing does exist, I think this might be yours."

She smiles a little at that. "Thank you."

"You're welcome." He glances to the chrono. "And if I'm correct, it's getting onto when you're in charge of supper?"

"You are. I need to get moving."

"Come see me when you finish the real version."

"I will."

* * *

Rey's not paying too much attention to supper. She's reading. And while she does so, Jacen sidles over, bopping her hip with his. "Something's got you interested."

She looks up and offers a quick, tight smile to him. "Something."

"Gonna tell us?"

"Do I need to?"

"I'm behaving. Your thoughts are in your own head right now."

"Remember yesterday, Threepio came by to talk about Alderaan and New Alderaan?"

He nods.

"More homework. I'm learning about Kylo's mom, and how she ended up not being Queen of Alderaan."

"Oh. You look like it's interesting."

"I think so…" She looks back at the pad. "And maybe not just for my visit there week after next."

Jacen raises an eyebrow.

She shakes her head. "Still rough ideas. I'll share when I've got them more smoothed out."

He nods, and heads back to his rice, making sure to turn the heat down before it boils over.

* * *

It started, at least according to Threepio, easily. Senator Organa of the New Republic didn't get back to New Alderaan very often. As often as her father ever did, but her mother had lived, full-time, on Alderaan, and that's, generally speaking, where people prefer their monarchs.

At home.

Being… Queenly.

And, well, she was sharp, and sarcastic, and she didn't have the picture book marriage or child.

There were whispers about finding someone who would… look better… someone who could… 'devote' their full time to the needs of New Alderaan _on_ New Alderaan.

(After all, while it was true that setting up the Galactic Republic, and the Senate, and figuring out it's charter, and the thrust of the government and how centrist it should be, and who could be members and… All took quiet a bit of time. And were, _of course,_ vitally important. But, maybe the person doing that on New Alderaan's behalf didn't have to be their _monarch._ )

And it's not like Leia had the only claim. The best one, but… There was her cousin, Almath Organa. (It makes Rey smile to imagine Threepio's thought process as he directly quotes Almath Organa in saying, 'Fuck the fuck off and die. You can pry my ass out of my shop with a crowbar when I'm dead,' when he was asked if he'd like a turn at monarch.) And well, he didn't want it. His sons, younger than Ben, were also a possibility, but… Their potential turns might come later. (As evidenced by Samath Organa's current position.)

But Breha's mother had sisters, and one of their offspring had survived. Jaxon Talmash. And, of course, the Antilies clan had surviving descendants. And when Jaxon Talmash married Ania Antillies… Well, it wasn't the first time those two houses had commingled.

So, there were, _options._

And it's true that Leia was stressed. She was fighting hard in the senate. The tighter the central control, the more the Republic could _do._ The more useful it was in creating a _good life_ for everyone under it. The tighter the central control, the harder it was to get people to join and stay. The Old Republic had inertia on its side. People didn't just leave, because they were _used_ to being members, and reaped benefit from continuing to play along.

That was not true for the New Republic.

So, Leia was stressed, and she was _distracted_ , and… Well… "reasonable" people pointed out who her father truly had been, and what he and his had done. And they nodded to her hardline centrist positions when it came to _military matters_. And whispers began to flow from ear to ear about how, maybe… Leia didn't need to be their Queen. About how… when he was young, and passionate, Anakin had been a crusader for good, but eventually, something went… wrong.

And she was sharp, and she was sarcastic, and she didn't compromise as much as she could or, maybe, should. And… she kept harping about 'dangers' and the need for a defensive military force. Hadn't the Emperor sung that song?

Could the Queen of Alderaan really afford to be a… militarist? A battle commander? The whispers suggested that blood will out, and Leia didn't actually _deserve_ the name Organa. Organa died in the genocide, and somehow, Leia wasn't with him. Somehow, she'd been in the custody of Vader, and _somehow_ she'd survived.

Another whisper began to circle though other ears. Because, when removing a monarch, bloodlessly, it wouldn't do to whisper the same message to everyone. Rumors and gossip need to be tailored. So, while some were starting to look at the child of Vader with new eyes, others were contemplating if Leia actually _wanted_ to be part of New Alderaan.

After all, how interested in it could she be? It had been more than twenty years at that point, and she still hadn't formally cemented her title. She didn't live on New Alderaan. Her _family_ didn't live on New Alderaan. They rarely saw her 'consort,' and had never seen her son.

How can someone claim the mantle of _queen_ if they aren't willing to put their family on the land they claim to rule?

How could someone who didn't have _roots_ in the community, rule it?

* * *

It, as best Threepio could tell, took five years. From first whisper to the day that Jaxon Talmash showed up to 'have a chat' with Leia.

He explained that, if Leia signed the, nice, oh so polite, papers, that she would be able to maintain her seat in the senate. After all, by the laws of the Senate a planet needed 50,000,000 people on it to have a seat in it's own right, and her seat was appointed by the government of New Alderaan, and offered as a courtesy because of the Genocide of Alderaan, and it's important history in maintaining the Old Republic.

And Leia, who was ever the deal maker, ever the politician, took the document, read it over, nodded, smiled, offered tea, spoke politely about New Alderaan current events, and asked to have the time to speak to her consort about this at length, to run it by her advisers.

Leia, of course, knew what she was doing. If Jaxon could hand her this document, let alone put it together, she no longer had popular support at home, and going back and regaining it, would have meant abandoning the much more important work she was doing in the senate.

There was something coming. The outer rim regions were reporting trouble. Ex-Imperials were starting to vanish. Whispers of something called _The First Order_ were starting to filter through their spy networks. She couldn't afford to lose the Senate position, which meant she had to play nice with New Alderaan.

But she didn't have to play _that_ nice. The document handed her was designed to remove her and her son from the line of succession.

Concordance Day, Ben's birthday, ABY 23 was seventy-four days away. She 'didn't get a chance to talk to Han' for fifty-five of them. That ate up a good bit of time. But not quite enough.

When she spoke to Jaxon again, and she told him she would be willing to abdicate. They could have a formal signing ceremony, and she'd pass the title on with grace and honor. But, as one of the primary heroes of the Rebellion, she was completely swamped in obligations until _after_ Condordance Day.

Jaxon didn't fuss. The last thing anyone in his cohort wanted was a long, messy fight.

Maybe they didn't know Ben's birthday. Entirely likely, Leia and Han had never publicized it.

Maybe they decided that it didn't matter. That having her go ahead and graciously sign the documents mattered more than the legal standing a future Ben Solo might have.

And maybe, playing a longer long game than expected, perhaps several of the would-be queenmakers, setting Ania Antillies on the throne, decided that keeping Ben Solo on the list of possibilities, but not actually having to deal with him, was an ideal way to manage the future. After all, just because Ania looked good _now,_ did not mean she wouldn't be good _later._

And thus, in a blooming garden, with the flourish of an actual pen, on a physical piece of paper, and what certainly looked like a genuine smile, the house of Organa fell.

* * *

Rey finishes reading. She knows there are lessons here. Things she should see. Easily. She feels like she should see the practical applications of what Threepio's offered her as easily as she sees Kylo sleeping beside her.

But she doesn't.

Shadows, hints of ideas. They aren't solid, and she's… not easily focusing on them.

Not _yet._

 _You will._ She's not sure who's voice that is. It's as much a ghost as the shape of what that lesson is supposed to teach, but… It's real. Probably.


	42. R&R

4/1/2

"Follow up meeting on the…" Kylo checks his calendar. "Third?"

Kinear blinks at that. "I'm available, but I've got you marked as off-duty then."

Kylo growls quietly. "I had certainly intended to be. Then I caught the plague and burned through—"

Kinear stops him. "Kylo, you're allowed off days. You're allowed to get sick. You're allowed to go on vacation. We are not actively fighting. We are not on a war footing. And even if we were, the men in charge get breaks because without rest, you can't think."

Kylo blinks.

"Look, _everyone_ is under the impression that you're a hell of a lot easier to work with when you get time away from here. Not only that, but you're _better_ at the job when you leave it for a bit. You think better, you make better decisions, and you're faster on the uptake, so, please, as a personal favor to me and the entire rest of the Order, take your time off."

Kylo just stares. "I… really?"

"Yes, really. I've double checked the bloody records. You know you're basically the only person in the First Order who _never_ had a day off? Hux had off time, not a lot of it, but he took it. Even Snoke took vacations, Kylo. My guess is part of you _never_ being off was Snoke making sure you didn't get enough of your brain in charge to take him out, and we saw how well that worked."

He hadn't known that, but suddenly a collection of Snoke's _personal missions_ are making more sense. "Oh… Uh… Then… The sixth?"

"Better." Kinear's still staring at him. They didn't have any meetings scheduled during the days he was supposed to be, but wasn't, off last month, and Kylo can feel him thinking _take all of it._

"The seventh?"

Kinear nods, is quiet for a moment, and then he says, "There will, I'm sure, be times when you can't get away. And with the way Ellie's about to ramp up your calendar, off time may be getting scarce soon. I've had full _years_ where I was on duty every single day. But… we don't have to do that right now, and if we do have to do that, we're going to do a much better job of it if we're not going into it completely exhausted. Fresh men, fresh troops… Even the fucking machinery needs downtime." He sighs. "I very much appreciate you reaching out and forming a friendship with Jon. I think he's good for you and vice versa. That said, the only downside of you only being close with Jon is that Jon works all the time so he doesn't have to go back to his empty apartment. If you had other friends, you'd realize that most of us can do this job and not have to be at it all day every day."

Kylo nods slowly at that. "Okay… What's a… normal… amount of time off."

"The men get eight off a day and two off every ten. We've got twelve months, and three tens per month, so…"

"At least forty-eight off?"

Kinear bites his lip. "Seventy-two." He's quiet, and Kylo's blushing. "Speaking of working better when you're well-rested."

"Uh, yeah…" Kylo wants to curl into a little ball. He knows how to multiply six by twelve, it's just somehow six by eight got in there, maybe because it's the fourth month now, and he's answering for the rest of the year, and not the question asked, but… That happened a lot when he was a kid. He'd have the right answer for something, just not necessarily the question he was being asked. "I take more than eight off a day."

"A lot of officers do. It's not a hard and fast rule. You know what the work is," he gestures to the datapads. There are only three of them on his desk now. His personal one, which currently has enough reports to last from now until the end of time on it, and the two that Kinear brought with him for this, that have reports that _cannot_ be seen by the wrong people, and thus aren't on the system. "Take the time you need to be able to focus on it well enough to do it, and then get it done."

* * *

"Apparently, spending eleven days on my ass does not eat up my off-time," Kylo says to Rey as he's setting food on the table in front of her.

She looks mildly surprised, and then pleased by that, and then slightly down. "That's good?"

He shrugs. "Maybe? I'm also apparently taking way too few off days, too. Something like two off out of every ten is normal."

She blinks at him, never having comprehended that much time to do… nothing. "What would you do with that much time off?"

"I have no idea." He pulls the plates to them, and she starts to dish up the meal. "Be here, I guess? I'd say maybe we could travel or something, but my guess is we're going to be sick of that in the not too distant future."

Rey sighs at that. After New Alderaan, Ellie's supposed to have the first collection of 'new experiences' ready to go. "We need to do at least some. Go see Ahch-To, find an island that looks good."

"I suppose that's an off-time sort of thing to do. Plan that, get it set up and ready to go. You need someone who can do that, and suddenly a pile of time just opened in my schedule."

Rey knows that's true. And she knows that Kylo knows she's not leaping for joy at the idea of this. So, she understands he's offering to just give it to her, as a finished deal. But that feels… off. "I was hoping we'd do that together."

"Okay," Kylo says. (Though it's clear he's wondering if this is a way for her to push looking for a new place further off. Rey rolls her eyes; it _might_ be.)

"I'm _scheduled_ for the next few days. Back when you set up the idea of off-time in the first place, I had Poe here covering me, but you got sick, so, I told him I'd be here, and he's off, so…"

"Right." Because she's got twenty-four little responsibilities here who require some level of access to adults. "Is this the sort of here where you've got to be around the whole time, or…"

"I can't leave for three days straight, but after the kids are done with cooking supper, I'm free."

Kylo nods. Her usual evenings free sort of schedule. There are fun things to be done in the evenings. He remembers buying the panties and strap, and his thoughts about taking Rey to the R&R section, and how good that felt, and… maybe they could do some shopping, of a personal nature, together… After dinner. Or maybe with dinner…

There's a word for what he's thinking, and it takes a moment for him to find it, but he does, and then says, "Would you like to go on a date with me?"

Rey blinks slightly at him. "A date?"

"Yeah, that's the word Jon uses to describe this. You, me, we go out, do some romantic-type things, have a good time together."

"We've been on dates before."

"We have, but not like the one I'm thinking of." He smiles at her, and she knows that naughty glint in his eyes.

She could just gently nudge his mind and know what he's contemplating, but decides against it. "So, you want to take me out, for… a good time."

He grins at her, eyes dark with amusement. "Very much so." He thinks some more. "Do you have a free night, and an early morning with nothing scheduled?"

"This date may involve sleeping late?"

"I really hope so."

She smiles back at him. "I'm intrigued."

"Good."

* * *

4/3/2

It feels absurdly bizarre to wake up, watch Rey go off to do the first lessons with the kids, and then do… nothing.

For the first few moments, Kylo's just wandering around their home. He washes up the breakfast dishes. That eats up an additional three minutes. Putting them back is one more.

He tries to remember the last time he had fully unscheduled free time. Vacations with Rey, getting sick…

Okay, healthy, unscheduled, on his own time.

He's coming to the conclusion that he's _never_ had hours of time where he got to do whatever the hell it was he wanted with them that weren't part of some sort of vacation with Rey.

Reading that novel. Right, there'd been a few hours where she was getting all dressed up and he had to amuse himself and… He supposes he could do that again. Make himself another cup of coffee, get into the library, and read for a while.

He glances at the comfy chair, and her datapad… _Her_ datapad. The one with the history of Alderaan that she wasn't exactly thrilled to share with him because she utterly loathes him seeing her be less than awesome at something. The start of a plan begins, but… Just read all day? And then what…

Shit, he needs a plan.

* * *

Kylo's not sure what it says about him that he's having a considerably better time with his 'off time' now that he's sitting, with a cup of coffee, and his data pad, scheduling out his days, but… Well, it's helping.

He doesn't feel so nervously open. He's half-amusedly thinking that dark-siders should be good at just winging it, but as he's debating what to fill this afternoon with, (he types: _Develop taste in music_?) it's occurring to him that being someone who's had basically every moment of his life scheduled for the last thirty-two… three… (he takes a moment, actually converts the date, and realizes his birthday is next month) thirty-two years, that maybe it's okay to ease into this free time thing with some light (heavy) planning.

Besides, this date thing he's contemplating for tomorrow night likely requires scheduling and… possibly an addition to his wardrobe. He was certainly thinking a long coat would be a good plan, and the idea of going to a sex shop with Rey… Yeah, he's going to need some level of camouflage. (He erases _Develop taste in music?_ And types in _Get coat_.)

After a bit, he sits back and nods. Okay, he's got a plan.

And the first thing on the plan, two hours to sit down and read something that isn't a fucking report.

* * *

Rey's datapad. Well… technically, it's probably Threepio's.

She wasn't entirely enthusiastic about him reading the Alderaan history. And… well… he knows part of it is she finds it frustrating, and she doesn't exactly love situations where he gets to see her struggle with something. She prefers to be effortlessly good at things, or at least have the image of that.

Especially with him. They don't talk about the fact that she sort of feels like she 'cheated' by just sucking fifteen years of Jedi training directly out of his head… And, he didn't exactly help that with the whole 'teacher' comment, and…

He knows her wariness about him reading this isn't trying to keep him from getting at the information. It's a deeper and somewhat twisty little worm in her head that's afraid that if they both have to learn something he's going to immediately take to it, and she's going to be floundering around, actually in need of a teacher.

Both of them know that's not exactly true, especially because he takes to new disciplines with the grace and elegance of a Favier on ice. (He sniggers at that mental image. The poor thing really didn't have a clue what to do when its paws went out from under it. Apparently, ice is not a thing on Canto Bight.)

But it's still there, and… He's okay with not poking it. Especially to her face.

But, she's not here right now, so…

He opens up the files, and finds there are several histories of Alderaan and New Alderaan, and settles down, eyes starting to skim the lines.

He wonders, idly, if Darth Vader, if the 'grandfather' in his mind would have held such sway if he'd had the chance to build roots in a different community. Probably, wouldn't have mattered. He had stories of Breha and Bail, some at least, and Ben Kenobi, and of course how Vader turned in the end, but he wasn't steeped in any given tradition or culture.

Luke didn't know enough of the old ways to give them the sense that they were following in a million year long path, and Leia didn't give him roots in the ashes of Alderaan, and Han didn't know enough of his family to even try.

He sips his coffee, eyes returning to the text. Maybe he won't take root, but it's a start. Stories for his children, even if he's got to look the damn things up himself.

* * *

When he looks up from the history, feeling fairly pleased with this part of the plan, three hours have passed, and he's well into the _Beat on training droids/workout_ part of the day and getting close to _Go fetch lunch for Rey and I_.

For a heartbeat, he feels really startled, and a bit ashamed, he's on day one of this, on a plan he made himself, and he's already failed the damn thing, but…

He can actually feel the dark creeping up on him, starting to spiral in and around him, and he intentionally shuts it down.

He's on _vacation._ He made a schedule just to help keep himself more comfortable with the pile of not much to do. There is no one checking up on him. No one is going to be disappointed in him if he reads instead of working out. He has _choices_ today and it's okay to just flow from one to the next and _enjoy_ them.

He can go get food now (because fetch lunch and dinner are pretty much the only things on the list that he really _needs_ to do) and then work out after lunch and… Thinking about food, something occurs to him, he actually can _cook._ There's not much in the kitchen here, but… Jon's got a kitchen in his flat, so there have to be places on the F-Deck where you can get un-prepared food, right?

He thinks he used to like doing that, or at least didn't hate it, back at Luke's. And… if he got to intentionally make food that was designed to be tasty as opposed to as nutritious as possible… he might like that even more… And… It's been a while since he spent some real time with Ostrae… Maybe… If she's got some free time, they could… bake something, together.

He jots that down on his potential plan for the afternoon of the day after tomorrow. (Tomorrow after lunch he's got blocked out for _Date with Rey._ )

* * *

On the F-Deck, rapidly coming to the conclusion that _obtain food to cook_ is a significantly more complicated endeavor than he's thinking it'll be, Kylo bumps that to his next break.

Apparently, cooking, assuming you want to make things that taste _good,_ involves having some idea of what it is you intend to cook, and what goes into it, and where to get those things and…

Next break.

He wanders over to a noodle cart, and gets two bowls of some sort of vegetable over cold noodles in a savory sauce, and feels a certain sense of accomplishment when he gets home with lunch before Rey's done with her lessons.

* * *

"Could I shadow your lessons the day after tomorrow?" he asks Rey during lunch, as they're slorping down the noodles.

She raises an eyebrow.

He shrugs a little, and then looks out toward what would be, if it weren't snowing so hard, a view of the rest of the settlement, and the kitchen where everything takes place now. "I just… I don't actually know what it is you really do here on a given day, and… I'd kind of like to know, and… I don't know… Maybe actually learn more about what being a Maji is?"

Rey's still looking awfully skeptical. "I thought you'd had enough 'balance, focus, find your quiet spot' lessons for one lifetime."

Kylo sighs. That's a big part of _not_ having sat in on any of her previous lessons. Maintaining the balance of them not being a teacher for each other is another part of it. Not being flamingly bad at it, in front of her, is another. "I may have, and it's possible I'll bug out after the first one, but… Do you mind?"

"No, not at all! I just didn't think it was the sort of thing you'd enjoy."

He shrugs a bit. "Maybe it's not but… I guess I'm trying new things."

She smiles at him a bit. "Good."

* * *

Kylo might not know exactly what's going to happen tomorrow night, but he does know that he's not making the same mistake he made last time. This time, he's going in properly covered.

It's not like being an adolescent Padawan, wearing loose, drapy drawstring trousers and a simple tunic over them, thus resulting in erections visible from orbit. (At least that's how it felt.) Last time he was wearing snug trousers and snug shorts, so it wasn't as much of an issue, but still… He knows he caught at least a few… possibly admiring… or at least appraising, glances in the direction of his shaft, so…

He's got to get something to cover it up.

Actually, that's not quite true. He has clothing that covers that bit of him quite nicely, it just happens to all be his command or formal blacks, which are NOT going to work for this particular plan.

It's one thing for people to speculate what the Master gets up to when he's having a good time. It's a whole other thing for them to _know._

He'd been thinking of getting a long coat, because, like the tunics he has for his blacks, that'll hang down in front of him, and keep any less than discrete bulges covered up.

And he's about to give Jon a quick call and see where one would go to get something like that when a few thoughts occur to him. Firstly, Jon does have a real job, and showing him the ins and outs of the ship he ostensibly _commands_ is not among them. Secondly, he is in possession of a data pad which contains not only a listing of every shop on this ship, but a map of where they are.

This is a problem he can solve for himself.

So, he does.

* * *

He's seven subsections away from the shop that sells coats. He certainly _can_ walk that. If he jogs a bit, he's sure he can get there and back in the time allotted between now and supper. He just… doesn't know if he needs to.

He does know that some sort of snack is in order, so that's the first thing he's going to do.

Kylo's starting to feel like he could maybe get used to doing this. Looking around, seeing where people are, using Poe's advice, if there's a big line in a place where there are a lot of options to eat, whatever's at the end of that line will be good, and then queuing up.

That part is fine. The fact that the people around him still don't know what to do with him is… Annoying. That's probably the word that most readily accompanies this feeling.

As soon as the couple in front of him noticed he was behind them, they jolted to attention, and all but leapt out the way to let him take their place in the line.

Then they wilted when he glared at them, pointed to where they had been, and quietly said, "I'm not in so big of a rush as to need to line jump."

That got both of them stepping back into place, but doing so made the people in front of them notice something was up, and then they leapt to attention and… The other people in line can feel something is going on, so more of them are looking, and stiffening up, and…

"I just want to get some food. You just want to get some food. This will work a hell of a lot better if you pretend I'm just another member of the Order looking to eat."

That gets a collection of extremely tense and uneasy people turning back around toward the front of the line, all pummeling Kylo with very intense thoughts along the lines of what the hell are they supposed to do _now._

(And, of course, there is _no one_ in line behind him.)

He figures that Schiff is absolutely right, no one wants him showing up for an unexpected visit. Even here and now, at rest, they're edgy about him being behind him. He's very aware that everyone in the line just stopped talking about work, too. No one wants him to overhear them complaining about _anything_.

Ellie's probably right, too. He should visit his ships, and as many of his recruiting stations/outposts as he can, let them at least attempt to get _used_ to him being around, but he's got to let them know he's coming ahead of time, or he'll just get a lot of this. Very tense people, trying to stare at him without moving their eyes.

On the upside, when he does get to the other end of the line, he finds the cart is selling some sort of protein patty on a bun with sweet/sour relish. It's awfully good, and the proprietor is with it enough to figure out that if he was willing to wait in line, he's not going to appreciate not paying. (Though Kylo is suspicious that just possibly everyone else didn't get quite so many of the crispy fried vegetable sticks that went with the sandwich.)

He notices, looking around, that it's true that a lot of people are eating at the tables around him, but some of them are taking advantage of the small packet the food is in, to eat on the move. And there is a tram… slowing down, pointed in the direction he wants to go, not too far from him.

Kylo speeds up, and meets the tram where it stops. He's never been on one and is a little unsure of the mechanics, but the people around him wait for the people on the tram to get off, and then they hop on, so he does, too.

He settles back into his seat, and notices that he does _not_ have to share. He's got his whole row to himself, and the ones in front and behind him, and then, with nothing else to do as the tram starts to move, he eats his snack, and pays attention.

* * *

Everyone around him on this level is an officer. Supposedly. Maybe someone on the tram, or some of the people hurrying around are enlisted sent here to locate and fetch an officer. Everyone else is of rank, and given where they are and what they're doing, likely moving to or from a work shift.

At least half of the people on the tram, like him, are in casual clothing, so relaxing after work. Or before. Or today may be their off day.

He's half thinking it might be nice to talk to some of them, ask about what they do, and how they spend their off time, but again, he can feel just being near them is making them nervous.

It's hard to relax when the man in charge is around.

It's hard to relax when you are the man in charge. Everyone who's recognized who he is is watching _very_ carefully, cataloging his clothing, hair style, what he's eating, how he eats it. He's mentally snarking about how one of them has likely counted his nose hairs by now, but… They don't usually _see_ him, so he supposes staring is normal. (He also supposes doing things where he leaves his office and lets them see him is probably in order, too. That triggers another thought, Jon's mentioned it takes close to an hour to get to him, and… he checks his chrono, and yes, he's an hour into his mission to go find a coat, so… His datapad is not glued to his desk. He probably could plop his ass at one of the tables in the food courts and work there. That might make low stakes meetings easier for his men to get to.)

He can also feel a lot of them are intrigued by the idea that he's here, sitting near them, eating a sandwich and going somewhere.

Being, flagrantly, off-duty.

Just like they are.

There are two, near the front of the tram, who are very much off-duty, and apparently having a good time of it. He can't imagine they're ranked much above Ensign, maybe a First Lieutenant. If they're older than Jacen, it's by months, not years.

They keep turning to look at him, and then whipping back around, eyes front, to whisper to each other. He absolutely knows by the exaggerated way they're whipping back to eyes front that both of them are drunk.

One of the two of them, a tall, dark-haired young man, turns to him again, and then, gathering up his courage, he stands up, swaying a bit, and heads back to Kylo. He doesn't sit down, but he does stand in front of the seat in front of Kylo, and then says, "Excuse me, sir. My friend and I have a bet, and… I know this is forward, but…"

"Yes?"

"Are you really here, or did we drink way the fuck too much?"

Kylo looks down, bites his lip, and silently laughs for a moment before looking up. "I'm really here, but if you had drunk too much, isn't that what your hallucination would say?"

That idea completely staggers that drunk, and the people in the tram around them are all staring now.

Finally, the drunk says, "If you're really here, what's something you know, that I don't?"

"Among other things, how not to get so drunk in public that I end up chatting with hallucinations."

"See, that sounds like something a hallucination would say."

Kylo smiles at that. "Indeed. How about this," he takes a moment to quickly rifle through the surface thoughts of the… he most certainly is an Ensign, in front of him. "This is your first long break since you got your Ensigns's pip, and you and your friend are overdoing it. I'd suggest heading home, drinking a lot of water before you pass out, and making sure you've got some sort of analgesic on hand, because when you wake up, you're going to wish someone would smother you with a pillow to put you out of your misery."

The Ensign's eyes are wide, and he's astonished by the amazing wisdom of the great Kylo Ren. Then his eyes narrow. "That's something I know that you don't."

Kylo cocks his head and takes a bite of his sandwich. "Maybe I am a hallucination. Where are you stationed?"

"Here, this hallway, subsection 15." Three stops from where they are now.

"No. I mean, what is your duty?"

"Oh. Right now, I'm a watch officer."

Kylo tries not to laugh at that, too. "So, it's your job to make sure the enlisted show up on time at the right place at the right time, and get their jobs done?"

"Yes... Should I call a hallucination, Sir?"

Kylo mildly says, "That's not the worst idea you've ever had," very aware of all the other officers staring at them, hoping this poor twit isn't going to get his ass handed to him by one of them when he sober and back on duty.

He nods so hard he almost topples over and says, "Sir."

"You're allowed your pleasures on your off time." He hope that neuters any desire the other officers might have to spank this kid for being fresh. "But, it absolutely wouldn't do for you to be late to your next shift."

"Of course, sir!" He snaps off something that would have been a fairly impressive salute if he hadn't slapped himself in the forehead.

"Dismissed."

"Yes, sir." And the drunk goes wandering back to his buddy, and then spends the rest of the ride giggling with him about their encounter with Kylo Ren.

Meanwhile, the people seated near him continue to do their best to not look directly at him while being utterly amazed at what he did with that encounter.

Kylo sighs a bit and wonders if this will ever wear off. Maybe, its possible, there might be a time when he can be out, and be Kylo, and just… be a person. Probably not here.

* * *

It's exactly what the entry in the Order F-Deck guide said it would be. A store. That sells coats. For men. It should have precisely what Kylo's looking for.

But… if he thought about it… Well, okay, no he's not capable of coming up with this thought unprompted, but here he is, in the store, prompted as fuck, and… Yeah.

Kylo sighs, walking around, feeling the extremely startled gaze of the proprietor on him, as he confirms his suspicions.

Three years ago, this was still the First Order. Right now, it's the Order. A formal great coat is part of the official uniform of Order, and previously First Order, officers.

There are long coats here. They are, he can see, very nice long coats. Even Kylo recognizes good leather, better stitching, and quality workmanship. The problem is, they're _all_ greatcoats. And most of them are black. There are a few gray, a few blue, and a spattering of brown ones, but… They're greatcoats, and he's sure, that given where he is, this is where officers buy the greatcoat that is supposed to be part of their uniform when they want a nicer one than the standard issue wool one that comes with their first Ensign's pip.

"Master!" And now he's got the proprietor at his left hand, all but quivering with the desire to be helpful. "Sir! I'm so honored to have you in my store. What can I do for you?" He's blushing, eyeing Kylo's shoulders, and blushing more. "Sir… You're a… I mean… I can make anything you may want, but…"

Kylo mentally rolls his eyes. "You've got nothing that's going to look right with my shoulders and waist?"

The owner nods, embarrassed. "I can fit your shoulders and chest, and as long as you keep it unbuttoned, it will work just fine, but as soon as you close the coat, it will be clear that it's made for a man with more belly than you."

He's still eyeing Kylo.

"To a degree that's not _that_ big of a problem. A coat like this should hang straight or slightly narrower at the waist, but…"

"But none of the coats you have here will do that for me?"

"No, my Lord, I am sorry. If you'd let me measure you, I can have one made, quickly. Tomorrow, the day after…" There are beads of sweat on the man's forehead, and Kylo doesn't need to be empathic to know that if there will be a perfectly tailored coat for him tomorrow or the next day, it will be because this man doesn't sleep between now and delivering it.

Kylo shakes his head. "I was mostly just curious." He mostly had a very different idea of a long coat. He's never worn a First Order uniform, and intentionally has maintained that through moving into the Order. He doesn't feel a need to put on the uniform designed by and for men like Hux. And, honestly, he's big enough as is, he doesn't need to add a garment designed to make his shoulders look even bigger. People will start to mistake him for construction equipment if he gets much bigger than he currently is.

Unfortunately, that response depresses the tailor. He'd been very pleased by the idea of getting something of his onto Kylo.

Kylo tries a soft smile. "I was looking for something casual." He was looking for something that he could close in front, and these are just not going to do that, either. He supposes if the shadows hit everything right, they'd be good camouflage, but none of these coats are going to work the way his tunic does. "And… It's clear, everything in here is just too… good… for casual wear."

"I can make something casual."

Kylo mentally rolls his eyes. There is no way of getting out of this store without giving the man a commission or breaking his heart unless he uses his powers.

He's subtle about it, and tries to be diplomatic, but he knows it's the mind trick, and not his ability to persuade that wins this. "I know you can, and I'm sure it would be lovely, but you don't need to. I'm perfectly satisfied with this encounter, and have exactly what I need from it."

The tailor's eyes light up. 'Oh, Master Ren, that's wonderful. If you ever need anything…"

"I'll make sure to call upon you."

"Thank you so much!"

* * *

As he's leaving the store Kylo pulls up his do-not-recognize spell. Trying to shop for anything more expensive than food while being _Kylo Ren_ means having to walk on vibro-blades to try and get service and _not_ appall/terrify/insult the proprietor, or have them want to shoot themselves when they don't have what he needs.

As he's walking through this market section, which appears to have a lot of clothing stores, the thought hits that it doesn't much matter what he's wearing. At least, if Jon got that story about the blond, bespectacled, orange jumper-wearing version of him correct.

That thought has him wondering what he must look like, now, to the people around him. Whatever it is, they aren't paying much attention. He supposes he could just drop into someone else's mind and get a view, but that would require making sure one of them notices him. He glances at the windows of the shops he's passing, wishing he could catch a reflection of what they see.

All he sees is him.

And… behind him… Kylo stops walking. He made a joke about one once, to Rey. Back when he was still wearing the trousers with the fifteen button flies. Something like, "I'll get a kilt. You could just flip it up." And Rey told him he had bony knees and he posed for her and said something about striking terror into the heart of the galaxy with his white, bony knees.

And there, in front of him, is indeed, a black kilt. The other things in the store look fairly casual, and he feels himself drift in.

He's standing in front of it. It's not just black. It's got pleats in the back, and the outside of the pleats are black, and the inside is gray, and all of it is the most supple leather he's ever touched. It feels stupidly good under his fingers. Thick, heavy, smooth, with an easy drape.

He's a little wary of the easy drape. Anything protruding under the kilt will likely show up. But… it's also heavy enough that anything attempting to protrude from under the kilt will likely keep pointing down, or, if he arranged himself properly, spend it's time snug against his belly or hip.

It would probably end up working a lot like his tunic did. Wear something snug under it, and the weight of the garment would keep everything else discreet.

He looks at the sweater he's wearing right now. It comes down to just above his pelvis. Put that with the kilt, and… He could likely go shopping with Rey for fun stuff and not end up with too many people getting a very good idea of what he looks like when he's having a _very_ good time.

One other thought hits him as he's going through them, looking for the waist size he remembers from Jon's note, with something like this, it doesn't matter that men with his waist rarely have the size thighs he does. As long as it fits his waist, the rest of him will slip into this nice and easy, too.

He's smirking, feeling very pleased, as the attendant comes over and asks if he wants to try it on before he buys it.

And, anonymous, all he feels off of her is the desire for the commission she'll get if she sells this to him. She isn't scared, or feeling the need to grovel with him. She's being a bit warmer and more flirtatious than she'd be otherwise, but apparently men are more likely to buy things from women who stand a little too close and make fluttery eyes at them.

He wonders if that would work if Rey wasn't in his life, but it's mostly absent wondering. There are certainly women from whom he likely would buy anything they handed him, but for whatever reason, this one isn't hitting him that way. Possibly because it's so bright in the top of her mind that selling him, and every other person who walks in here and likes women, clothing is why she's so warm and friendly and standing too close.

As he's heading out, kilt in a bag in his hand, he's feeling pretty good about tomorrow.

And better about tonight. He's sure if he brings home more of those sandwiches, Rey'll be really pleased with him.

* * *

With an hour to go before he needs to get supper and go home, another thought hits Kylo. There are probably _variations_ as to what different Specs offer, and there are likely… aesthetic issues involved, and… He thinks a little further… The Finalizer had a compliment of 74,000 when he was there. It's got to be up to 90,000 by now which means there's at least 900 Specs on board.

The chance of him just strolling up to a place where he and Rey can get a good massage, and just a good massage, and say… not end up with someone who expects to offer them a whole lot more than a massage, likely aren't great.

And it would be at this point where it occurs to him, that yes, he's got the _Supremacy_ directory, he does not have the one for the _Finalizer_ so unless he asks for a copy of one, which will likely involve either explaining why he wants one, or just _looking_ at C8 hard enough that he decides not to ask, the only way he's going to somehow, magically, take them to the right sort of place and that place just happens to have an opening for them, is by sheer luck of the Force.

Or, he can go back to his room, sit down the with directory, and find out what's available here, on the _Supremacy._

* * *

He's been scrolling through names for five solid minutes. He's absolutely correct about the Specs having specialties, and preferred services, and customers, and… Yeah. Just walking into a place is a _bad_ idea.

Finally, he says, "C8, what's the compliment on the _Supremacy_ now?"

"We're up to six point three million on board."

"Thank you." Well, that explains the scrolling. Unless there's waiting lists stretching into next week, there's likely at least fifteen thousand Specs on board, and given what he's hoping to turn this ship into, likely more.

There's an address search feature. He puts in F-Deck. No need to go scanning through the ladies that work on C, D, or E; he knows he's not going there. That narrows it down some. He whimpers slightly, he's still got 1287 options.

Massage narrows it down some, men and women narrows it down a little, couples gets it down a bit more, but by the time he's put in every keyword he can think of, he's still got 400 options, and that's just too damn many for him to search through in… A quick glance at the chrono shows he's got twenty minutes before he needs to get home with dinner.

Okay. He doesn't have to get this figured out right this second. He's got unscheduled time tomorrow morning, too, so he can… Try to narrow the search down more, and…

Well… He does know someone who's done this. Here. And it's not like the man is under any illusions about him, so…

He jots down a quick note.

 _Jon,_

 _I'm not calling because this isn't a big enough deal to disrupt whatever you're up to right now._

 _But, I'm hoping to take Rey out tomorrow night, and get us both massages. I remember you mentioning fun with bath time and a massage, and… Is there anyone you'd recommend? And…_ (he's decidedly not blushing as he's typing this) _someone who won't be fussed if we just want massages. Any post-massage fun will be had without outside help._ (He figures that's specific enough.)

 _I can make an appointment myself._ (Theoretically, he thinks.) _I just need a clue as to who to try and book._

 _Thanks,_

 _Kylo_

* * *

He's half a minute from gathering up everything to go home when his comm chimes.

"Okay, this is vastly more entertaining than the contract I'm going through. You want Spec reccs?" Jon sounds supremely amused by this.

"Did you know there's something like 15,000 Specs on this ship?"

Jon laughs.

"And the directory tells me they've got specialties." It's clear from the way he pauses that he didn't exactly _know_ what a good third of the listed specialties were.

He can feel the expression on Jon's face. "Oh, you'd be right about _that_. And let me guess, you really don't want to take Rey to the wrong place."

"I really don't. 'Here, Love, lets have a nice, relaxing night out, oh holy FUCK WHAT IS THAT!?'" (It's possible his voice might be a bit too emphatic here. But, he got curious after he saw 'sounding' three times, because he absolutely could not even begin to imagine what that was, so he looked it up. He wishes he didn't.)

Jon laughs for way too long at that line before saying, "Have you been drinking?"

"No, why?"

"Apparently, you're fun on vacation. Anyway. Yes, I have a recommendation. What time are you thinking?"

"I can make my own appointment."

Jon laughs at that, too. Apparently, he's just amusing as fuck right now. "I'm sure you can, but since my friend is very, very good at this, you need to book weeks in advance if you're not already a client. I didn't get the sense that your fun night out was for two months from now."

"Fuck."

"Since, I already am a client, let me book you and Rey."

Kylo's quiet. But, he's got to say it to get the idea across. "I was sort of hoping to go in cloaked."

Jon's quiet for a moment, because he's certain cloaked isn't the same thing for Kylo that it is for him. Then understanding dawns. "Oh, the thing where you don't look like you. Yeah, probably not a terrible idea. Does that work on people who are touching you and really paying attention?"

Kylo shrugs. "It has in the past."

"People who didn't expect to see Kylo Ren?"

"Yeah."

"Okay, what name do you use when you're not being Kylo?"

"Rey and Ben Amidala. And, time wise, probably looking for 18:00."

"Just getting the evening off to a good start?"

"That's the idea." He can feel Jon smiling at that. "Do you have time to grab lunch with me tomorrow?"

He can hear Jon shuffling things around, and understands he's checking his schedule. "Yes, and if you come to me, I've got more than ten minutes to do it in."

"I can come to you. Where'll you be?"

More shuffling sounds. "Actually, down on ZZ, looking at the layout. We've got a meeting to go over this stuff later next week, but a few minutes tomorrow could cover the basics."

"Okay, that'll work. If you've got a taste for something specific, let me know, and I'll make sure to bring it."

"Good. See you tomorrow."

* * *

He again beats Rey home.

It's _cold._ He turns on the cooker, and opens the door. Turns on the burners, too.

She wants to look for a new home with him, so… Sure, good, but… He decides to check his personal chrono to see if it has temperature sensors. It does. He takes it off and checks. It's 14. Inside. With the heat on.

Yes, they get cold snaps. It's not snowing right now, and that tends to go along with the temperature dropping, but… A year… That might be too generous on the time frame for when they've got to get out of here.

Poe's back the day after tomorrow. They need to sit down and talk about getting a sooner rather than later plan into play for getting everyone out of here. The mental image of talking with Poe about ferrying the equipment necessary for a full ecology scan while working on his waltz forms in his mind, and he sniggers at it.

"What's got you laughing?" Rey asks, startling him so badly he almost drops the sandwiches.

"Uh…" Shit, he's blushing, and he knows it'll take her barely a second of effort to figure it out.

"Kylo?"

He can't get it out of the top of his thoughts. It's glowing there, dancing with Poe, learning, his wedding surprise for her, refusing to be banished.

Her eyes narrow slightly. "I'm going to leave it alone, because I know it's a surprise, but if you'd think about it a little less, it'd be easier."

He bites his lip, nods, and looks at dinner. Food. Good food. Right. "I tried something new today."

That has Rey interested. "Good new?"

"Well, I brought more of it home, so… I liked it."

"Okay, let me take my boots off, and…" He's shaking his head. "No?"

"Floor's bloody cold." He'd taken his boots off when he got home and very quickly realized that was a bad plan. "Let the cooker get it a few more degrees up."

"Okay," she sits at the table, notices her datapad where he left it. "Were you reading my pad?"

He doesn't exactly feel guilty about that, but he also wasn't invited to do it, either. He puts the sandwiches and fried veggie sticks on plates for them. "You wanna get drinks?"

She stands up and pours some pear cider into a pot on the burner. A hot drink'll go down a treat right now. "Evading?"

"Cold." He puts the plates in the cooker to keep them warmer while the drink heats. "And, uh, yeah. I was. You weren't wrong, New Alderaan history is a sarlac."

"I told you."

"Yeah, well, I'm a glutton for punishment, so…"

She snerks slightly at that. "How far did you get?"

"Just got to intercontinental trade. The old ocean ships starting to bring goods from one side of the planet to the other, and how the Organas were captains and sailors."

She smiles a little at that. "You like that idea."

"A little. I… never had the chance to really feel like or… be… an Organa, I guess. But, I kind of like the idea of it, you know. Everything in the world that matters to you wrapped up in fragile shell of wood, taking it across dangerous seas by the light of the stars, hoping that if you're good at it, you'll make a fortune that secures the future for yourself and your family. That… resonates."

She smiles at that, too. "Does it, now?"

"Yeah… It does… Maybe… when we're done being the Master and Mistress, we'll get a good ship, and just get out there. Go from place to place and show our family the galaxy. Go back to the Maji in between adventures, and tell them what's out there, maybe take some of them along from time to time. Maybe just us for some of it."

Steam starts to rise from the pot. Rey pours the cider into mugs for them, and Kylo levitates the plates to the table. They sit, hip to hip, and she pulls the blanket from the comfy chair to wrap around the two of them while they eat.

"Do you like that idea?" he asks. "Or is that… not grounded enough?"

She shrugs a bit. "I think, if we've got a home base, somewhere to keep going back to at the end of the journeys, it will be."

"I can do that."

She takes a bite of the sandwich. "These are good. So, tell me about your adventures with unscheduled time."

He laughs at the idea of unscheduled, and begins to fill her in.


	43. R&R: Sensual

4/4/2

It's occurring to Kylo that while he might like falling asleep in a cold room, burrowed under a million blankets, snuggled up close to Rey, it's the worst possible way to get up in the bloody morning.

There is not a single iota of his being that thinks getting out of their bed is in any way, shape, or form, a good plan.

It's just _not._

It's _cold_ out there. And here, under the blankets, it's nice and toasty warm, and his favorite person is wrapped around him, and maybe they could just sort of stay here, cuddled together in perfect, sleepy contentment.

Warm and snug and cozy, and really, really having to pee.

He mentally rolls his eyes.

There are times when he thinks he's in danger of coming into contact with the ephemeral nature of love, the divine ideal of it, and then his body barges on in and refocuses life onto it.

Another mental eye roll. Maybe, after all, that is the meaning of _life._ Keep his, and her, and eventually any bodies their bodies may create, happily located in those bodies. Maybe it really isn't any loftier than that.

It's too damn early to be contemplating the nature of life. And his bladder is way too full.

And the air is too damn cold.

He's awfully glad that he can just port himself back to their room on the _Supremacy,_ and take care of business in a room he can't see his breath in. More glad about being able to return to their home, before Rey wakes up, with a _hot_ breakfast, dressed from head to toes, and not at all glad to realize that he can see his flipping breath _inside_ their home because the cooker is not actually designed to run all day and all night with the door open and the bloody thing died while they were sleeping.

* * *

Sometimes, the Force, really is _nice._

And, though Kylo doesn't exactly love contemplating it, sometimes the education he got with Luke comes in handy.

Namely, he's fixed, or at least been near fixing, a busted cooker before, so how hard can this be?

And this is why, when Rey actually does wake up, and wraps herself in several blankets, and wanders into the kitchen to investigate the noise she's hearing, she finds Kylo, on his back, with the stove hovering over him, as he's (and she winces) ripping out components, intending to take the time to see if they work, later.

Rey's first instinct, when she heads into the kitchen, and sees Kylo on the floor surrounded by pieces of cooker, is to shriek. He's just tearing through the thing, willy-nilly, with fragile, valuable parts all around him, and…

She makes herself bite her lip. Kylo lives in a world where you just figure out what the broken part is, and then _buy a new one._ She supposes, at this point in time, she does, too.

So, she doesn't yell. She doesn't hit him with a high-pitched, terrified, _what are you doing?_ She takes a deep breath, and sees breakfast at the table, steaming in the cold air, and decides nothing is better on an empty stomach, so she starts to eat.

After a few more moments of him ripping parts out of the cooker, she says, keeping her voice mild, "Do you want help with that?"

"Nah. Not sure what's busted. Figure I'll take them all out, test them, and then put the working ones back."

She eyes the parts. One of them, a heating coil, is very obviously broken. The others all look fine. "If I had to guess, that heating coil that's frayed on the end and black would be the culprit." Her voice may be a _tad_ sharper than necessary, but most of the parts he just yanked out work significantly better if they don't get yanked out of where they belong.

He nods, still pulling pieces out. "Probably. Just want to make sure it died from overuse and not a short or malfunction from somewhere else. Plus, it'd be good to make sure it didn't take anything else with it."

Okay, that's not unreasonable, especially if you can't just lay hands on something and sense where it's broken. After all, just by looking, Rey knows that they had the cooker going too long, and the door was open, so the thermostat kept increasing power to the heating element to try and reach the correct temperature, and the damn thing just failed. It can only, literally, take the heat for so long, and then the alloy fatigues to the point that it no longer works. But, it's occurring to her, that Kylo likely _can't tell that_ just by looking.

He scoots out from under the cooker, and gently hovers it over to the living room section, so it doesn't land on the parts around him.

Then he sits next to her, pulling his part of breakfast to him, wrapping his hands around the hot coffee mug with pleasure. "You're thinking loudly, but I'm appreciating you not saying it out loud. Dad would have grabbed the heating coil, only the heating coil, replaced it, and then acted surprised when the cooker blew three days later." Han couldn't tell what was busted just by looking, too.

Rey gets a deeper level. That's true to a certain value of true. He had a decent sense of what was working and what wasn't. Probably a stupidly good one for someone who wasn't Force sensitive. But, like her, he grew up poor and spent most of his life on the edge, so anything that was still working, he kept in service _until it died_ because he wasn't entirely sure when he'd have the credits to get a new one.

She gets another blast of memory with that. "And your mother would have complained at him about how they could afford a new cooker, so they might have just as well bought one, and not burned the kitchen down with his quick fixes."

Kylo nods at that, too. He glances at her, too. "And I figured you'd likely have a heart attack if I suggested just scrapping it and getting a new one, too."

Her eyes narrow a little. "Not a heart attack."

"But you would have thought it was horrifyingly wasteful. And you would have given me _that look._ " It doesn't come out a lot, but there are times where he'll do something without thinking, like attempt to throw out a portion of food they're not going to personally eat, and then _the look_ will be aimed at him. "And unlike this where you could bite your tongue, it would have made you fuss."

She nods, getting an entire new cooker because of one busted heating element would have involved what he calls fussing. (She calls it, _doing it the right way._ ) But, appreciating the compromise position, she decides to nudge him a little closer to _the right way._ "So, do you have any idea what to replace that heating coil with if that's the only thing that's busted?"

He shrugs at that, too. "They've got to sell them somewhere, right?"

She kisses the tip of his nose. "They do, but we've also got a spare parts cupboard in the barn with the Faviers, so if you felt like braving the cold, you could walk to the far side of the settlement and just grab one."

He glances at the parts scattered across the kitchen, and nods. "And my morning just filled up."

* * *

"So, you and Rey are having a 'night out?'" Jon says with a smile, scooping stew into his mouth as the two of them sit on a crate of some sort of unnamed building supply in the middle of the newly cleaned out and soon to be beginning construction ZZ deck.

"That's the idea."

"They were booked for 18:00, but I was able to get 20:00," and he taps his datapad. "All the details are in your file."

"Thank you," Kylo scoops up his noodles and looks around before saying, "Uh… tips?"

"Oh, gratuities, yes, that's common. Ten percent is just being polite, fifteen is common, twenty for above and beyond. I've already covered it; I know they'll go above and beyond for you."

Kylo blinks. "That's… good to know, but I meant, do you have tips for a good night out. Not like we do this a lot, you know?" Jon's about to answer, and then Kylo says, "Wait, what do I owe you for this?" It's occurring to him he's got no idea of what this sort of thing costs. The times he's visited Specs in the past, he didn't pay. He didn't think about it, at all. He went and did things, and people around him just… coped. Now he's wincing, wondering if some poor girls got the glorious good time that was him in his Jedi Killer days, _and_ got stiffed on the costs.

"Trust me, you'll take it better after."

Kylo just stares at him.

"Look, I know you're good for it. C8'll take care of the details, and I'm not going to be missing any meals during the intervening times."

Kylo chews on his lip as he continues to stare at Jon, halfway between grateful and horrified. Finally, he says, "I'm theoretically in charge of this ship. I should probably know what things on it cost."

"And I'm not saying you shouldn't know. I'm saying _after,_ when you know, viscerally, what you paid for, the price won't seem so exorbitant."

"Holy Force."

"Kylo, you don't shop, and you really don't shop for pleasure. Any number I tell you will seem off. Hell, do you even know what you get paid?"

He shrugs. "I can find out."

"Exactly. If you think of it, I'll tell you tomorrow. If not, I'll settle accounts with C8."

"Fine. So, tips?"

Jon ponders for a moment. "Don't gorge on dinner? Visiting the specs, no matter what you get done, always feels better on a not overly full belly."

Kylo doesn't roll his eyes, but that one, to him, was fairly obvious.

"I don't know. I've never been on a date with you. Or Rey. Or you and Rey. Do things you enjoy, together."

Kylo sighs a bit. "I guess that's really what I'm asking. We're still… learning… what fun is. You know? We've taken a few days off, together, twice, and this is the first time, since I've been a child, that I've had completely unscheduled time to myself. So… what's… fun?"

Jon gets that look he sometimes does, that Kylo has categorizes as 'mentally slapping the shit out of the people who raised you.' Then he says, "Beyond getting massages, do you have anything planned? How vague is your idea?"

"It's the before massage part that's empty. Eat. Okay, good, we like eating. Not sure where or what, though. Massages. After… I mean, you're sending me to the _fun_ section of the F-Deck, right?"

Jon smirks brilliantly. "Oh yes, I am. If it were Lane and I out on the town, there are a few clubs I could… Hmm…" His eyes narrow a bit and he rolls his lips. "Er… Well, I can suggest them, but… How comfortable are you with men making passes at you?"

"About as comfortable as I am with women making passes at me." And they both remember Jon swooping in to rescue Kylo all those months ago when he was at the first formal supper of the Order and a few lovely, young things had been attempting to get Kylo's attention via the wants of his shaft. "A good night out for me isn't dancing with Rey while other men try to pinch my fanny."

Jon looks very curious at that. "I wasn't aware you came equipped with one."

Kylo stares at him blankly for a moment. "You don't mean what I mean by that, do you?"

"Apparently, not."

Kylo inclines his head a bit. "Whatever it means, I'm unlikely to enjoy that. Also, because I'm not exactly good at dancing." He doubles up on that mental note to get some time with Poe soon.

"Okay, in that case, I do not have any clubs to recommend to you." Jon thinks for a moment. "But I do have a restaurant." He grabs his pad, hits a few buttons, types a few things in, and then hits another one. "Okay, you're set for dinner, and info is in your system. After massages, you've got plans set?"

"I've got… Yeah. Probably. Uh… There are sex shops there right?"

Jon's face is about to crack in half he's smiling so widely. "Oh, yeah… There are."

"In which case the post-massage part of the night is planned."

Jon's giggling, and elbows Kylo in the side, before saying, "I bet it is."

Kylo smirks back at him. Then he says, "Can I test something on you?"

"Sure."

Kylo brings up his do-not-recognize spell. "What do I look like?"

"You, you look like you."

"Shit. You know to expect it. I'll have to try that later."

Jon raises an eyebrow.

So, Kylo explains, "My do-not-recognize spell. I was hoping you could tell me what I look like, beyond blond and wearing an orange jumper."

"Oh. Yeah. Sorry, I just see you." Jon takes a sip of his broth. "Oh, tips! It's customary to get little presents for your beloved before going out for a good time, and… It's been a billion years since this happened, but I know I used to like it when Lane would pick an outfit out for me. Something to set the tone for the night. And he enjoyed getting to dress me up to his liking as well."

Kylo's mouth opens and closes at that. Jon's vividly remembering the play of desires that went with those outfits and those memories feel good. And Kylo can understand why he might suggest that. On top of that, he has bought clothing for Rey, that is still in his closet waiting for the right day to come out to play. He liked doing that, a lot. And he could continue to do something like that. That fades a moment later as it occurs to him that he knows literally nothing about where they're going, _and_ part of why you'd pick an outfit to 'set the tone' is because the place you're going has some sort of dress code.

"The restaurant, how do you dress for that," Kylo finally asks.

"Nice informal."

"That means nothing to me."

"Your formal blacks are too nice, the Padme trader costume isn't nice enough, and that chalk suit that you like to pretend is white would be fine if you open the jacket."

Kylo rolls his lips, wondering if his previous purchase can go with this. "I bought a leather kilt, because… well… Uh… That last shopping trip, where I asked you about Rey's size, uh… No tunic, and the Padme jacket isn't very long, and…" He hopes he doesn't have to be more explicit, but he figures he doesn't because Jon's got a shaft too, and knows how they work.

Once Jon understands what Kylo's saying, he's hunched over, laughing so hard he's in danger of rupturing his spleen. Kylo sighs and rolls his eyes, and lets Jon have his laugh.

When he can breathe again, he says, "What are you, seventeen?"

"Bloody well felt like it on that trip. It was… intense. And doing it with Rey, post-massage, that's likely to be _intense,_ too. So, it's leather, pretty heavy, hangs down, covers everything."

Jon nods. "Uh… Yeah, if you've got a shirt with a collar, and say a vest, you put that with a kilt, and you'll be okay."

Kylo nods back at him. "Rey?"

"Any dress she owns or you pick out for her, will likely be fine. Just keep all of her bits covered, and make sure she can comfortably sit on a pillow on the floor, and all will be good."

"Okay."

Jon checks his chrono. "Shit."

"Late?"

"I will be if I don't get a move on five minutes ago. Have I mentioned this ship is too fucking big?"

"You have. Any updates about the dreadnoughts?"

"Uh…" Jon blinks. "Yeah, shit… A while back… I think they said they got the second set of payments and were proceeding along, but…"

Kylo waves that off. "Talk tomorrow?"

"I'd like that." And then Jon's off, and Kylo's sitting on a box, in what will, eventually, be the landing dock of his diplomatic wing, what should, eventually, be the first view of _The Order_ that anyone sees coming here, sipping his soup, wondering what to get Rey.

* * *

This time he's roaming around the F-Deck cloaked. It's just… easier.

(Though he does idly wonder what would happen if the Master were to be seen, out and about, shopping for pretty things for his lady? Maybe next time. Or maybe when Ellie finds somewhere not the _Supremacy_ for them to go wander about on.)

Part of him is thinking of heading directly to the fun part of the F-Deck, and go seek out some more fun underthings for Rey. Part of him is _very much_ enjoying that idea. Or maybe just presenting her with the fun underthings he already got. Part of him is _insistently enjoying_ that idea. Part of him is starting perk up some and while he's fairly sure he can go back to his place, take care of himself now, and still be good for tonight, he's also thinking that this anticipating part is really nice, and he'd like to stay here, now, enjoying it.

Sort of like stroking himself in the shower, this is about… learning how to make himself feel good and just enjoy it.

And the idea of getting pretty things for Rey makes him feel good.

* * *

When Jon was remembering Lane picking out outfits for him, he was mostly feeling the desire of those moments. The… joy of being exactly the way his beloved wanted him to be for a night. The deeply personal cherishing that went with those moments. Lane's attention to detail, to Jon, to… Kylo doesn't have words for those feelings, just that they were deeply content, and very pleased, and that Jon still aches for their loss.

And, to a degree, Kylo understands that he's probably intruding too deeply into Jon's personal life by letting himself feel that. But, to a different degree… this is probably in the deep chasm of things he should have learned by the time he was fifteen, but he didn't, and unfortunately for Jon's private life, he's got something of a surrogate father/older brother role, and that involves filling in bits of the chasm from time to time.

It'd be nice if Kylo already knew and understood all of his desires, and how they worked, and how to feed them, and what they liked best, and all the rest of that, but he doesn't so… Tips.

And, at least for the moment, imagining Rey in some of the pretty things he's petting as he walks through the shop seems to be feeding his desires nicely.

* * *

He's waiting for her. She's working with the kids, shifted things with Rose, so Rose has dinner, and she had lunch, and right now, they're still in the kitchen wrapping up… Oh… How to set up and read an eco-survey, which he supposes is probably going to be a useful skill in the not wildly distant future.

Rose is laughing with her about her 'big night' and Rey's confirming that in the next week or so, they'll take Paige so she and Finn can go out. That perks up Kylo, too. It's been a while since he's had some baby snuggles, and he wouldn't mind that happening again.

 _Snooping?_ He hears in his mind.

 _Anticipating._

"Eagerly?" she says, out loud, in front of him, a pleased and amused look on her face.

He pulls her close. "Very much so." And then kisses her. And then his hands are over her eyes, and he's gently nudging her toward their room.

"Kylo?"

"It's a surprise. No peeking."

"No peeking? What…"

"I think you'll like it," he says turning her so she's facing away from him, letting go of her, very rapidly stripping out of his clothing, and into his 'going out' outfit. "Okay, that's me done. Keep those eyes closed," And then he's pulling off her jacket.

"You getting me naked is the surprise…"

"I'd hope by now the idea that I'd want you naked is never a surprise." He unclasps her shirt, gently pulling it off of her. "And, as much as I'm enjoying the view," he kisses her shoulder, before slipping off her breast band, "this is a necessary part of the plan."

"The plan involves me getting naked? Are we just having sex?"

"Not just." She laughs at that, and he kneels before her, tugging off her boot.

"Do I need to get a shower?"

Kylo stands up, and presses his face to her throat, inhaling. She smells like skin, and whatever vanilla cake-y sort of thing she was helping the kids cook. "Nope. You smell good." He kneels back down, taking care of the last boot. Then he reaches up for her trousers.

"You really are getting me naked?"

"Certainly looks that way from where I'm kneeling." He replies, kissing her belly. "Though, it's occurring to me, I've never properly undressed you before, and one of these days, that's going on the list."

"The list?"

"This is what happens when I have too much free time. I end up making lists of things I want to try at some point."

"Really?" She looks amused even with her eyes closed.

"Okay, no not really, but I am thinking about it."

Even with her eyes closed, she threads her fingers through his hair, stroking his scalp. He makes a tiny, "Mmmm…" sound. "Distracting me."

"Do you want me to stop?"

"Not really, but this'll likely go better if I'm paying attention."

She removes her hands from his hair. "We'll put more of that on the list, too?"

"I'd like that." He sits back on his haunches. She's naked save for her panties and socks, and he's enjoying the view. He smiles to himself, pleased by this.

"Kylo?"

"Love?"

"It's _cold._ "

"Right." Hard nipples, goosebumps, this probably wasn't the place to do this. He gets moving. The dress is in their bathroom, and he heads in there to grab it. "Arms up."

"Arms up?"

He just flashes her the mental image of her with her hands high in the air.

"Wait, are you… going to put clothing on me?"

"I might," he says as he makes sure the opening of the dress lines up properly with her arms and head, and then smooths it down her. "Yep. Looks like I did it."

Rey wiggles a little, feeling the garment draping over her. "This is… new?"

He's standing behind her, and kisses her shoulder. "Yes. One more minute."

Rey hears him rustling around while he fetches the boots she bought back on that first, find stuff she likes trip with Jon. They're too light and soft and pretty to be worn in the snow here, but on deck… They're perfect for on-deck. It takes him a moment to figure out how the zip works, but once he's got that down, he unzips the first boot, gently takes Rey's foot, and slips it into the soft gray suede. Once he's got it zipped back up, he kisses her knee, and then does it again for the other foot.

Then he stands, rests his hands on her shoulders, and pulls them to their room on the _Supremacy_ in front of the mirror next to the bed. "Okay, open your eyes."

The first view is of herself. The dress is a soft gray, and the straps are a light blue green floral pattern. There's a soft, flowy sleeve on the left side, and the skirt is higher there, brushing her thigh. On the right, there's no sleeve, and the skirt almost touches her knee. It's… different.

She's not sure if it's the sort of thing she'd even look at twice, let alone pick out for herself. It's soft. Very soft. And that's when she gets the idea of what must have happened. He likely used his eyes to narrow down the options, and then used his fingers to pick the final dress.

He's standing behind her, hands on her hips, fingers splayed across her waist, and his thumbs stroking up and down gently, feeling the fabric on her skin.

"Do you like it?" he asks, sounding a little nervous.

"I don't dislike it."

"But it's not instant love, is it?"

She shrugs a little and then looks at him. Her eyebrows raise as she notices, in the mirror behind her, bare legs. That gets her interested. Then she turns and looks him up and down. "Oh." He's got on the black and gray leather kilt, a white shirt, and a black vest. She nods slowly, enjoying this a _whole_ lot.

"Oh?"

"I _like_ that. You got… a leather kilt?"

"Uh…" He smiles a bit. "Plans for tonight are… risqué, and… I might want something a bit more concealing than trousers."

The kilt does hang down, and she gently touches it. Like her dress it's _so soft._ Though her dress is a fine knit of some sort, and his is smooth, supple leather. "I like that, a lot."

She feels Kylo add, _get leather clothing for Rey,_ to his mental to-do list. She grins up at him. "Risque?"

He grins back down at her and kisses her. "Uh huh."

She licks her lips. "Okay… Uh…" She wiggles a bit. "Kylo,"

"Yeah," he breathes against her neck, nuzzling where her ear meets her neck.

"Breastband?"

He straightens up and blinks. "Oh… Uh… Do you need it?" (If asked, Kylo would have to admit that he's got no idea why Rey wears one. He understands the bra thing that pushes everything up and out and whatnot. _That_ he gets on a visceral level and rather enjoys, but her day in and day out breastband is just sort of there.)

She takes a few steps, and he appreciates the jiggle and the brush of her nipples against the fabric. The fabric is so soft that it just kisses her skin all the way down, and he's loving the effect of this on her.

She nods at him. "Yeah. Concealment." She wiggles a little, and his eyes track the motion of her breasts. "I enjoy the way you're watching. Not sure I want all the other people who like women doing the same."

He only mentally pouts at that, before saying, "Okay." Then he rushes to the wardrobe, locates one of them, and wiggles a finger to indicate for her to turn around. He uses his Force to lift the dress as he stares at the band in his hand. It's true he's taken them off a few times, but he's a little sketchy on how getting them on works.

"Just hooks and eyes," she says as he's looking at the edges of the band.

That also gets some nodding, and then he fits it around her chest, with only a little petting on his part. He'd like to stay here and play more, but he also knows that dinner reservations are creeping up upon them rapidly, and while it's true that Kylo Ren can likely show up whenever the fuck he likes to dinner and have a place ready for him and his Lady, Ben Amidala is a rather different bucket of bolts.

He gently pulls his Force away, and the dress settles on Rey. "Feeling better concealed?"

"Yes," she says, looking up at him.

He offers her his arm, and she takes it. "Dinner?"

"Dinner," he replies.

"What are we having?"

"I genuinely have no idea."

Rey's looking surprised at that, but she walks with him toward the elevator, and tonight's adventures.

* * *

"One day, we should probably just walk from one side of this to the other," Rey says, as they're heading through the F-Deck, Aft 18, Subsection 10.

Kylo tries to quickly think that through in his head. "Week. I think you mean week."

She raises a brow.

"Aft 25, all the way at the back, is the full sixty kilometers across."

Rey sighs. "Right. This one is…"

He shrugs… "I don't know, fifty? More than I want to walk."

She twines her fingers with his. "So, we're not doing this whole floor. What do you think the highlights are?"

He nods. That's a better, and doable, question. "We'll ask?"

She nods back. "So… uh…" She doesn't say, 'where are we going?' but it's clear she's thinking that.

He answers anyway. "Not precisely sure. It should be around here, though." They're in the right subsection, and according to the map, they should be right on top of the restaurant. He hopes. The gnawing feeling that he might have them in the wrong hallway or subsection is beginning to creep up on him as they continue to stroll down the hallway.

Finally, though, he catches the sign. It's on the far side of the market plaza, which is why he was having a difficult time finding it. Bindaro's. "There."

Rey nods. "Well, the name isn't helping."

He raises a brow.

"Me figure out what dinner is going to be."

"Oh. Uh… Jon booked it. So…"

"Wait, did you get Jon to set this up?"

"I fully intended to set this up on my own, but I asked for suggestions because…" He doesn't need to finish that sentence. "Next thing I knew, the first half of the date was booked, and I'd been told in no uncertain terms was I to attempt to figure out what it cost until _after._ "

Rey's brows raise. "Oh my."

Kylo nods again. "Yeah.

* * *

If Kylo had been paying attention, 'sit on a pillow' would have given him at least one hint about the meal. It'd be eaten on the floor.

If he'd really been thinking that might have encouraged a second thought, along with the fact that _this_ is the place Jon picked knowing this was a date night for them, namely, that this is a _romantic_ eat on the floor sort of place.

But, somehow, it does catch him by surprise when they open the door to a space about the size of his office, with a… bar… he's going to call it a bar, in the center where people are doing things with… food… That's definitely food.

Around the bar, tucked into curtained off nooks, are a collection of small tables, with pillows on two sides of them. Apparently, this is a place where people go in couples for romantic dates. On the floor. A quick glance shows that all but two of the tables have people at them, so it's apparently a rather popular one at that.

A server notices them immediately, and heads over. "Amidalas?"

Rey nods. "Yes."

"Excellent. Come on in." She waves them toward her and one of the empty tables. "Have you been to a jarquterie before?"

Both of them shake their head as they follow her to the table.

"Then this'll be fun. We do have a menu, but most people will tell you the best way to do this is to just let Kiro set the menu. Unless there's something specifically you want, he's going to steer you better in relation to what he could get at the markets today."

Rey smiles at that. "Then we'll have what he's making."

"Great." She gestures to the teapot on the table. "The tea is brewed and ready, but if you'd like wine or a cocktail, we can accommodate that."

"Is there… a drink suggested with dinner?" Kylo asks.

"We can arrange that. Bar tending isn't exactly Kiro's area of specialty, but he does have preferred wines and cocktails to go with each plate."

Rey hears that and says, "Plates?"

The server smiled. "You really haven't done this before, right. Sorry. If you opt for Kiro's dinner, you'll get five to seven small plates, each with a portion of whatever looked especially good today."

"What's a portion?" Kylo asks, thinking about Jon's don't fill up too full suggestion.

At the same time, Rey says, "I'm sure tea'll be fine." She knows five to seven glasses of wine is vastly too much, even if they split them.

The server holds one hand cupped into a small serving. "About that much. Usually a few morsels."

"Oh. Good. And… one glass of wine. Whatever matches the meal as a whole." It's not that Kylo's feeling nervous or anything, but being a bit more relaxed might be nice, and he'd like to get the idea of how the flavors are supposed to mix.

"We can do that." The server smiles at them, and Rey and Kylo get settled.

Almost. Rey sits first, and then Kylo plops himself down, catty corner from her, legs sprawled out. There's room under the table for the one, but the other's sort of next to where Rey settled herself. She's tucked her legs in under her, and is sort of sitting on her one hip, leaning toward him. Once she's looked away from the teapot and the tea she's poured for them, to Kylo, she starts to giggle.

"What?"

Her eyes drop in a very expressive sort of way. "Your shorts are showing," she whispers with a smile.

He blushes a little, spends a moment trying to figure out how to sit, and then crosses his legs and tugs the kilt down in the front. He knows, because he put it on, that it's almost two meters of leather that wraps around his hips and clasps at the top, but what that meant in terms of how to sit without flashing everyone his undies is was something of a mystery.

Her hand lands on his knee. "Aww… that wasn't you teasing me with a glimpse of what's to come."

He laughs a bit, and then nods emphatically. "Yes. That's absolutely what that was. It was completely intentional and totally not any indication that I've got no idea how to sit if I don't have trousers on when I'm in public."

That makes her giggle, and lean in a little closer so her cheek is against his shoulder. "What got you… I mean… It's… I like it, but…" He waits for her to attempt to finish that sentence. She doesn't.

He pours the tea for both of them, and then thinks. _Like I said, tonight's plans are risqué. This seemed… prudent._

She's fingering the hem of the kilt, tracing her fingers gently over the edge of the leather, thinking about how it split over his lap. _Looking for… easy access… prudent?_

That rushes hot and heady through him. He _hadn't_ thought of that, but… She's in a skirt and so is he, and all they'd have to do is just push clothing out of the way and… He leans into her, nuzzles against her ear and cheek. "I hadn't been thinking in that direction, but I am, _now._ "

"So… like when we went to the cinema? Did you find a… romantic… movie for us?"

That's a thing they could and should do again, too.

He picks up her tea cup, and offers it to her. She takes a small sip, and he focuses on her lips on the edge of the cup.

"I didn't find a film."

"Hmmm…" _Fun with blind corners?_

He thinks about the sorts of things he hopes they'll get at the shop. Depending on how _exciting_ shopping may be… _Maybe._ He gently bites her shoulder. _But… I'd prefer we hold off until we get home. It'll… hopefully… be worth the wait._

She turns to kiss him, and for a moment, it feels very private. The curtains around the nooks block the view from three directions, so there's some feeling of being the only people in the place.

It's not a deep, or particularly passionate kiss. Mostly just a happy one. Together, out, with each other, having _fun._

The server coming back with the glass of wine kills that.

She sets it on the table between them. Her stare isn't censorious, but there is a certain level of _you're in public, behave_ behind the eyes. Kylo's got the sense she's whipped that look out at a lot of couples here. "It's a Greeden White, should match most of the meal well, though skip it on the second course, it'll clash with the sauce."

They both nod seriously at that.

Kylo scoots closer to sitting upright, less in Rey's space, and lifts the glass to his lips. It's… not what he was expecting. Most wine tastes to him like grapes that should have been eaten a few months earlier. Its not bad, but not his favorite. This is… "Melon?" he hands Rey the glass.

She takes a sip and shrugs. "I've had melon maybe twice, _maybe._ "

"We'll have to fix that, too. Do you like it?"

She nods. "More than most wines I've had."

"Yeah, me, too." He twines his fingers with hers. "You ever think about making a list of things to try?"

"No. I… No."

"I'm thinking, maybe, when we get a list of the places they intend to send us, that we should… Spend some time figuring out what's there, and… Try things."

"What kind of things?"

He shrugs. "Don't know. Probably depend on where we're going, but… We're adults, Rey, we should… know what we like. Normal people have hobbies and things they do for pleasure—"

 _Each other._

He grins at that. "Okay, yes, that's my favorite of the bunch, but… Other things, right? What does Rose like to do when she's not working?"

"Read, play with Paige, spend time with Finn, sketch."

He's nodding along at that. "Do you miss tinkering with things? I could feel how you were watching me work on the stove. And, again, I appreciate you not jumping in and telling me I was doing it wrong, but… Was fixing things fun? Would you like the chance to do more of that?"

Rey thinks about it. "It was satisfying. Fixing things feels good. I'm not sure about fun, though. I've always fixed things because they were broken, and not being broken made life easier for me. Do you miss… calligraphy?"

"Not exactly. I sometimes miss the discipline and release it provided. Sometimes I… want something tangible and beautiful I made. That's… like your fixed things being satisfying, right?"

"Probably." She's about to say more when the first plates come. They're small, about the length of Kylo's hand, and on each one is two morsels of food.

"Kimirichu," the hostess says, but that's not terribly enlightening.

It's a small square of some sort of bright orange protein. Probably a meat of some sort if the fatty looking veining is any hint. On top of it is a tiny salad of little greens, and on top of that is a drizzle of a sauce, and a cluster of small black spheres.

Rey's intrigued. It looks good to her. She's got her chopsticks and is digging in.

It's… amazing. Salty and meaty, and there's a bright, sharp sweet flavor, and the little spheres burst on her tongue in tiny explosions of sea-water salt, and this is _awesome._

Kylo's on the verge of throwing up. It's a plate with two tiny pieces of raw meat salad in front of him, and Rey is eating it, and _moaning_ in pleasure.

He gulps the wine, breathes slowly, mentally berates Jon for doing this to him, and tries to figure out the quickest route to a refresher if he can't sit through this meal.

"You have to try this," Rey says, nudging his plate closer to him.

He closes his eyes. _I really don't._

He feels her hand on his cheek and turns his face to her, really hoping she's not going to try and feed the… whatever that was, to him.

She doesn't. He feels her lips on his, and okay, kissing, he's good with kissing, and then her tongue, and… Okay, yes, the flavor of whatever that is is quite pleasant, but…

 _It's_ raw, _Rey. This isn't slightly undercooked. This has never been introduced to a heat source at all!_

 _So's my tongue, Kylo, and that's never bothered you._

He rolls his eyes, but they're closed, so that's not exactly doing much for the situation. Instead he gives her tongue a sharp nip. _Not the same thing, at all._

She pulls back, with a snerk, but he still doesn't open his eyes. "I thought we were trying new things."

"I'm fairly sure the only thing I'm going to be trying if I eat that is to find a refresher faster than anyone ever has before."

He hears chewing, fast. The sound of chopsticks hitting the plate. More chewing. "Okay, you can look again."

The plates are clear.

Kylo's not thrilled to do this, but he waves the server over. She comes, looking attentive. "More wine, sir?"

He glances at the glass, apparently the gulp took care of half of the glass.

"Maybe. Uh…" He rolls his lips. "My friend made the reservation for me, and… He doesn't know that I don't get along with raw meat. Is… everything… like that?"

The server looks daunted. "Oh. Well… Yes. It's a jarqueterie."

Kylo nods. "Is… anything here… cooked all the way through?"

 _No._ Comes across very clear in her body language as she says, "I'll talk to Kiro."

"Thank you. I'm… sorry to be a bother. My friend… I've never said, and he didn't know, and…"

"It's not a bother. It's your first time here, and you didn't know. Trust me, you are not the first person who's had this issue."

Kylo finds that bizarrely reassuring. Until he can feel the eyes of someone, likely Kiro, seeing as those eyes belong to an imposing man standing behind the bar, holding a very large knife in his hands as he looks at the two of them.

He just _stares._ Kylo can feel… His spell is holding, Kiro doesn't know who they are, but… He knows… something… Is going on. The server's body language is saying that she's used to doing this, and Kiro normally just boots out the person who doesn't like raw food, but for some reason… His eyes narrow a little, and again, he's just _looking_ at Kylo.

Kylo feels it click in Rey's mind before it clicks in his own. _Jon._

 _Right._

 _Grand Marshal_ Frakes made the reservation. Grand Marshal Frakes who probably likes this place and is a good customer here. They may be personally cloaked here, but the fourth highest ranked member of the Order made their reservations so…

 _So much for flying under the scanners,_ he thinks to Rey.

She shrugs a bit. _Different scanners. We're important guests, I guess._

 _Something like that._

The server comes back, with a different glass of wine. "We can accommodate you. It'll take a little longer. How much time do you have?"

"We've got to leave by 19:30."

Rey raises a brow at this. "Your surprise has a time frame?"

"It does," he replies. "Does that work for this?" he asks the server.

"It will." She returns to Kiro, says something, and again Kylo and Rey feel eyes on them.

"Not exactly what you were planning on for tonight's adventures?" Rey asks.

"I'll admit, no. The idea that people would go to places where they don't cook the food also never occurred to me, so…" He shrugs a bit. "I'm glad you liked it."

"I _really_ did."

He looks at the empty plates. "Jon did say to not eat too much before… the next bit."

She looks amused at that. "So, this mystery next bit… Any hints?"

He likes the idea of this game. "Hmmm… Okay… It's on the… fun part… of the F-Deck."

Rey's a little confused for a second, and then her eyes light up. "The _fun_ part."

He grins at her. "Yeah."

"Oh my. Have we ever… done anything like this before?"

He sips the wine. The new one still has that somewhat melon-y flavor, but it's drier than the first one. He thinks he likes the sweeter one better, but this is nice, too. "Maybe… Some of it."

She thinks about that, and sips the older wine. "Does this plan have… parts?"

"I certainly hope so, but… Obviously, you can say no at any time."

"Are you saying there might be things I'd say no to?"

"I don't anticipate anything like that, but I also didn't anticipate raw meat on the table here, so… Just making sure that… This is fun."

She smiles up at him. "I think it will be."

"I really hope so."

* * *

It's a few minutes later when the next plate shows up. Rey's looks a lot like the last one. Sleek white, some sort of small piece of something with a bunch of other somethings on top of it, in a very artistic little pile of flavors.

Kylo's is sizzling. It's black and square and the server has hot pads on her hands, and doesn't look completely comfortable holding it, and he's never so much wanted to grab something with the Force away from someone for selfless reasons before.

"Don't touch the plate," she says as she sets it in front of him.

He nods. On his plate there is also the little pile of what he'd previously referred to as meat salad. Like Rey, he's got a three small circles of… something. Her's is blood red. His is grayish, with a golden brown sear. Probably, whatever the blood red stuff is cooked on one side, sitting on a sizzling plate, cooking through in front of them.

He looks up at her, eyes wide, and says, "Thank you so much, this is perfect!"

She nods. "If we can get good lamb or beef, we'll use this. He's never done it with fish before, but…" She waves that off. "Eat fast. Tuna's much better raw than cooked, and way better rare than well done."

Apparently, the red stuff is tuna, which is not enlightening to Rey or Kylo, neither of them having run into the concept before.

It is… good… maybe… Rey really likes hers. Kylo, by dropping into her head to get the flavor, can understand what the server meant by, 'it's better raw.' That said, he's VASTLY happier with the texture of cooked meat, no longer in any danger of having to sprint off to throw up, and it's not bad per-se, it's just… well, she's right, it tastes better uncooked.

The citronen sauce on the tuna is so good he wants a bottle of it to take home and put on EVERYTHING. And were it not for the fact that the plate is probably 250 degrees, he would have attempted to lick it off. (He's pretty envious of Rey, because she can run her finger over her plate to get every drop of the sauce.)

* * *

By the next course, he can feel the chef is actually starting to enjoy this, or at least doesn't hate it. He's grabbing bits of what is apparently fish, that might not be totally suited toward what he's making Rey, and would otherwise not find it's way onto a plate here, and thinking something along the lines of 'tongue-dead heathen' (Kylo's not entirely sure what language he's thinking in, and Rey refuses to translate for him.) as he's making stuff for Kylo that's…

Well, actually, he really likes it. Tongue-dead heathen he may be, but he's a happy one.

This whole concept of sit around, talk, drink, and have people bring you tiny, very hot plates, with a few really yummy bites on them is something he could easily get used to.

"This is… fun?" Rey says, bite of scallop en route to her mouth.

"I'm liking it. You?"

"I always like food," she says with a smile. They watch the chef as he's cutting and plating and arranging. "Think trying to do this might be fun?" she asks.

Kylo keeps watching. "I like playing with knives. You do the meat; I'll do the veg and sauce… I bet it would be fun. Did I tell you I attempted to cook yesterday?"

She looks amused by that. "Didn't see you in the kitchen."

"I almost attempted to cook at our place. Decided once I got here, that having a clue what I was going to attempt to cook, and where to locate the ingredients was probably important."

She laughs at that. "How about this, in addition to sitting in on lessons, maybe you can join me at taking a turn keeping eyes on the kids while they cook. Make sure they don't burn anything down."

He takes a bite of his, cooked, scallop. "I can do that."

* * *

They are finished supper by 19:30 on the dot. Which is probably good, because the directions for where they're going next are… sketchy.

Jon's note had said, F-Deck, Aft Hall 24, Subsection 19, Third Hall, Red door.

The F-Deck, which goes the full width of the entire Supremacy, is, like the ship, a huge triangle. There are twenty-five Fore Halls, twenty-five Aft Halls, and twenty subsections. Each subsection is three klicks long, containing two klicks of housing, and one of markets. Each hallway is half a klick wide, with the market section being a wide open place, with a huge courtyard in the middle filled with places to eat and mingle, and the living halls broken into two five meter wide hallways with apartments on both sides, and one fifteen meter wide hallway with more apartments on both sides that the trams can do down. Forward 1 only has one subsection, 10. Aft 25, the longest and last of the halls, has all twenty subsections, and is the full sixty meters across.

So, from Jon's sketchy directions, Kylo knows they're going to one of the 'living quarters.' Though, it's his understanding that no one lives on Aft 23, 24, or 25, subsections 18-20.

They hear the "fun section" long before they get to it. Loud music, loud voices, loud… everything.

Likewise, they can tell they're getting closer a few halls before they get there, too. The people around them are… shifting.

On any given hall of the F-Deck there are Order officers out and about doing their thing. As they get closer to the fun zone, the 'thing' they are doing is becoming more and more apparent. Manners and posture are getting looser. Dress code is becoming more… revealing. Kylo never thought he'd be overdressed in a kilt, but as they get closer to the 'fun zone', he's not, by a long shot, the only man with visible legs. And, at least on this part of the ship, had Rey forgone her breast band, she would have just fit in.

He's watching the people around them, and some of them just live in this area, because they're still on Aft 22, but a lot of them, moving the same direction they are, are dressed to party.

"Has this always been here?" Rey asks.

He shrugs. "I'd assume so. The whole time I was on the _Finalizer_ , they had a fun zone, so…"

She nods.

"Not sure who decided that the First Order needed some sort of… recreational spaces, but whoever it was probably had been, or understood soldiers."

"Soldiers like to party?" Rey says.

"Apparently," they're far enough down now they can see where everyone is going, and…

* * *

They finally step out into Aft 23, Subsection 18, and just about get knocked over by the music. It's _loud._ There's some sort of dance party going on in the middle of the market area, or maybe just, when the music is this loud, everyone just dances. That's probably closer to true, nothing about the mass of people in front of them looks even remotely organized.

And it's also true that both Rey and Kylo find it just about impossible to not move with the beat. They may be walking, but it's in rhythm with the music.

Like the other market areas, there are shops all along the walls. Kylo's making a mental note of them, scanning for somewhere to go later. Apparently, they won't be lacking for options, and why Jon laughed when he asked about sex shops is glaringly apparent.

Maybe a quarter of them appear to be some sort of sex shop. And there are dance clubs all over. The reason the music is so loud, and so… unorganized is they're listening to probably fifteen songs simultaneously pounding over and through each other. Sooo, many bars… And carts selling more drinks and snacks and… Kylo's not sure what that cart is selling, it's obviously a recreational pharmaceutical of some sort, and at least thirty people are queued up to get some, but…

There are several places that have a lot of… really interesting art on the windows. And, Kylo's brows furrow as he feels it, blasts of pain inside. He looks at Rey, and she just shrugs, also not sure what is going on behind those windows. It takes both of them a moment to figure out that those are tattoos shops, and that unlike Jacen, who didn't get his by choice, some people intentionally put marks on themselves.

He thinks about the swirls Rey drew on his arm and chest, and glances at those windows again. _Maybe?_

She shakes her head. _I like your skin the way it is._

That seems relevant to him. They continue deeper into the party. Noise, lights, apparently some of the clubs have flashing lights in addition to the loud music, more people, more… everything.

Kylo exhales, loudly. This is on the verge of painful sensory overload. The _Finalizer_ with its much smaller fun zone might be a good choice for an entirely different reason.

He feels a sort of general numbing all of a sudden, and realizes that Rey's shielding him.

"Thanks." There's not a single chance in hell she heard that. _Thanks._

She nods. _This is intense._

He nods back. _Yeah. I didn't quite envision it being this crowded._ Though the number of specs should have been a hint that it'd be packed in here.

 _It's okay for me._ She grins at him, and he can feel that she's enjoying this. He grins back at her. _It's… like being second-hand drunk. I get to enjoy the buzz, but I'm still in control._

He likes that way of looking at it. _Good._ He checks the chrono. Five minutes to find, "The Red Door."

* * *

On any other section of the F-Deck, this would be officer housing, but Kylo can't imagine anyone lives here. It's quieter as they start to get away from the main market area, but that doesn't mean it's quiet, and there's a lot of foot traffic.

Each door they pass, instead of just having a number on it, has some sort of business name, and many of what would otherwise look like apartments have windows with a view as to what may be inside.

Sex. There's a lot of sex inside those rooms. He's trying to not just stop and stare, after all, if the windows are open they expect you to watch, right…

Rey's staring at the windows they're passing, eyebrows high, and he'll admit his are, too.

"Uh… Are we in the right section?" Her voice cracks as they pass one window with some _extremely_ naked people dancing around in front of them.

Kylo checks the note. "Probably."

"Uh huh… Kylo…"

He looks a little sheepish. "It seemed like a good idea at that time."

She nods slowly, watching an open window a little further down the hallway. The people in that one aren't human, and she and Kylo are very rapidly getting some thorough comparative anatomy lessons. "And… You said Jon set this up. Did he… understand… what you were hoping to get for us?"

He certainly thought he'd been beyond specific enough, but… They pass another window and… well, it looks like everyone's having a good time, but that's not exactly the sort of good time he'd been hoping to purchase for them. "I really hope so…"

Red door, great. He sees a lot of doors. None of them say Red Door.

Then it catches his eye from his peripheral vision. It's a red door, about twenty-five meters down the hall. Kylo feels the sigh of relief from the depths of his soul, along with a certain level of trepidation as to what's on the other side of that door.

When they get closer to it, they can see no windows, no name, no… advertising for what might be on the other side of the door. There is a keypad, and it says on it _Name:_

Kylo types in Amidala, and then door slides in, opening up on hallway filled with soft red textures, sofas, a fountain, and a striking woman in a very tight and formal looking gown.

"Welcome Amidalas, come on in!" She smiles at them, and Kylo's thinking that if this is Jon's friend, he's going to enjoy this quite a bit. He exhales in relief as they step in. It's quiet in here, just the burble of the fountain, and the woman asking, "Would you care to sit? Have some tea? Brandy?"

Rey shakes her head, and Kylo says, "We're good on drinks." She's looking around. This could be the waiting room of a posh spa or a fancy restaurant or… Any place that needed a place for people to sit comfortably while they wait.

 _I'm pretty sure Jon understood what I was looking for._ Kylo thinks to her, and she nods.

Then she looks around some more. _What were you looking for?_

Kylo blinks. Right. He hasn't said, and has done a good job keeping his plan hidden in his mind, and she's not looking, and they just walked through 2500 meters of sex for sale. _Massages. I wanted to get us both good massages, and Jon knew someone._

Rey smiles at him.

 _I asked him for help because… Well… I just wanted to get a massage for us, and… Didn't want to go wandering into the wrong shop._

After having seen a whole bunch of 'wrong shops,' Rey giggles at that. _Good plan._

The reception lady says, "Unthar and Amilie will be… Oh, and here they are." And as she says that they see two people, one a tall, slim pale man, with ice colored eyes, white blond hair, and a woman, just as dark as he is pale, with black hair and dark chocolate eyes, and the kind of curves that Kylo may have imagined in the past but never figured he'd ever see in real life, join them in the waiting area.

Unthar is grinning at them, moving forward, hand extended. "Jon's friends! Wonderful, come on… oh… in." Unthar's warm smile doesn't exactly falter on that oh, but it does trip a little as his brain connects what he's seeing with what's _under_ the image in front of him.

Rey catches that little 'oh' immediately. She knows _exactly_ what the striking young man sees. They are, as the kids would say, _busted._ She glances to Kylo, wondering if he still wants to go through with this. She's game, a massage sounds really good right now, and both Unthar and his wife just radiate this sense that they'll be _really_ good at this, so…

Kylo on the other hand, has missed that little _oh_ because he's also starting at the striking young _man_ in front of them. He's trying not to sigh or look put out, because… Jon never said, and he didn't specify, but… Okay, yes, he's aware of the fact that Specs come in male as well as female. It's just that his default image of a Spec is so firmly entrenched as _female_ the idea that Jon (and he's mentally kicking himself for not realizing what he was walking into here) would not also have _female_ as the default for Specs didn't even threaten to occur to him, until now.

He asked about men _hitting on him._ Which, of course, isn't what they're here for, so it likely never got close to occurring to Jon this might be an issue, either.

Jon's friend (should have asked for a fucking name) is offering his hand, and introducing himself as Unthar, and his partner… no wife… (Kylo's also mentally wondering if this is the most awesome family business ever, or if by day two of this, if he and Rey were to attempt it, he'd be killing people.) Amilie.

So, Kylo does the little hand squeeze thing, and cool as you please, Amilie takes his hand, smiles up at him, all warm affection and sensual pleasure in her gaze, and okay, he likes that just fine, as she's saying, "Jon's a pet of Unthar's, and I've always had a good time with him when he's asked me to join the fun, too. He tells us you and your Lady…"

And that's when Kylo realizes they are, as the kids say, _busted_ because he can feel the capital L on Lady and… But, she's just gently moving them toward the massage rooms, and… shit… _Touching you and paying attention…_ No one on Gidi Secundus would have even imagined Kylo Ren might walk in. Jon's pet Specs, who _know him_ and likely _his friends_ , and make their living by being very good at reading people and giving them what they want, even if they can't or won't ask for it, apparently saw through the spell in less than ten seconds.

He looks over to Rey, a quick spike of panic in his gaze. _Are we still…_

She's watching the sway of Amilie's hips in front of them, and thinks, _I'm good with this. Are you?_

They're in the massage room now, and as soon as the doors shut, Unthar lets go of Rey's hand, and takes a few steps over to a discrete urn against the wall, one with a small fountain therein, and does something to it.

Then he steps aside and says. "Lord and Lady Ren." He covers his mouth with his hand, but it's clear he's got a wide and amazed grin on his face. Kylo gets a very strong sense that Jon's getting one hell of a kiss the next time he comes in. "Oh my… Jon said he had friends who really needed to relax, but…"

Amilie's grinning up at Kylo, and then smiles warmly at Rey. "Oh… Do we bow? Curtsy?"

"Please don't," Rey says.

Kylo rolls his eyes a bit. "Part of relaxing is just being Kylo and Rey for a night."

"Right! Of course!" Amilie says.

"What did you do with the fountain?" Rey asks Unthar.

"Usually… A place like this, it's never an issue. But… Better safe than hurt. It's a security measure. Either of us says the safeword, and enough security to take over a minor outlier planet shows up in this room. But… To work… It's listening all the time."

Kylo's touched by that. That they'd be trusted. That Unthar would understand how much he does _not_ want people to know he and Rey are here.

"Real privacy," Rey says.

Unthar nods.

"Won't the… front desk… get nervous with the security off?" Kylo asks.

Amilie shakes her head. "Not here. You pay us. We pay them for the space, amenities, and security. If we turn the monitoring off, they assume we know what we're doing. No one who works here is new to this game. And you aren't, by a long shot, the only esteemed guests we've had in here over the years who want _real_ privacy."

"Oh." Rey says.

"And there are panic buttons in a few places hidden in the room, too," Unthar adds. He's quiet for a moment, really looking at them. "Do you mind if I ask how you're doing it? It's… confusing. There's… an image over the real you? Is it a field generator or something? I can see how anyone who wasn't looking carefully wouldn't see through it, but…"

Kylo intentionally presses his fingers to the cuff of his shirt. "Or something." And drops his spell. Rey sees him do it an mimics it. _Not feeling the need to broadcast this Force specialty?_ Rey thinks to him.

 _That's the idea._

"Jon told us you were looking for a bath and massage?" Amilie says, and saying it, Kylo does notice they're in a room with a pool similar to his, and two comfortable looking tables draped with blankets.

"And any _glow_ at the end, you'll provide for each other," Unthar adds.

Rey sniggers a bit at that, and Kylo _doesn't_ blush. He supposes it's good to get all of the specifics out of the way ahead of time, but it does feel odd to talk about this in that level of detail.

"Now, we usually do the bath service naked, but… It's usually a _full service_ affair, so… Would you prefer we wear bathing costumes or…" Amilie asks.

"So, this is a surprise for me, uh… What is the bath service?" Rey asks.

"And Jon didn't mention he was booking this to me, either," Kylo adds.

Unthar smiles. "Well, it's _his_ favorite, so he probably assumed you'd like it. Bath service. We undress you, put your hair up, rub you all over with cleansing oils, use a somewhat rougher than usual towel to briskly rub the oils off of you, and then into the bath for a soak, drinks, we have tea service and a short bar," Amilie grabs a sponge from the side of the bath, and shows it to them, "a bit more scrubbing, hair down, full shampoo and conditioning," he steps a little closer to Kylo… looking at his jawline, "You can get a shave, but it doesn't look like you need one, likewise L—Rey, we can shave any bit of you that might want to be, then rinsing off, toweling off, a quick step to the drier, and then onto the tables for a conditioning massage."

"What's a conditioning massage?" Kylo asks.

Amilie answers that. "By the time we're done with bath service, we know your skin pretty well, so a conditioning massage means we make sure the oils we use are designed to make your skin as happy as possible. Right now, it looks like Rey's a little on the dry side, and Kylo, your skin looks a little oily, so we adjust what we use to make sure when you get off the table your skin is soft, supple, properly moisturized, and very happy."

"And the muscles under the skin?" Rey asks.

"Soft, relaxed, and glowing," Amilie answers with a smile.

"The whole point is that when you get off of that table you feel _good_ all over," Unthar replies. "So, as we said, we generally do this service naked, but we don't have to. It's entirely about your comfort levels. All of this is. If there's anything you don't want us to do, or if something is too hard, or too soft, or just doesn't feel right, you just let us know, and we'll adjust."

"Where… does the cleansing oil go?" Rey asks.

"Usually, anywhere you'd put soap." Amilie replies, "But, if genitals or breasts, or buttocks are parts of your body that are just for each other, we don't have to touch them. Or we can get you squeaky clean from hair to toes and everywhere in between."

Kylo only looks mildly panicked at this, but Rey's more than caught it. _Thoughts?_

He swallows. _I suppose if he's working with me, I won't get hard from being… cleansed. Though, speaking of brand-new experiences, having another man wash my shaft is at the top of the list. But… If I see her working on you, like that, the room could be on fire and I'm still going to get a stand._

Rey makes herself not laugh at that. _And you'd find it uncomfortable to be standing proud while a man is cleaning you._

Kylo makes himself not roll his eyes. He's irked by feeling like this, but it's real, and if anyone gets the real him, it's Rey. _Yeah._

 _And if he's working with me? You looked pretty tense when you noticed this wasn't two women._

 _I was... am… shit. Uh…_ He's looking at Unthar and… _Shit… I'm not wildly enthusiastic about having a man rub me down, but I'm significantly less enthusiastic about watching one rub you down, especially if… cleansing… is involved, so…_

 _You want to do this?_

 _Yes? I don't know. Feels achingly stupid to be fussed that Unthar isn't a woman. This is a person who specializes in this sort of thing, likely is amazingly good at it, and I'll probably like it once I get going._

 _That's because under Lord Ren, you're a big, black lazy maomao who loves to lay around and be stroked and petted._

 _That may be true, but no one with a penis has ever been on the stroking and petting side for me, so I'm a bit wary of this._

Rey does laugh at that.

"Do you two need some time to talk?" Amilie asks.

 _You're okay with this?_ Kylo asks.

I _am._ Rey replies.

"We're good." _Enough._ Kylo confirms. "Genital touching… That's just for us and each other. And… Swim costumes always look kind of uncomfortable to me. Are they… easily waterlogged and too heavy when wet and…"

Amilie doesn't say, "You poor thing, which benighted part of the galaxy did you grow up on?" though she appears to be thinking of it. She does say, "Oh no. They make fabrics designed for water. Our swim costumes are trim and slick, and they feel almost exactly like being naked in the water."

"Speak for yourself," Unthar says, and then he shares a look with Kylo, both of them understanding, without having to say anything, about how any wet, close fabric is _not_ going to feel naked to a male body, no matter how light and sheer it is. Because, unlike female bodies, certain bits of the male body naturally _float_ in water, and they don't do so in a snug swim costume.

"Naked is fine," Kylo says. Hoping he's not going to regret that. "Especially in the bath. Swim costumes… We didn't use them where I come from, so…"

"Oh, that's why your mental image of them is thick and heavy and… Right, a lot of places where people just swim in regular clothing or go without… That makes sense," Amilie adds.

Unthar smiles at them, and then says, "So, the only question left is, who does whom?"

Rey glances at Kylo, who doesn't exactly sigh, but does look a bit on the resigned side, though he does perk up some when Rey grins to Amilie, and she steps over to her, rests her hands on Rey's shoulder, rises up to her tiptoes and then kisses Rey gently on the forehead.

* * *

For about half a heartbeat it looks like Unthar may indeed attempt to kiss Kylo's forehead the way Amilie just did with Rey, but apparently he reads people more than well enough to know that that's a no-go. (Kylo does get the sense that Unthar's thinking _for now._ )

"All right, sweet, let's get you undressed," Unthar says to Kylo.

It's… different. It probably shouldn't be, but… It is. There's a person, and Kylo has to look down to make eye contact, but… when isn't that true? The last person he regularly got to look eye to eye with was Phasma, and… she's been gone a long time. Still, he's not looking down that far, and the voice is deep, and hands are almost as big as his… that's just… odd… but…

"You don't look like you're enjoying this," Unthar says.

Kylo half swats his hands away and finishes pulling his shirt off. "I'm adjusting. The last time someone with a baritone called me 'sweet' I was eight."

"And it's been even longer since someone undressed more than a bit or two of you, also?" Unthar doesn't glance at Rey, but it's clear he's meaning, undressed you in a taking care of you sort of way, as opposed to, part of sexy playing.

Kylo looks at Rey and realizes that he got himself undressed before he got hit with the plague, so Rey didn't have to attempt to wrestle him out of his clothing. (Thank the Force. He doesn't want to contemplate how big of a mess that would have been.) He shrugs a bit. They've taken clothing off as part of playing, but… "It's never come up."

Unthar does kneel down to start on Kylo's left boot. "If you prefer to undress yourself, you can. The idea of this is to enjoy it, not have me push you through things you don't want to do." Though, as he's saying that, he's getting the top buckle.

Kylo can understand why Jon would like this. Pretty man on his knees taking his clothing off. And he'd likely enjoy it if Amilie were working with him. He glances over, and she's gently pulling Rey's boot off, and… okay, yeah, he's enjoying that part of this, too. Pretty woman kneeling in front of his woman, taking her clothing off… That's a treat… Maybe if he just watches them…

He feels Unthar pause, and then say, "Love?"

Kylo blinks, and looks back down. Right, boot will come off significantly more easily if he lifts his foot up.

"Thanks, baby." It's clear to Kylo Unthar's going through his list of pet terms, trying to find something that'll stick or Kylo will respond favorably to.

Kylo swallows, and then rubs his lips together. "Kylo, please. Uh… The… endearments are… feel… weird."

"Sure, Kylo, no problems." He peels Kylo's sock off, and then starts on the second boot. "Is this okay?"

Which leaves his shorts and kilt.

And a man on his knees in front of him reaching for the clasp on the kilt.

"It's been a while since I've seen anyone wear one of these. Good choice though. The leather's nice."

The leather is nice. And Kylo does really like how it feels, but again, this is a man, in front of him, taking his clothing off, and "I'll get it."

Unthar just smiles at him and then steps around so he's at Kylo's back, which Kylo doesn't exactly sigh in relief at, but… It does make it easier.

He puts the kilt and shorts with the rest of his clothing, and notices that Rey's watching him, enjoying the view, and… apparently so is Amilie, her eyes are flittering over his skin and it's clear she's pleased, and… He doesn't mind that at all.

Except her husband is right behind him, getting a tie for his hair.

But they're _sex workers_ so… This can't be an issue, right? He focuses on Unthar, making sure he's okay with… well, all of this, and… shit, he really is. Apparently, Kylo's in possession of what Unthar's thinking of as a 'delicious ass' and he's got no idea what the hell to do with that, but… Well, the guy isn't about to smack him because the way his wife is looking at him, so…

It shouldn't be this nerve wracking, right? This is _supposed to_ be relaxing.

Rey grins at him. _I'm having a good time._

 _Great._ He offers her a half smirk/half smile. _That was at least eighty percent of the plan._

 _You were hoping to have a better time?_

 _Yeah, this is… rockier than I was anticipating._

"Here, Kylo, I need you to sit down for this part." Unthar pats one of the massage tables, and Kylo sits on the edge of it. A moment later, Unthar's standing behind him, and running his fingers through his hair.

As physical sensations go, this is nice. Actually, it's better than nice. Unthar's making soft, fast circles on his scalp with the tips of his fingers, and that's lighting goosebumps all along his body. Then he gathers up Kylo's hair, and runs his fingers through the length of it, from scalp to tips, and then back to his scalp, this time with firm, slow circles.

It's possible that Kylo might have moaned, a little, at it. Likely, even, given the immense smirk he can feel coming from Unthar, along with the thought, _when it comes down to it, pleasure always wins._

Kylo's not sure if that's true, but he's not going to argue, because he sort of wants to melt onto the table right now and just let Unthar keep petting his hair, and he's really not going to make it clear that he can read Unthar's thoughts because they're so close right now.

* * *

Rey's probably onto something with the big, lazy maomao. Unthar is petting his hair. Supposedly he's putting it up so it doesn't get covered in oil or something, but mosty, he seems to have noticed how much Kylo likes having his hair played with, so he's standing behind him, massaging his scalp, running his fingers through his hair, and stroking it in a variety of ways that don't feel like they're doing much other than making him feel good.

But that's probably the point of this.

 _You're looking considerably more relaxed._

 _I'm feeling more relaxed._ He can see that Amilie's gotten Rey undressed, and is in the process of putting her hair up, too.

Rey's eyes are closed, and her head is foreward, and Amilie's rubbing her fingers through her hair, and maomao comparisons may be apt for both of them because Kylo would swear she's purring.

* * *

"All right, your hair is up. You stand up, and I'll start on the cleansing oil," Unthar says.

As long as Kylo keeps his eyes closed, he really can't tell the difference. Unthar has soft, strong hands. They're bigger than any woman's hands he's ever seen, except Phasma's, and it's actually somewhat novel to have someone who can close his hand around his forearm.

It does feel good. The oil is slick and warm. It smells good, and Unthar's got… a really excellent touch. There are no ticklish spots, no too hard or too soft bits, his speed is on point. He keeps gliding the oil over Kylo's skin, taking long enough for everything to get "cleansed" but not long enough for Kylo to get self-conscious about anything.

The real difference, that he can tell, is that this time Rey's really watching him, and Unthar, and Unthar stroking oil all over him, as he stands there, naked, feeling a little silly, and wait… Unthar's naked too, and… He doesn't remember that, but maybe it happened while he was playing with Kylo's hair or something. He certainly zoned out for a bit there and just floated around on how good it felt.

Right now, the part that feels really good is how Rey's watching this.

 _You're really enjoying this, aren't you?_ He opens his eyes to look at Rey, who's also standing there, gleaming softly as Amilie rubs the oil into her skin, eyes on him and Unthar, an intense and very pleased expression on her face.

 _I_ really _am. This is an amazing treat. Check both of you in the mirror? Can you see how gorgeous you are?_

Kylo doesn't shrug at that. _I can see how both of us have physically fit bodies, and he's got fairly rare coloring. I can_ feel _how good you and Amilie look._ And now that he's got his eyes open, he is enjoying the view, a _lot._ Amilie's got Rey's hair bundled up on the top of her head, and slowly rubbing the oil into and down her back in long, gliding strokes, and…

He closes his eyes again. He's _not_ getting a stand while a man is working on him.

 _I really don't think either of them will mind._

 _He's touching me, Rey. I'm getting the occasional glimpse of what he and Jon get up to, along with him wondering if this is the sort of thing we get up to with Jon, or if at some point the five of us may play together. Trust me, I know, on a visceral level, that he won't_ mind. _This is very much a man who loves his job, and would not be, on any level, fussed if I wanted to play with him in any possible way I could think of, and likely a few I'm not mentally capable of imagining, but he'd be more than happy to introduce me to._

He can feel how much that amuses her. _Us with Jon?_

 _He's wondering._

She thinks about that for a moment and then jumps to the next bit. _What would all five of us do?_

Kylo blinks. He's mostly just getting flashes of images and feels from Unthar. _Honestly, I'm not sure. It's a lot of bodies all sort of tangled up. The bits where he was wondering about us with Jon made more sense to me. I could figure out who was where._ He hits Rey with Unthar's image of her between him and Jon, and she flushes. And, though he's not sure what to do with that, or with the fact that he very much doesn't hate that image, he drops it and keeps on with, _All five is just confusing. He's under the impression that it'd feel really good though._

Rey inclines her head a bit, glancing at the four of them. He can feel her starting to really _think_ about it, and then glance back to him, but after the first blush of that, she tamps down that longing, because after all, this is making him uncomfortable to some degree. Rey thinks to him, _Is that part of why you're feeling self-conscious?_

 _Probably._

 _If he were only interested in women, would this feel better to you?_

Kylo blasts Rey with how Unthar's admiring his lats and obliques, and how much he's enjoying touching them, and looking forward to getting his hands on Kylo's ass. _It feels weird to have someone enjoying me this much. Honestly, a woman, who isn't you, enjoying me this much would feel weird, too._

 _You really are a treat to look at and touch. Why would a woman feel weird?_

 _It just… does._ He's already a little off about wanting women who aren't Rey, and having them want him back, especially if it's not just about manipulating him for his power or position… He hits Rey with that, how… uncomfortable the too tall, too gangly, oddly proportioned kid who eventually grew up into a man who fit his body better, but never really got used to the idea that it might be pleasing, or a source of genuine pleasure, especially for someone who isn't her. He's, just, sort of, on most days, getting to the point where he can see that he's okay looking… And he's feeling pretty good about her genuinely liking his body, and getting comfortable with playing with that, but getting beyond that is a step he doesn't know what to do with.

She makes sure she's got eye contact with Kylo. That he's looking at her, and in her head as much as his own body, too. _You are allowed to be desirable. There's nothing wrong, or bad, or… unworthy, of people wanting you. You're beautiful, and sexy, and your body is amazing, and… People should want to pet it. That's okay. You're eminently pettable, my maomao._

He mentally snerks a bit at that. _I still think you like me too much._

 _So, what if I do? I'm not wrong._

 _I love you._

 _I know. Now, relax, and let the gorgeous man rubbing oil all over you play with you some so I can enjoy the… Eye candy. That's the term Jacen used._

 _Yes, dear._

* * *

Actually, that's the piece that slots everything else into place.

Relax and let Rey enjoy the view.

Because she's watching.

And _enjoying it._

And he wants her to _enjoy this._

It's a present for her, that he gets to enjoy, too, so… Make it a good one.

He closes his eyes, and lets himself sink into the feel of this. Of hands on his skin, slick and warm. Of Rey's eyes on his body, on the warmth of her affections, and the heat of her sexual desire.

What did Jon like about Lane dressing him up? That for a night, he got to be exactly the way his mate wanted him.

Kylo's eyes slip back open, landing on her, and she grins at him

And it's _good._

* * *

Rey feels the moment it shifts in Kylo's mind. There's been this cloud of nervous static. A sense of energy ready to crackle and spring and the feel of someone holding on because he knows it's a bad idea to flare out.

And then it just smoothed out.

The tension didn't so much vanish as shifted. The… need… is still there, but it shifted direction into a sort of eager waiting.

Her man _wants._ He's standing there, watching her, open, naked, looking to be perfectly hers. Wanting to be adored because he's _hers._

So, she does. She watches the play of the light on his skin, the gleam of it off the oil, the fine hairs on his belly raising and falling with each breath, and the warm smile on his face. She cradles him in how perfect he is in this moment, and how much she cherishes him.

How he is, _perfectly, exquisitely_ hers.

And Kylo _glows._

* * *

Once he got into the right mindset, being _cleansed_ wasn't an issue. He just floated through it, enjoying the sensations.

Slick oil, warm hands, and then brisk rubbing with a somewhat rough towel.

His skin is warm, flushed, slightly tingling.

It's good.

He understands why Jon likes this, and the view of Rey pink and glowing is awfully nice, too.

Then comes the next part, get in the bath. Okay, easy enough. Unthar asks if they want drinks, and he knows they're here for at least another hour, so… why the fuck not?

"Yes, something that tastes good and has about a shot of alcohol in it."

Unthar smiles at that. "Very specific, Rey?"

"Whatever you mix up for him, without the alcohol."

That perks up Amilie, and she flashes a quick look to Unthar, he shrugs minutely, and both Rey and Kylo know they missed the context of something going on here.

"Is the water to your liking, Rey?" Amilie asks as Rey's glancing from her to Unthar.

Rey groans with pleasure, and Kylo's nodding at her. The water's just hot enough, and feels _really_ good on freshly buffed skin. "Yeah, it's really good."

Amilie flashes another _look_ to Unthar, and this time Kylo just lets himself feel what they aren't sure if they should ask about.

 _She thinks you might be pregnant. Apparently, hot water isn't good for pregnant ladies._

Rey blinks slowly. _How in the galaxy did she come up with that?_ She glances down, and okay, yes, they did just have dinner, but she doesn't _look_ pregnant.

Then they both watch as Unthar offers the drinks. Rey nods. _No alcohol. Oh. Uh… Ideas?_

Kylo takes a sip of his, and it's good. He uses that time to think but he's got nothing. _None. I have no idea what to do with that._ He sets the drink on the little table behind them.

Amilie says, "Let us know if you get too hot, okay, Rey?"

"Oh, not a problem. He's the one who overheats sometimes. I grew up in a desert, so heat and I get on fine."

There's another glance between Amilie and Unthar.

"It's just… easy to overdo it, so… Maybe you might not want to be in too long," Unthar says from the side of the bath, getting ready to slip in.

Rey rolls her eyes. "I've already had a glass of wine, and that's about as much as I like in a night. Nothing else going on."

"Oh. Uh… I guess that was sort of transparent," Amilie says. "Unthar can usually spot a pregnant lady at a glance. He knew I'd caught before I did, but…"

"But usually isn't always, and it's considered best practices when you're in early days to keep your body temperature as close to normal as you can," Unthar replies.

There's something that would have never occurred to Kylo. "You have children?"

Amilie smiles at that. "Two boys. They're three and sixteen months, and right now is past bedtime, so they're snoozing away, looking like perfect angels, but during the day, they're a handful."

"Lars sleeps through the night now, which means everyone at the Fresk house is a lot happier these days," Unthar adds.

"Finn and Rose talk about that," Rey says.

"Our friends," Kylo adds. "Their daughter is a little under a year. She started sleeping through the night…"

"Soon. They hope. Right now through the night is twenty to four, with a wake up for a bit of a cuddle around twenty-three."

Kylo winces. There was a time when that would have been vastly more sleep than he got on any given day, but right now the idea of having to get up at four each morning just aches.

Amilie's nodding. "That's really common for a little under a year. Lars started sleeping twenty to six about six weeks ago, but he had to switch from two naps to one before that got settled."

Neither Rey nor Kylo have anything to really add to that. But, apparently, lounging around in the bath with the Fresks is part of the package. Then it hits Rey. Anything that can feel good is supposed to feel good when this is done. On a normal job, they'd be getting petted and played with right now, but that's not part of this job, so right now is supposed to be pleasant and entertaining conversation and good drinks. So, Rey asks Amilie, "I hope this isn't rude, but how did you two get into this line of work?"

Amilie smiles. "It's not rude to ask people how they found their vocation. Perhaps when we've told our story, you'll tell us how you became Lady Ren?"

Rey smiles at that. "Perhaps."

"She was a client of mine," Unthar says. "And I got into this, because on Whelnor, where we're from, for those who are called, temple service is considered an honorable and high-status career, but, unfortunately, the maniacs who took over decided to 'erradicate the pagans,' us, and did everything they could to blot out our faith. There's no temples left for me to serve at, but Junrah knows that the buildings are not necessary, just the service."

That absolutely floors Kylo. His jaw drops and he just stares. Then he blinks a few times, pulling his brain back into his head, swallows, and says, "I might not have sprinted away from the faith of my youth if we'd had anything like that."

Unthar smirks at that. "It's not just that black and white."

"Just that black and white was also part of running away," Rey says.

"Temple service was about all levels of the healing arts," Amilie adds, clarifying things.

Unthar adds, "But different people have different talents, specialties, and abilities, and this is the one I most readily gravitated to. It's not just fucking, though in my specialty, there's a decent amount of that, too."

"Like most of his charges, I was tired, sad, lonely, burnt out, and desperately in need of getting out of my head, back into my body, and connecting to my physical body and another person," Amilie says. "I'm a slicer. Most of what I did was look at a screen all day and move tiny bits of code around. Doing that felt good, when the code would sing, but it was isolating, and over time I was pulling more and more and more into myself, and losing the human in the code."

"Most jobs, she doesn't work with me. I'm usually on my own. For cases like yours, or people who need or want extra affection, or where I need an extra person to help out, she works with me, but most nights, she's still a slicer."

Kylo cocks his head a bit. "Do you work for the Order?"

Amilie's amused by that. "No."

"Do you want to?"

She smiles, and gently strokes his shoulder. "You don't pay well enough to hire me, love."

"Oh."

With a warm smile, Amilie continues, "Anyway, in those days, before the Furgarathin had come to Whelnor, if you were feeling… sad, sick, off, wrong, whatever, you could go to the temple, pray, and seek healing. I knew I was feeling wrong, but I didn't know what I needed, and he saw me at my prayers, and…"

"And there are a lot of things I'm good at, but helping sad, lonely people feel alive again is what I'm better at than anyone else."

"And he is. Unthar can pull the sad and lonely right out of you with his touch."

Unthar smiles a bit at that. "Well, I can try. I'm good, not a miracle worker. Junrah works the miracles. Mostly, what I do is help people remember whatever it was they loved about themselves before they got lost, and help them get back in touch with it. And once they can feel it again, they can find the path to unlose themselves."

"So, we talk, and touch, and pray, and… And that was the best I'd felt about anything and everything for years. So, we meet again. And again. And then we're meeting outside of the temple. And…" She's smiling softly, gazing at her husband.

"Temple service…" Kylo starts… "What was… is… your… rank… title?"

Unthar grins at him. "You'll like this, Master of Sacred Arts of L'Rantan and Krillin."

Kylo's smiling back. "You're right, I do. Were Masters allowed to be meeting outside of the temple with their devotees?"

"Of course. The temple is… just a convenient place. The love… healing… That's within." He's really looking at Kylo, and thinking. "And let me guess, your faith didn't hold with this sort of thing?"

Kylo remembers Luke's lessons. "We were allowed unbounded love of all things, assuming we could do so without developing any attachment to them." Though that wasn't quite true. Luke wasn't sure about attachments. The Old Jedi were, but his own experiences had differed, so he relayed those ideas, but… Like with sex, or anything else that made going dark easier, he saw them as… challenges to be only attempted by masters.

Unthar winces. "That's not how we did it. Love, sex, pleasure, healing… They're free flowing and offered to any and all who need or want them. Loving Amilie, being _deeply_ attached to her, doesn't make me less capable of taking care of other people. Our gifts, our healing services, are granted by the love of Junrah, and she would not be pleased with the idea that the love of one somehow damages the love of others. After all, if that were true, how could we heal others? Our love of her would defeat the purpose of loving her."

"Before we part company tonight, I want the name of anything you'd be willing to let us read about your faith," Rey says.

Unthar looks sad. "I'll be happy to give you what I know and remember, but…"

Amilie takes over. "The Furgarathin came, and they brought armies. The temples, the holy books, most of Unthar's brothers and sisters… They burned them all."

"Amilie was able to fake new ids for us. Slice right into the civil service records and hide us, and a few others."

"But ceasing to exist electronically is only part of the issue." She holds up her arm, and it's an arm. Rey and Kylo don't know what they're supposed to be seeing. "The Furgarathin marked themselves with ink and brands. At a glance, they could tell we were not of them. We left as soon after as we could."

"When did you join the Order?" Kylo asks. After all, they wouldn't be the first people who ran to the Order for a better life.

"Technically, we haven't joined the Order. And we didn't join the First Order, either. But," he shrugs a bit, "Armies like willing sex workers, so… We rented a place and got to it. It was seven years ago. We had a very long conversation about what to do, and where to go, and… If anyone needed more love and light and healing…" Unthar says.

Rey blinks. "Wait, you… moved to here? To try and improve it from the inside?"

Kylo thinks, but doesn't say, _by having a lot of sex with my men?_ The shock of it is evident on his face though, and Amilie actually laughs out loud at it.

"Of course." Unthar replied. "We wanted somewhere we could do the most good, and not be murdered for our faith. That seemed to be here. Only a maniac would shoot at the _Supremacy._ "

"We did not anticipate the level of mania the Resistance would offer," Amilie replies, voice dry.

Rey winces, wondering where they are in relation to the rift left from the _Raddus_ attack.

Unthar's speaking, "One person is a small thing. But small things, and gentle nudges, that can lead to big changes. I don't know how much we helped in the wider range of things, but a lot of very angry, very hateful, sick, unhappy people left me better than they had been. We only work with officers, so everyone under them got the services of a leader who wasn't so angry, hurtful, hateful, or sick. Maybe it didn't do much, but it had to have helped some." Unthar just looks at Kylo, and then says, "I imagine you know this, you had to, but this place… The way it used to feel. It wasn't just black metal, and black plexiplast, there was real, genuine darkness here, so… We tried to help lighten the pressure of that on the people around us."

Kylo nods, slowly. He does know.

Amilie adds, "And then… After _Starkiller_ and the _Supremacy_ was cut in half, so many people here were hurting so badly. That's how we met your Jon. He was bleeding pain from every pore, and… Your people have _nothing_ here to help with grief or mourning and… After that, we couldn't leave."

"And you started to make some interesting changes, and… well, then we didn't want to leave."

Rey knows she's going to do it before she knows _what_ she's going to say. Just that it has to happen. "Would you want to reopen your temple?"

Both of them look surprised at that.

"I know… Obviously, it can't be the same, but… Your faith isn't ours, but it doesn't sound like there shouldn't be any reason for you to not start up a temple here."

Kylo's on board with that. "I don't know if Jon talks shop with you, but, he's working on setting up an entire city in the city, so to say, someplace for our diplomatic level, and there's no reason why there couldn't be temples there." He glances to Rey. _Maji temple?_

 _If I ever figure out what's involved in having one, sure._

"Are there more of you still alive?" Rey asks.

"A handful. Twenty-five, maybe fifty," Amilies says. "We scattered after we got out of Whelnor."

"Adults?" Kylo asks.

They both nod. "Some children."

"Well, that's more people than there are Maji," Rey says, "our faith, so… If you wanted to…" She can see them both looking at each other, very intrigued, wanting to talk more.

Unthar offers up a gentle smile. "We will certainly think and talk about this. And perhaps act on it. But you aren't here for that."

"We could be," Rey says.

"Our faith certainly believes that the Force leads us to be in the right place at the right time," Kylo adds.

Unthar shakes his head. And he rests his hands on Kylo's shoulders, squeezing gently. "But you aren't here for that. And you shouldn't be. You're here for a personal reason… and maybe this is part of a greater one, but there's also an immediate one, and given what he's said about his past, I've got the feeling that neither of you really prioritize taking care of yourself, at least, not to the level you should."

Both Rey and Kylo look a little guilty at that. "We're… better than we used to be," Rey says.

"Assuredly, you are here now," Amilie adds. "How about this, if it's not a rude question, what's inspired you to come to us?"

Rey looks over at him, and Kylo's about to say something like, "Long story," but as he thinks about it, it's not.

"I wanted to do something nice for my wife. It's been at least six months since we've done something like this, and free time is likely to become even scarcer soon, so… Time to relax, and enjoy our bodies and each other, and for a little while, just go play some, being Rey and Kylo."

Unthar and Amilie smile at that. "That is an excellent thing to do."

"Do you two…" It trails off as Rey thinks about how to ask or what to ask.

"Have playtime on our own? Of course," Amilie answers, as she shifts behind Rey, laying her hands on Rey's shoulders, and then beginning to take down her hair. "Less now because our boys do everything in their power to eat up our free time, but we still do normal family things."

"If sex is your job…" Kylo starts, feeling a little tentative.

Unthar smirks at that. "Sex is a tool I use in my job. Healing is my job. And yes, I do know a lot of other Specs have various issues about finding a balance between this as a job and what they do with their private lives and loves. But, this isn't a job, it's a calling, so… It's different."

Kylo's sort of staring at him blankly.

"You don't pick me up here. I pick you. Or perhaps a good friend sends you my way. That in and of itself shifts things dramatically."

"And you just… know who to pick?" Rey asks.

"Almost always."

 _You get any Force sense off of him?_ She thinks to Kylo.

 _Just the same general 'this is a living human being sense' that you are, but he's got something. Assuming he's anywhere near as good at this as he thinks he is._

 _He had you sitting on the massage table, purring in thirty-six seconds flat. He's better._

Kylo smiles at her.

"Have you been together long?" Amilie asks them as she gathers a pitcher near, fills it with warm water, and gestures for Rey to lean back so she can soak her hair.

"A few years," Rey says.

"I would have thought longer," Unthar replies, "you have that knack for knowing what the other one is thinking, right?"

"We… clicked with each other very easily on that," Kylo says. "Perhaps like you two?"

"It took several years to get this good with each other," Amilie says, pouring the water over Rey's hair.

Unthar has an appraising look on his face. "And I think that neither of us have quite the click you two do."

Kylo shrugs at that, and Rey doesn't reply.

"What did the Jedi say? All is possible with the Force?" Unthar asks.

"Something like that," Kylo replies.

"Indeed." He pulls a pitcher toward himself, and also fills it. "Let me guess, you like having your hair washed."

Rey laughs out loud at that. "Oh, he does. He'll melt in your hands."

Unthar grins back at her, and then to Kylo. Then he hoists himself up on the side of the bath, and gestures to in front of him. "You go here. Do you do anything special with your hair?" he asks as Kylo slides over in the bath, kneeling, back to Unthar, waiting for what comes next.

"Just wash and dry it. Put some sort of goop on it once a week."

Unthar looks to Rey, as his fingers begin taking Kylo's hair down. (Kylo hums appreciatively.) This wouldn't be the first couple he's met where the wife just gives her husband grooming products and he uses them rather than fuss about it. This is the first couple where the wife shrugs, too. "Jon's mom gave it to us. We use it. It makes hair soft."

"Ahhh…" Amilie says.

"Well, then…" Unthar adds.

Amilie reaches for a bottle and pours a thin stream of some fluid into her hair. It must be shampoo, and it certainly smells good. She spends a moment lathering it between her hands before she gently lays her palms on Rey's head, and then begins a gentle, foaming massage. Kylo watches as she begins to wash his wife's hair. He feels Unthar's hand on his shoulder and knows to tip his head back so Unthar can wet his hair.

This time, unlike when he settled into it for Rey, he extends his senses to feel what Unthar's really doing.

Making all the nerves in his body light up with pleasure as he washes his hair.

That's the top level.

Deeper… It's not Force work. It doesn't feel like that. Though it's akin to it. A deep, settled love and empathy.

It was there, in the Jedi books, love as a verb. As something above and beyond the rush of romance and the thrum of desire. There was love in the sense of caring, of cherishing. The ideal of the ability to spread that love throughout the galaxy, to feel the value of that which was around you, and to treat it with that value.

The Jedi strove for that, but felt that attachment to one love lessened the ability to feel it for all other loves.

He can feel it through Unthar's touch. This is the exact opposite. That through deep attachment, to his personal loves, to the love of his god, and the love of himself, he can feed his own empathy, his own love, and then spread it around, let it touch those near him.

And with it he can do amazing things.

It's not the Force, not Jedi style healing. He very much doubts that Unthar could close a cut with a touch, or calm a fever, or tell the cells of a broken bone to knit together faster and easier.

But for a tangled mind… For someone aching for affection and attention and love… For a person who desperately needed to connect with another human, and be cherished… His own well of it is so full he can offer it up to others, easily.

And basking in it, Kylo's fairly sure that's nothing he's ever going to have an easy time with, but it might be a goal, something he can seek to try to emulate. Dark side agape. Be so deeply, marvelously, passionately attached to his loves that his own well fills to overflowing, and he can offer it to others who need it.

He smirks a bit as Unthar's fingers rub through his hair. The Force might be an ass. It might stick him in stupid places and torment him for kicks and giggles, but it also does this. Puts him in the path of the people he needs to become the person he was meant to be.

He feels Rey's foot brushing against his under the water. She approves of this.

* * *

"Okay, time to lie down."

Kylo's on his belly, sprawled out over the massage table, which is a bit small for him. It's not quite two meters long, and so is he, so his feet stick off the end.

He can feel Unthar really looking at him, and then lay his hand on the scar where Rey ran the light saber through him.

"Any issues with this scar?"

"Totally numb."

"This one?" His hand is on the spot on his bicep where Finn bit him.

"They're all lightsaber burns. None of them have any sensation."

He can feel Unthar nodding, cataloging that away. "This straight surgical looking one?" He touches the line on his side where they fixed up Chewie's bowcaster hit.

"That one'll itch where I can't scratch sometimes. I think that's because the ribs, some lung, and intestines under there all had to be replaced."

 _You were fighting with a chunk of lung missing?_ Rey sounds shocked in his mind.

 _I'm really not kidding about my ability to pull off of pain. I'd never hurt so bad in my life, but that's what kept me going._

"You did not lead a safe life, did you, Kylo?" Amilie asks.

He doesn't open his eyes as he shakes his head. Rey adds, "All of them are from the same day."

"Bad day, then," Unthar says.

"From a certain point of view. I certainly didn't enjoy it at the time. But it set valuable things in motion, so…"

Unthar's nodding. "Transformative pain. We had Masters of that discipline, too, but it never called to me."

Kylo decides to ask. "People who… used pain to transform themselves?"

"Some. That's often where they began. But there were often temple services where one could be offered such pain if they needed it."

"People… came to you to get hurt?" Rey asks.

Unthar shugs a bit as he lays his hands on Kylo's upper back. "It was not my discipline. But, as I understand, some hurts can only be healed with more hurt, and some patterns can only be broken by pain. It… did not resonate for me, but for some…"

"What makes a poison is the dose," Amilie adds. "And every person has a different tolerance. So, what one person needs may not be the same thing as another, and what is damaging to one, may be medicine for another." She glances away from Rey to Kylo's scars. "Your love looks like he needed a higher dose than most."

Kylo's not sure what to think about that.

He does know what to think about Unthar's hands on his upper back, soft, warm pressure, the glide of slick skin across skin. _Yes._

And that's all now needs.

* * *

Kylo feels gentle hands softly comb through his hair, lifting away from his scalp, something soft, dry… lips? He feels the brush of warm breath against his face. Definitely lips, press to his forehead, and then Unthar's voice, "Okay, Rens, we're done for tonight. Amilie and I are going to get dressed and head off. You've got the room for another hour, and Jon took care of the bill, so you can just leave when you're done."

Amilie's voice, and the feel of a soft hand on his shoulder, and the dry press of another set of closed lips on his forehead. "It was a pleasure working with both of you. I've laid our card on your clothing, so if you'd like to book us again, you'll know how to. We try to keep one appointment a night open for regulars, and early is usually easier to get than late."

And then it's just the two of them in a dim, quiet room, the soft fluid sounds of the fountain behind them.


	44. R&R: Shopping

4/5/2

Rey stretches luxuriously. "That was a really good idea."

Kylo's on his own massage table, blissed out, and certainly contemplating moving, but not exactly feeling a need to do it, yet. "It really was."

"Just to make sure I understand the plan, we just… get up… after this?"

He rolls over. "I'm not saying we've got to, but… There's something I want to do, and… It'll be more fun if we leave off sex for after."

"Are you going to tell me what this something is?"

He smiles at her, eyes traveling over her naked, glistening skin. He bites his lip, and thinks about what they might get… "Is knowing more fun, or not knowing?"

She could know easily. A moment of focus, and she'd pull it right out of his head. He's not, on any level, shielding right now, he's just not projecting, either. So, Rey takes a moment to decide which is more fun, anticipating or knowing. "Tell me."

"The shop I got the panties at. It didn't just sell undies."

"You got that strap there, too."

"I did. They sold… a lot of things there. And… They… cater to men. Probably most of them have tastes that align more closely with Poe's than mine, but…"

Now she's looking at him very curiously.

"I wanted to get something for you to enjoy me in. I figured a place that catered to guys who were narrow for other guys would have stuff like that."

"Oh…"

"I looked around some, and they had dildos, and a lot of other things, but… It was store for men, so… I didn't see what we'd need for you to be able to play with one properly. So… We rub off some, get dressed again, and there are shops here that are for men and women, so… Want to go to sex shop with me? Go look at all the toys. Find something to play with tonight?"

Rey's eyes are glowing, and she's hopping off the table, reaching for a towel to rub some of the oil off.

* * *

It takes a little while to find a store. Kylo knows they have to have them on this ship. They walked by a pile of them on the way here, but… Maybe it was the drinks, maybe it was the really good massage, maybe it's the thrum of what feels like a billion other horny, drunk people, but he knows they got turned around somewhere on the walk, and…

Well, they're exploring.

Neither of them mind though. They're walking slowly, holding hands, brushing hips or shoulders every few steps, enjoying, very much, the way this bit of the F-Deck feels.

Not in a rush, just wandering, they're walking past a lot of places that offer… all sorts of 'services' apparently. Not all of them have open windows, but some do, and…

It's not like anyone near them is moving particularly quickly, either.

 _Do you think it's okay to just… watch?_ Rey thinks to Kylo as they're walking more and more slowly, staring at two women behind a window doing things that neither of them had ever seen two women do, but both of them wouldn't mind seeing more of.

 _I mean… There's a window right in front of them, so… I can't imagine it's not._ He's rapidly taking a _lot_ of mental notes because, well, the ladies on the other side of the glass seem to like what they're doing, so Rey might, too. More importantly, Rey is standing next to him, also watching, eyes wide, breath perking up, so… He's got some ideas for later, now.

They aren't the only people walking very slowly with somewhat glazed eyes. And, though he's not _looking,_ it's also not escaping his notice that just about every man here who didn't spurt in the last half hour or so it at least somewhat stiff. Apparently, walking proud on this part of the deck is just- they both look at another open window… this one most certainly does not have any women behind it… it also doesn't have too many women in front of it- appropriate.

There are _extremely_ relaxed people wandering around, having recently had a good time. And some very _eager_ ones looking for a good time. And a not inconsiderable number in between, strolling, or lounging, or sitting, with a friend, or friends, petting, kissing… more than petting and kissing.

Rey doesn't think anyone in her line of view is actually having sex. But a decent number of them likely will be, _very_ soon. If they'll seek out somewhere more private than the middle of this hallway, she doesn't know, or for that matter, care.

* * *

If there was anything Rey would change about it, it's the fact that it's really _loud._ Voices, of course. The rest of the F-Deck is loud like that, too. But unlike the rest of the F-Deck, now that they've found the market again, every other door is a club of some sort, most of which appear to have pictures of naked people on them, and _very_ loud music coming out of them.

Unlike the Spec shops with the windows, these clubs don't offer a view of what's inside, but there are lines to get in, and very eager looking people waiting, and fairly drunk, randy, happy people staggering out, so…

If it weren't for the noise, Rey would be happy to suggest they head into one and explore, but they're just too damn loud.

* * *

Kylo's actually a little surprised that he's not seeing much fighting. This many drunk people in one area generally goes along with fighting, but…

Maybe it's something in the drinks.

Maybe it's the fact that everyone here can bring anyone else up on charges if they get into a fight.

Maybe they're just here on a good day.

However, it is, he's pleased not to be dodging a brawl.

* * *

Eventually, though, there's a shop, and Kylo doesn't know why he nudges them toward that particular shop instead of the one next to it, or the one across the hall, but… So far just trusting and going with the flow's worked really well tonight, so…

Through the window they can see models of people wearing very small bits of shiny/silky clothing that doesn't cover very much of their bodies, and the name emblazoned on the front window is "The Treasure Trove."

 _This is probably the right sort of place._ Kylo thinks, holding the door open for Rey.

As they step in… _I think you're right._

Though Kylo's a little less sure of that. This place has a lot of clothing, on mannequins, and being worn by attractive members of several sexes who may be employees, or possibly clients. (He never thought a shirt, vest, and kilt would constitute as overdressed, but he'd also never spent any time on this section of the F-Deck before. Not that on the F-Deck, there's anything that constitutes a dress code, but, out here, the mores regarding acceptable clothing are _relaxed._ )

The reason he's not sure if this is the kind of place he's looking for is that all he's seeing is clothing. (Granted, that may be enough, as his eyes snap upon a… he's going to call it a thing, because it's certainly a thing, made of some sort of strappy black stuff, and brighter blue stuff, and a cloud of tiny sparkly bits, that's just barely brushing the underside of the model's butt, and no matter what this thing is, it'd look fucking AMAZING on Rey. He notices her gazing off in a different direction, and he's not entirely sure if she's looking at the fit young guy in what appears to be some sort of head to toe sparkly rainbow glitter and _nothing else_ or the woman next to him, wearing... Well he knows the bottom part is probably a skirt, though he's not sure if you call it a skirt when it's wider than it's long, maybe it's a hip band, and two matching rainbow sparkly disks over her nipples.)

"I like your idea of a date," Rey says, still gazing at… Sparkly Guy. "You ever contemplate adding body glitter to your wardrobe."

He rubs his lips together. "Only for extremely private gatherings." Then he quirks a very tiny smile. He bends his lips to her ears. "You want to see me sparkle, lightling?"

"I wouldn't mind." She's looking up at him, thinking of her quest for pet names that work for her darkling, and makes a mental note to look up stones that are black and sparkly. She's got the sense there has to be something like that, and even if it won't work as a pet name, it might be useful for making some sort of token of affection.

"I'll remember that." They're both distracted from that as someone walks toward them in very shiny, head to toe, black… Kylo doesn't know what it is, beyond very, very shiny. It looks like it was poured over the person wearing it. "That can't be comfortable," falls out of his mouth.

Rey doesn't grimace, but she does look somewhat appalled. "Do you think she can breathe?"

"I assume she's got to be able to." After all, the lady in question is up and walking around, so she's got to be able to breathe, and probably see, but the face part of it is just skin tight, solid, shiny black.

"I don't like that," Rey says.

Kylo's nodding. "Yeah, for me, that's the opposite of sexy." He keeps looking as she walks past. The outfit makes a sort of bizarre creaky-squeek as she moves. "And that's the end of my stand."

She's laughing a little as she says, "I'll put that on the never list."

"Thank you." He takes her hand, and pulls her a little further into the store. "Let's see if they've got the sort of things I was thinking about."

* * *

Oh, they do. It takes a bit of wandering around, through the racks and shelves of clothing, and the _interestingly_ costumed models before they find the room that does not have toys in it, but does have… entertainment options, and small cubbies where one can privately (or in small groups) view said entertainment options. ("Don't they have viewers at home?" Rey asks. Kylo shrugs. "If we were on D or E, I'd get it, most enlisted are in dorms, so a small private place you can rent by the hour makes sense, but…" he shrugs again. They appear to be popular though. Most of the doors have the In Use sign on them.) But, through that room, into another one is more of what Kylo had in mind.

He's not sure if he should be relieved or disappointed by the lack of models in here. Part of him is relieved because he's not sure he needs to see how all of this stuff works. Part is disappointed because he just doesn't _know_ what a lot of this stuff is and seeing someone use it would likely help him decide if it's something to investigate further.

They're not the only people back here, but there are a lot fewer than the front of the store. Kylo doesn't mind that, at all.

"What were you hoping to get?" Rey asks.

 _At least a dildo, one you can use. Beyond that, whatever tickles your fancy?_

She smiles, drifts over to a tube of… slick… Poe calls that stuff slick, which he supposes makes sense, and holds it up. "It's got flavors."

He's right next to her, looking down. "Gods, there are what, thirty options here?"

She nudges a bottle on the next shelf. "Of just that one brand."

"Fuck! Uh… Do we want flavors?" He's pretty sure _he_ doesn't want flavors, at least not for anything he's going to be licking. He shifts so he's standing behind her, and rests his chin against her shoulder. The scent of the oil Amilie used on her is still about her skin, and that's yummy… So, maybe flavors, or at least scents would be good.

He looks down, and there's a little gape at the top of the dress, so he can see _down._ The swell of Rey's belly means he can't see all the way down, but he knows what's below that gentle curve, and… No flavors there. There, she should taste like Rey, and maybe his spurt mixed with her, but that's it.

Rey's still holding the box. Maybe she might want flavors for his skin?

Rey shrugs a bit. "I don't know. Uh…" She picks up a bottle and checks the price. Her eyes go wide. "Uh… how much money do we have?"

Kylo blinks. He looks at the price. Going by prices, this is not the sort of place he got the strap and sexy undies at. He wonders if they're just in a more expensive section (possible) or if local prices on the _Supremacy_ are a lot higher than on the _Finalizer_ (maybe?) but one bottle of slick here costs more than his entire fun underwear for himself expenditure so…

"Let me check." He glances around, makes sure no one is paying attention to him, and then casts the do-not-look spell. Once that's done, he ports back to their rooms, grabs his personal datapad, and checks to see what's in their credit account. He knows he cleared out his account back in the fourth month of last year, turned it all to cash, and funneled that into Lirium, but right now… Shit, it's been almost a year, and he thinks the only things he's bought with his Amidala credit stick were his last shopping trip, a few meals, and the Gidi Prime trip, which more than paid for itself.

Fifty-two thousand six hundred and eleven credits. Apparently, the little boogers pile up pretty quickly when you don't really buy things. He figures he's got to make about five thousand credits a month now, and wonders if that's a lot for someone in his position. He's got the sinking suspicion that it's probably not.

No matter, it's a lot for what they want to do, even in a place where slick costs 80C per tube.

He ports back with his do-not-look spell still in place, and doesn't drop it until he's standing next to Rey again. She's holding a small blister pack, and says, "They have sample packs."

"Good."

"How are we set for credits?"

 _Fifty thousand._ He stops there. _Forty-five. I want to make sure I've got more than enough to repay Jon._

 _Good point._ She holds up two sample packs. "This one is flavors, and that one is slipperiness. They make different kinds for different sorts of sex."

His eyebrows raise at that, and he looks at the different kinds of slipperiness pack, reading the back. "Huh…" Apparently, massage oil might not be the best possible option for when she's using her fingers on him. That said, he's a little curious about the 'absolutely no friction at all' one. "How do you think that feels?"

"No idea. I'd guess you'd mostly just get the sensation of stretch, and not moving so much. We'll have to try it out."

He nods a bit, and decides that experimenting is going to be fun. He looks down again at the list of options. "I'd think the numbing one would defeat the purpose."

Rey shrugs. "Maybe if you're the kind of guy who spurts in ten seconds," she says as they head to the next aisle.

* * *

The next shelf is slicks. LOTS of slicks. He and Rey glance at each other, because like with lube, there's just so many more options than either of them would, or could, have possibly dreamed of.

"How different can they be?" Rey asks.

Kylo shrugs. "I guess… I mean, we've got more than just humans here, so…" There are a lot of different types of boxes. But, judging by the names and the pictures, most of them seem to be made for humans. "Still seems like a lot."

Rey's looking around at all the options, and at how surprised Kylo seems to be by this many options, too. "How'd you get… You don't shop. How did you get the ones we used?"

He blushes a little, looking away from the boxes that have _sizes_. "Uh… They just sort of… Came with the room." Looking around he's getting the sense that First Order accommodations don't necessarily come equipped with slicks. "And… uh… replenished themselves."

Rey's looking really amused by this story. "So, you just… what? Opened a drawer and found them?"

He looks a little embarrassed. "That's uh, actually… kind of right." He bites his lip. He told Hux he needed rooms, specified what he wanted in the way of entrances, and then a few days later, he had his current space. In the drawers under his bed, were his vitamin packs and protein bars (all of which he immediately threw away, back then he didn't eat anything he didn't fetch for himself) and a tube with slicks in it. "I'd never seen one in a package before, so I had to open it to figure out what it was."

"Hadn't you used one before?"

Twice, and then once after he got that room, but before he and Rey began moving toward becoming he and Rey. "Yes, but I didn't put it on myself, and wasn't exactly paying attention to how it worked." And he certainly hadn't been aware that sizes were a thing, and… maybe they don't actually have to be _quite_ as snug as the ones that just pop up in his room.

"Oh." Rey's looking at the packages when a thought hits her. "Something just… goes into your room and takes stock of everything?"

Kylo blinks. He supposes it's possible that his shampoo and conditioner are some sort of magical never-ending fonts of hygiene equipment, but that seems rather unlikely. He's also fairly sure that in the almost two years they've been doing this, and the more than three since he got to the _Supremacy_ that he's still on the same toothbrush and container of toothpowder, but actually thinking about it, that seems rather unlikely.

"Yes? It's like laundry, I think. A droid comes in, restocks stuff, changes out the sheets, gets the dirty clothing, returns the clean ones."

She nods at that. "Uh… No matter where we end up using these, I think they get to live on Lirium, or wherever we end up."

Kylo opens and closes his mouth and then nods. "Probably a good plan."

Kylo's still looking at the packs. He's got a suspicion that the one he gave Jacen likely got replaced, but… There are so many options here, not just size-wise, too. Different shapes, and textures, and materials, and colors… Colors seems kind of stupid to him, but textures and materials… Maybe they… feel different or something.

'Ultra thin-super strong-maxxx sensitivity…' None of those things sound bad to him. So, he grabs a pack. (In size large. Mostly just because he _can._ )

"I thought you didn't much like them," Rey's looking curiously at the pack he just grabbed, not even starting to imagine why he wants that.

"I mean… I don't, not really. It cuts down on a lot of the sensation. But, I've been reliably told they cut down on clean up a lot, and… Well…" _I know where I want the dildo to go._ He grabs a small pack, too. _And your fingers._

Rey thinks about that for a moment, and then nods. "That's a good idea." She looks at the first pack, sees the size, and then thinks to him, _Oh… For you?_

He flashes her a lightly naughty glances, and taps the key words on the package. _Maybe… Been, thinking… We both…you know… can do that._ He feels a little flushed. Not blushing, because he's not embarrassed, this is an aroused flush, and it's good.

Rey turns that idea over for a moment. _That… might feel good._

 _I like it._

 _Would you like… doing it?_

He shifts slightly, widening his stance and leaning back a little, and then meaningfully glances down. There's a definite bulge under his kilt. It's not as visible as it would be in many of his trousers, the leather is doing its job, but it's certainly there.

 _I'll take that as a yes._

He kisses her jaw, and then lips, and whispers, "Oh yes!" His hand drifts down, resting on her low back. He's tempted to let it settle on her bum, but… they are in public, and… "You want me to try?"

She kisses him. "We can certainly play with it."

They're both grinning as the move to the next section.

* * *

After a whole aisle of slicks, they round the corner and find… Things.

"Okay, what do you think that is?" Rey asks staring at the _thing._ It's a long, flat paddle looking thing, with a leather handle and some shiny studs along the flat side.

Kylo purses his lips. He very much did not expect to see something like that here, though some of the specialties that didn't immediately make sense to him are starting to come into view.

Rey's staring at him, because she can read the way he's looking at… the thing.

He offers up a limp half smile. "I mean… I know. I just didn't know you could buy something like that…" he glances down the shelf, there are a lot of variations on the theme of what Rey's looking at on this shelf. "or..." he gestures to some of the other things, "those, here."

"Well, what is it?"

"A flogger. You use it to hit people. Hard, a lot."

"Why do you know that?" Rey asks, very afraid that he's going to say he's got personal experience with them.

"Not like that." He sighs. "Historical conditioning methods were part of what Hux was constantly researching and sometimes testing. Different sorts of pain get different sorts of responses, and these were all in the things that 'didn't work' category. This was considered better than a whip, because it hurts, but won't break skin, so there's less chance of infection… Some of those reports he was reading were old enough they predated bacta." Looking at floggers for sale, here, Kylo's wondering _why_ Hux kept reading reports about techniques that didn't work.

"Oh."

"Yeah, so… eight thousand years ago, they used to use these to keep troops in line, but I had no idea-" and suddenly he does. Suddenly those bite marks on Phasma make a hell of a lot more sense. And Hux's collection of reports, and… "Oh."

An eyebrow rises. "Oh?"

"Uh… The Princeling. The one who couldn't keep it down when you were smacking him. Uh…" Both of them look at an aisle filled with things to hit people with.

"Ohhh…" They both say, together, looking scandalized. Then another bit of working with Unthar and Amilie clicks into place.

Kylo looks back at the flogger and then swallows hard. "Transformative pain. The vocation he wasn't drawn to."

Rey winces a little. "Ew."

They don't linger in that aisle.

* * *

Neither of them know what the stuff in the next aisle is.

"Obviously the people who sell them expect you to get it from the names and pictures," Rey says, looking at a 'Your pussy's best friend, The Hare.' (Neither she, nor Kylo, know what a pussy or a hare is. And the picture on the box is not helping the issue. If Rey were to describe it, she'd say it's a kind of thumb shaped blob with some floppy bits on top.)

Kylo's holding up a different box and a small, roundish, vaguely squishy thing that fits in his palm, but he's got no idea what you do it with. "It's for women? Pearl Pleaser, that's got to be for women, right?"

"That looks like a woman on the box," Rey says, taking the box from him. "Fifteen pulsing, rumbling, vibrating levels of orgasmic pleasure in a compact pearl-pleasing package. What's orgasmic?"

Kylo shrugs. He's flipping the thing over and over in his hand. It's triggering a very faint memory. "Uh… Pearls. They come from oysters. This thing, I think, kind of looks like an oyster. Maybe? I don't think oysters are pink and squishy."

Rey's still looking at the box. Then she takes the Pearl Pleaser from Kylo, and pokes it deliberately. There is a cleft in it, and she can work her finger in between the layers of the cleft. It's not closed tightly, though the lips are sort of snug and fleshy. "You can put something… your pearl maybe, in here?"

"How's it feel?" Kylo can, sort of, imagine that maybe it's like having the smallest lips ever pursed around your pearl, and that could probably feel good. Maybe rub it back and forth or something. He's not sure where pulsing and vibrating would come in though.

She hands it to him, and he grabs the back end of it, which is when it turns on and suddenly 'fifteen levels of plusing, rumbling, vibrating orgasmic pleasure' begins to take shape for Rey. Her mouth falls open, and she very quietly says, "Oh."

Kylo watches her, the tip of her finger in the thing that's sort of purring in his hand, and thinks at her. _Okay, I don't care what the hell it is this thing actually is. Anything that makes you look like that is coming home with us._

She smiles at him, and does pull her finger out, motioning for him to try it, and… It's… buzzing gently around the tip of his finger. "That's… intriguing." He's watching it sort of pulse as it buzzes. He gives the base another squeeze and it begins to do it harder. Rey gives the base another squeeze and Kylo yelps in surprise when something on the inside of it begins to flick the tip of his finger.

"What was that?" Rey asks.

"I don't… a tiny little tongue or something."

"Wait, really?" She's yanking it off his finger, and trying it on hers and… "Oh…" The most amazed expression is on her face. "If it was warm… That's… It's not dead on, but… It sort of feels like when you lick and suck at the same time. Just... smaller."

Kylo squeezes the bottom again, and now it's Rey's turn to yelp. "Oh… Okay, that's probably too much, but… The… lips are vibrating now."

Kylo tries it on his finger again, and… "If you could fit a shaft into one of these things… I mean… Probably not regularly, but…" Regular sex, meal sex, ending up the night with a glow sex, is usually pretty lazy and relaxed, belly to belly, on their sides, kissing and petting, and he doesn't see how that thing would literally fit into the picture. But… for their more… energetic nights…

Rey's nodding. "Not regularly, but… We should take this home."

Kylo's also nodding, but as he's looking around… There are at least seventy different variations on the theme of this thing sitting around them. "This one, or…" he gestures to all of the others.

"Let's stay with this one for now." Rey's got it in her hand, and is trying to figure out how to turn the bloody thing off. This is the display one, so it shouldn't be sitting on the shelf vibrating forever, right?

Eventually, (apparently you have to just keep squeezing until it's gone through its entire array of settings) she gets it turned off. And while she's doing that, Kylo continues to read the box. "It's waterproof."

"You've already got plans for that thing, don't you?"

He grins at her. "I've read Jedi texts indicating that there are ways to slow down respiration to the point of appearing near death, if one needs to survive in a low oxygen environment. But you know, the people who wrote that were thinking about how to survive a collapsed cave, of if you were in a ship with a hull breach, not how to lick maomao in your bath."

Rey laughs at that. "And is that what you want to do with that?"

"You in my lap, on my shaft, that on you, both of us in the bath… It'd be warm in the water, right?"

"It would. Both of us slow and lazy, rocking up and down, letting the water and the… pearl pleaser do all the work."

He's flush to her back, nuzzling behind her ear. "Some night when we're both feeling tired. Set it on low, and just let it ease you over the edge, and I'll ride along on your good time?"

She wriggles against him a bit, focuses on how wet she feels, how slick and needy, and then blasts him with the sensation of it.

Kylo's teeth find the nape of her neck, and he bites down, gently, to muffle his moan.

* * *

Kylo supposes there would have to be toys for the partner that does the penetrating part of sex. (Apparently, they do make pearl pleaser type things that a shaft can fit into, and they found them in the next aisle.) And 'masturbatory sleeve' is probably a fine term to describe the things they're looking at. And _most_ of them, are… things that exist. He doesn't feel one way or another about them. (Before Rey, his opinion would have been _significantly_ different.)

But there's one of them. On a… stand or stool, or something to keep it about hip high for an average-sized human male. And… Yeah… If he were to design one, it wouldn't look like that. It'd probably look like the dozen other ones on the shelf that appear to be mostly cylindrical shapes for sticking your shaft in.

This one… He's fairly sure he's had nightmares that were less scary than this thing.

Rey's just staring at it in abject horror. Finally, she says, "Do you think whoever designed this has ever seen a human woman?"

In that they're staring at something that looks like a Hutt with ridiculously large, and bizarrely off to the sides boobs, with a delta, anus, and mouth, but no head or face, none of which look like anything he'd ever want to get any part of his body any closer than it already is to, and all of which are oddly proportioned in addition not being where he'd think you'd want to put them for easy thrusting access, he says, "Not only do I not think they've ever seen one, I also don't think these are designed for species that enjoy fucking them."

Rey nods slowly, still staring at it. That's a good point. Humans are the majority species on the _Supremacy_ , not the only one. "What do you think it feels like?"

Kylo raises an eyebrow, and then says, "There are not enough credits in the universe to pay me to touch that thing."

"Coward."

"Your fingers work just as well as mine do…"

She reaches out a hesitant finger, and slips it inside the "mouth" before yanking it back with a "Uhajh!" sound.

He's looking alarmed.

"It's cold, and wet. Ughlh… And there are teeth." She shudders, shaking her hand as if she could remove the feel of that thing.

Kylo decides to be "helpful." "I think you're supposed to turn it on." He gestures to the little switch on the base it's attached to.

Rey stares at the switch, like she's half afraid turning it on will be the equivalent of turning on a lightsaber pointed directly at her eye. Stepping as far away from the thing as she can, but still hitting the button with her toe, she nudges it.

The only good thing that can be said for the "masturbatory sleeve" is that it's quiet. Otherwise everyone else in the shop would have been staring at them when it whirled to life, wriggling and squirming.

Rey watches it for a moment, and then says, "You know, when we bait hooks to catch fish, the bait does that right when the hook goes through it."

Kylo's looking at the floor, vibrating with unvoiced laughter. That said, looking up at how it's moving, he's at least starting to understand how it's possible something like that _might_ feel good. Putting his hand near it, he still doesn't want to _touch_ it, he can feel it's warmed up, too…

His eyes narrow just a bit, contemplating it, and then he licks his lips, shakes his head, and says, "Peaches. Ripe, sun-warmed, peaches."

Rey sniggers a bit, and they move on.

* * *

The next aisle is the only one that hits them differently. Radically differently.

Like with the pearl pleasers, it takes them a moment to figure out what they're looking at. But only a moment. Restraints. Cuffs. Ties. Ropes. Extremely focused field generators. It takes a moment for them to figure out what the ones with the long bars in between the cuffs are for.

Rey goes cold looking at them.

Kylo feels it, and he pulls his own reaction, going _hot,_ deep inside, shielded.

She's got a pure spike of revulsion. And it makes sense. Someone (someones?) literally held her down.

They go through quickly, and he tries not to pay too much attention to the box with the picture of a man kneeling, a neck cuff, with a chain down the back to two wrist cuffs, and two ankle cuffs. He stuffs how much the idea of it, kneeling, chained, at her disposal… knowing, trusting… that she'd treat him right. That he could offer himself up to her, be entirely hers, and be cherished for it, lights him up inside.

Maybe, one day, that might be a game they could play, but he knows now isn't the time.

* * *

The next aisle is cock straps, and that's familiar territory until they're about a third of the way down, past the metal ones, when they start to change.

Kylo's got one in his hand, staring at it intently, mostly trying to figure out how to get it off quickly, without breaking it. This one is a soft, snug but somewhat stretchy plexiplast, so it's not like either of them could remove it easily, especially if he's in Rey while using it.

As he's twisting it in his hands, going through the mental gymnastics of how to get it on and off, (Namely, he understands that somehow this is supposed to end up behind his stones, but since it doesn't open, he's not sure how to make that happen.) he notices that there's this lump on the one side. He remembers that the one snap on his strap was in the right place for Rey to rub against it, so he can sort of understand the value of the bump. It's while he's tugging on the plexiplast, seeing how stretchy it really it, that it starts to buzz in his hand.

Rey's been standing next to him, not really commenting, because she's not the one who wears these, but that's got her attention. She rests her finger on the nub, and that's an awfully pleasant little buzz there.

Rey just grabs one of the boxes, as Kylo tries to figure out how to turn it off. Eventually, he notices that if you twist the plexiplast, it turns on or off. Once he's got that figured, he puts it back.

Rey's holding one toward him with a big grin. Because one that buzzes for her and holds him tight is apparently interesting to her.

The box she's given him is pretty much the one that'd been in his hand. The one he can't figure out how to remove easily. And, until he can figure out how to spurt wearing one, not being able to take it off mid-communing is a deal breaker. "I want to be able to get it off fast."

She nods, and they go looking for another one with snaps.

It takes some searching but Rey comes back to him with one with snaps, and protrusions that vibrate for a female partner, and it's also got an attached plug for him, and, it looks like that vibrates, too. Kylo's just staring at the picture of the thing on the box, nodding, as his mouth goes dry in a very good sort of way.

"I take it that's a yes," she gently rubs against the front of him, which actually is managing to protrude straight out, leather kilt be damned.

Kylo makes a noise along the lines of "Nrgh," and then gets enough of his brain back online to whimper slightly, and then, just because he can, he focuses on how he feels right now, and how he assumes this thing is going to feel, and Rey also whimpers as he shares it with her.

She's looking up at him, eyes bright, lips wet, and says, "You know, I think I know what those cubbies are for in the entertainment rooms." And possibly why no one in the outside hall was having sex, though a lot of them were awfully close to it. After all, it'd be fairly easy to be here, fifty kilometers, and likely several hours from your room, and just _need_ a little privacy. Fast.

He inhales so fast he squeaks. All they've got to do is go over to one of those little cubbies, stick his credit stick in the slot, and… soundproof privacy for however long they want it.

"We should probably buy the stuff, first, right?"

Rey doesn't know, but she assumes that's true. "Probably."

Kylo thinks about that, getting in line, paying, going back… The things in his hand, cleaning up before using them… having room to spread out and… Those cubbies are kind of small. He's sure he can sit in one, he's not sure he can lie down, and… "Next time. I want…"

She's grinning up at him. She knows what he wants. She wants that, too. "Besides, I want to get something to see you in, and we haven't even gotten to the clothing, so…"

Kylo whimpers at that, too. "We really need to do this again."

"We really do. Maybe there are reviews and we can research what we get next time."

His eyes spark. That sounds like the kind of research he'll enjoy.

* * *

It's the next aisle that has what Kylo was hoping for. Land of the dildos. And the strap-harness things necessary for them to work for women. There's an entire section of the things devoted to women using them on men and each other, and he more or less zips past the ones that are for use on their own and homes right on in on the ones for use with a partner.

Rey's smiling, amused, aroused, and then right up behind him, her body flush to his, as she whispers against his shoulder, "So, this is why we're here?"

Her hands slip down to his hips. There's another couple a little further down the aisle, so they don't move toward his shaft, which is happily defying gravity. (And the leather kilt. Though she does tug his shirt down a bit.) She just holds her hands on his hips, right against the crest of his hipbones, and he can imagine it so clearly, bent over, at her mercy, at her pleasure, her hands pulling him close, the way he does to her when he's just got to get that much deeper, when deeper is better, when he wants to push so far into her that their bodies meld and melt into one another.

But there is another couple a little further down the aisle.

So, he doesn't moan, out loud. He bites his lip, holds her hands, floods her with the image of him on his belly, hips up, writhing, humping the bed because he _needs_ , waiting for her, as she slicks up one of these dildos, and then uses his Force to stroke a long, firm almost lick against her pearl.

He's very satisfied to feel her shudder against his back.

And then he's very surprised when he remembers that anything he can do to her, she can do back, and that she does not need to be visibly touching him to make him shudder all over, too.

He hits her with the fact that _his_ undies are wet now, and how hard he is, and how much he wants all of this right now, along with a fantasy of her bent over in front of him, skirt flipped up, as he pounds into her from behind, kilt between his teeth to keep it out of the way, everyone else in the damn store watching as he makes her scream.

She ups the play, still holding his hips, but adding just a little mental pressure to his back, between his shoulder blades, letting him know she wants him to bend forward. He doesn't, the other couple are very carefully _not_ paying any attention to them, but still… He does tilt his hips a bit, rubbing his butt against her, and feels her give a little thrust against it.

The image she gives him with it, what it would look like from her point of view to have him bent over in this store, his skirt up, begging her for it, makes his knees week and his shaft _throb._

His hands fist. _You win._ He steps away, because if they keep doing this, he's going to spurt in his shorts like a randy teen. He also turns a bit away from the other couple, and discretely (or as discretely as possible) adjusts himself, so the tip of his shaft is tucked under the waistband of his kilt, and not doing it's best to go wandering off and into Rey. _The whole point of this thing is it was supposed to be heavy enough to keep it down._

 _Not so I'd stare at you and enjoy how pretty your legs are?_

 _That's a side benefit._

She's smiling up at him. _Are you saying I've lifted your spirits?_

 _Among other things._

That gets a laugh from her. "Well now. Which one do we want?"

* * *

It's a multitude of options. The damn things not only come in every color, texture, shape, and size imaginable, they also move and whirl and vibrate, and come with odd bumps and twists and…

It doesn't take too long for both of them to get overwhelmed.

Finally, Rey says, "Okay, lets start here, how big do you want this thing to be?"

The gargantuan ones all seem to be back on the side that Kylo more or less sprinted past. The ones in front of them still have a fairly good range of sizes though.

"Is it just about what I want?" Kylo asks.

Rey nods. Then she glances down to the slightly better camouflaged, but not particularly smaller or softer bulge under Kylo's kilt. She doesn't touch, doesn't add her Force to that look, but he still _feels_ it. "I think so. You already come equipped with everything I want in this direction."

He flushes in pleasure at that. Still… "You sure?" He's gesturing around. "It doesn't just have to be for me."

"You're right, it doesn't, but right now it is. We already got a toy for me, remember?"

He goes glance down at his hand and remember that he's carrying around the pearl pleaser for her, so… "Okay." He looks around at the array of options. "Uh… When you do it to me, how many fingers are you using?"

That gets a surprised look on Rey's face. "You can't tell?"

He shrugs. "I'm more or less just enjoying how it feels, I don't spend to much time trying to figure out what exactly you're doing." He smirks at that. _I'd likely be shit at sucking cock, too. Beyond the most general level, I've got no idea what you're doing, just that I like it._

She breaks out laughing at that. _You just broke Unthar's heart._

He rolls his eyes. And then looks meaningfully at all of the options.

Rey holds up her index finger and wiggles it around.

He nods. "Small then." He bites his lip, eyes wandering around. "Maybe."

"Maybe?"

He glances toward the other couple. They, stubbornly, have not decided to go wandering off. Kylo switches entirely to mental conversation. _The little ones look kind of stupid on the strap._

Rey chuckles. _Yeah, well, you're not going to have much of a view of it._

 _Not_ while _you're doing it._ He picks one up. The smallest, and closest to her finger size, of the bunch. _It just kind of looks… sad._

 _It doesn't have to be small. Just get what you like. Also, when are you planning on looking at it when I'm_ not _using it._

He hits her with his mental image of her wearing something like this, slicking it up, standing in front of him while he's _eagerly_ waiting for her.

"Oh."

Kylo nods. _Yeah._ He glances to the strap-on in his hand. _This doesn't look like the one in my head._

She smiles at him, and again _looks_ at what's under the kilt. _The one in your head looks a lot like the one in your shorts._

He smiles at that, and bites his lip. _What's in my shorts is not purple plexiplast._ He's not entirely sure why his mental image of a dildo is purple plexiplast, but it is. He does take a few steps nearer to a purple one.

 _Size-wise._

He's holding the purple dildo. It's… not as big as he is. But it's bigger than her finger. For a moment, he almost wants to talk to Poe about this.

 _You want to talk to Poe?_

And apparently he projected that thought, or they're just close enough right now, there's no point to trying to keep thoughts to themselves.

 _Not exactly. But I know he's done this, and… I don't know. Your finger feels tight when you use it._ He nods to the lube multipacks. _But maybe we're not using the right sort of lube. The tiny little one on the strap looks stupid to me. So… Is this… a good size?_ He's holding it up. _I don't know. You don't know. Poe probably does._

Rey sort of shrugs at that, and keeps looking around. After a few seconds, she darts off to the part of the aisle he went through fast, and grabs something.

It's a box. It's got the little, kind-of-dildo-like-things (apparently, according to the box they're called 'plugs') that were in the Physical Therapy video. The name on the box is Easy Stretch, and it claims to come with five sizes of plugs, some sort of device to make sure lube goes where it's supposed to go, and a 'detailed guide to everything you need to know to experience mind-bending anal pleasure.'

 _Maybe we start with something like this, and then go looking for something like that? See what feels good before getting a strap on?_

Kylo chews his lip at that. He's more than aware that for the guide alone, that's probably worth buying. But his mental image of this isn't little plugs. It's him completely surrendered, entirely open to Rey, and whatever she's going to do to him.

Her hand lands on his wrist. _You want to rush, leap in headfirst, and just take whatever comes, right?_

He nods at that.

She presses closer to him, holding his wrist, looking up into his eyes. She can feel that he's aware that maybe this might hurt some, like the burn of her finger, but more, and maybe he might like that some, like stretch and burn and maybe a little _more,_ maybe an edge to surrendering to her, and…

Rey's shaking her head. _You won't let me be in danger by myself. And I agreed to that, because that's a non-negotiable for you. This is one for me. I'm not going to hurt you. Not if there's a way to do something so it doesn't hurt. I'm okay with fingers and going slow. We don't have to get the kit, but… We're not leaping headfirst into this. No rushing, not if it hurts, okay?_

He nods at her, and bends his head so his lips are nestled against her temple. His eyes close. _Okay. Reading, learning, experimenting._

 _Good._ She looks at the pile of stuff they're holding. _Do they have baskets or something to hold all of this stuff?_

He shrugs.

She nods back to the strap-ons. _Pick one out. I'll get a basket. Maybe we get there tonight. Maybe next week. Or next month. We'll see how it goes. But if you want it now, we can get it now._

He kisses her. _Now._

Rey nods. _Okay. Basket._

While Rey's hunting down a basket, Kylo finds what he wants… needs… probably wants, though staring at it, he's feeling pretty needy.

This one has an adjustable dildo. There's a little pump that goes with it, so it can start small and get bigger, or start bigger and make it smaller when it's time to use.

He likes the idea of that, a lot. It's probably not the stiffest toy ever made, but… It probably doesn't have to be. And, it's got a bit of a bend to it. The box says that's for prostate stimulation, which sounds good to him.

* * *

It takes Rey longer than he expected to go and find a basket. So, he's standing there, holding several toys, feeling a little silly all by himself.

Kylo's not sure if he should keep exploring by himself, or wait for Rey, but… They're almost to the back of the room, so they've probably browsed through most of what's here.

Probably.

"Excuse me, have you tried something like that before." He jumps about ten centimeters when the couple that had been at the far end of the aisle has drifted over to talk to him.

Once he lands, and swallows, and finds his voice, he says, "Uh… No. Sorry."

The woman shrugs. "Too many options. We don't know what we're looking for. Kind of hoping you had some ideas."

"Sorry, first time, too."

"Oh."

The guy is very clearly _not_ looking at Kylo, but then he quickly glances up, and then back to his feet before saying, "It's not weird, right? She says it's not weird, but…"

Apparently, whatever the Force decided his do-not-recognize-face looks like, it's an approachable and friendly demeanor. Right now, he's wishing it wasn't.

"I don't think so…" Kylo says, wincing. "I mean. Who the fuck cares if it is? If there's ever a time you get to do whatever it is you like, this should be it, right?"

The guy blushes a little at that. The woman is nodding vigorously.

"If it helps, my two best friends claim to really like it." Kylo's fairly sure that's true. Or at least, close enough to true. You probably can't tell the difference between a real shaft and a plexiplast one… probably. Assuming it's not vibrating or something like that. Then his eyes narrow, is Poe one of his best friends? Shit, probably. He can feel his mom approving, and talk about emotional situations he never wanted to encounter in a sex shop. He _yanks_ his mind away from that, fast.

The guy looks up at him. "Your friends sly?"

Kylo blinks; he doesn't know that one. He focuses on the intent of that question and understands that sly means men who like to fuck men. "Yes and mostly."

The guy's looking at his woman. "That's why it's weird."

Kylo rolls his eyes. "Look, I'm whatever the polar opposite of sly is, and we haven't tried one of these yet, but every other experiment along those lines has been very successful. I don't think your body really cares one way or the other about what's touching it as long as it feels good." (He doesn't contemplate that too hard, or mention that your mind cares intently, though it apparently can be lulled by a pair of good hands wielded by an even better heart.)

The man doesn't look sold on that.

He feels Rey getting closer and relaxes. _Finally, there are people talking to me about strap-ons._

He senses her laughing before he can see her. _Are you being nice?_

 _I'm trying. Rescue me?_

 _Always._ And a second later she's turning the corner into the aisle they're in. Then she's wrapping an arm around Kylo's waist and snugging up next to him. "Hey, love." She holds up the basket. "Basket."

He glances down. That is a basket. He's putting the toys in it, and there's also an already wrapped package in there. "Basket with… What's in the box?"

She grins up at him. Then to the people next to them. He's holding the basket now, and she, with a jaunty little wave says, "It's about time for us to get moving on."

"Oh, yes, of course," and they wander off, looking a bit dazed.

 _Okay, maybe that's a tad more rescuing than I was hoping for._

Rey smiles a little at that. Then she glances to the box in the basket. _Maybe I'm feeling a little guilty about getting you a present, and then waiting in line when I could feel you trying to peel your skin off out here._

He gives her a mock appalled look. _You could feel that?_

 _You were not being subtle. What happened?_

 _They asked for dildo recommendations and if it was weird._

Rey starts to laugh, loud. _Oh, Force, I should have seen that._

 _Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was hilarious._ His eyes narrow, and he's looking at the box. _Am I going to like what's in there?_

 _I'm not going to absolutely guarantee it, but I'm laying better than even odds in that direction._

 _Good. Does it go on me or you?_

She grins, eyes sparkling. _Not telling._

 _Brat._

Rey reaches up on her toes and kisses him. _And you love it._

 _I do._

"Now what?" she asks.

"Let's go home."


	45. FuckingMaking Love

4/5/2

Kylo's never, ever been this hard with no one touching him.

Never.

Not at sixteen and the first time he mastered _not_ touching himself for the full week it took for his body and Force to take care of himself. Not at thirty when he woke up from the dream, or not dream, the first time he and Rey had sex, in the pool, and his body was burning with the feel of her skin on his, her maomao clenching on him, and then awoke, alone, and so hard he could have used it as a training saber.

Never.

It's after 23:00, and the party on the F-Deck is _rolling_ along. And the idea, the simple, basic idea was to buy their goodies, leave the shop, find some vaguely out of the way place, and then port on out of there, then home for lots and lots and lots of sex.

(It will be later, the next day or so, when Kylo will get enough blood back into his brain to realize he could have just paid for the damn things, and then used his do-not-look spell, and then ported home, but… Well, the only blood in his brain was the blood necessary to keep him standing upright and breathing. Everything else was in, or on its way to, his shaft.)

The line was torture. Standing there, knowing what was in the basket, knowing what they'd be doing with it, surrounded with all of those people, also buying goodies, standing in the queue with similar levels of eager anticipation, and models, wearing… not a whole lot at all, and then they finally got out and…

It's just… So _many people._ All of them at least a little turned on, and… Many of them are a _lot_ turned on.

He can feel his pulse in his shaft, in his stones, in his eyeballs. Every cell of his body feels full, swollen, primed… _ready._

Rey's got the bag in her hand, and he's half afraid that if he takes her hand in his, just the touch of her skin against his will take him over the edge. He's half relishing the idea of it.

 _Can you?_ Rey thinks to him, focusing on how she's feeling, how each step drags the lips of her maomao against each other, wet, slick, open and pouting for him. _Begging for his touch._ On how little it would take to pull her over.

His eyes shut and he trips a little over his feet at that. The feeling of it, and her, and her needing him… _If I ever could… now'd be it._

He takes her hand in his, pulling her close to his body, against his side, not his front, as they hurry, looking for… Anything, a blind corner, a discrete bit of hallway, just somewhere to be out of the view of all of these eyes so they can port out of here.

But there are no discrete corners here. Or, there are. Lots of them. All over the place. The problem is, every time they turn into one, there's another couple, threesome, moresome already in it, playing happily.

This is empath heaven, or hell, depending on how eager you are to find a dark corner of your own. Everyone around them is currently also experiencing fairly intense emotional and physical sensations and it's… overwhelming.

Everything in his mind and body is just _suffused_ with sex. _Bloody fingernails are hard._

Rey sniggers at that.

If being on Lirium while Page was being born was full body steeping in life, with the erotic side of that poking through because sex is how people make life, this is full on, full out, full body _fucking._

She tugs him to a small nook between a very loud club and a bar. Hopefully no one else is in there.

 _Do you like it?_ Rey thinks to him, staring up at him, eyes sparkling, lips wet, as she's nibbling on the lower one. Her tooth slides over her lip, and he can feel the drag of it. He could pull her close, crush her to his body, lift their skirts… No one would care. There are at least three other couples doing something similar within the line of his sight.

She tugs him out of the corner, no luck in here.

 _Do you?_

Kylo's not sure. It's… a lot. He feels like his shaft is as long as his lightsaber, and just as hot, and he knows that it's not _just_ coming from him. He looks at Rey. At the bag she's carrying. Thinks about what's in the bag.

A lot of it is coming from him.

He thinks about opening that bag and trying out what's in it. _Most_ of it is coming from him.

 _Do you?_ He thinks back to her.

She rests her head against his shoulder as they get a bit further into the hallway. _I'm not as sensitive to it as you are. This is… nice. Intense. Just up to the edge. Not overwhelming._

He's almost starting to hope. There's another alley sort of thing, with some sort of storage shelf tucked into it, and behind it would be very out of view. Get to the far side, port, and home, and naked, and skin and slick and friction and spurting so hard his vision blacks out and… Just get out of view of everyone else.

Which is what the other people back there were apparently thinking, too. A couple is there, moving fast and jagged. Kylo can feel the sensation of chasing release, second hand. Feeling it through his body, but _not._

Sex that he can feel, but it's not happening to him. Sex he can enjoy, but won't put him over the edge.

Part of him sort of wants to watch. He's never actually seen anyone else, not in real life, have sex before. It doesn't much look like the videos they watched, or the people behind the windows. Those are shows, done to look good. Done to entice the watcher. This is real fucking, done to _feel_ good.

It looks good, too.

Part of him is fairly sure that if they wanted an audience, they wouldn't be behind a storage shelf. They'd be out on the main thoroughfare, not being discreet.

Part of him wants to just say, _Get the fuck out_ , wave his hand a little, and watch them run, then pull Rey to him, and kiss her hard, deep, tongue sliding, gliding, wet and eager, and just the feel of her body against his…

His shaft is _throbbing_ at the idea of it. It's _wet._ And every time he breathes the tip of his cock slips between his belly and the waistband of the kilt. It's good leather, soft and smooth, and wet… It's warm from his body, and feels like skin. And every breath is like a gentle caress.

Rey squeezes his hand. She's staring at the couple, too. He can feel she's also caught between curiosity and lust. She blinks, looks at him, a thought hitting her, and then back to them. _They aren't paying attention._

They aren't. If they've even noticed they're being watched, it hasn't caused even a second of pause in their stride.

And then they're in their room, on the _Supremacy._

She's in his arms, holding him close and tight, and kissing and it's _amazing._

Kylo pulls back a minute into it, breathing hard, skin flushed. He's… just so fucking _close._ And this… He's got good control, better than good, but… At this point, the only way he's not going to get off five strokes into this is if he hurts himself, and she's not going to like that.

"I'm going to spurt in less than a minute." His hips are rolling against hers, and he tries to make them stop, but they don't want to. "That's just… non-negotiable."

She holds up the bag. "Do you want to leave off _playing_ for another night?"

"FUCK NO!" He pulls her flush, kissing her hard, grinding against her belly, then spins her around, quickly mentally checks if this is okay, and waits for her to nod, before pushing her belly to their bed, and yanks her skirt up.

She's not wearing underwear. He's sure she had it on before they left. He remembers seeing her take it off when they were getting undressed by Unthar and Amilie. She does not have it on now. Now, he's got a perfect, uninterrupted view of her ass and delta, wet, ripe, swollen and delicious.

That mental image of holding the kilt up with his teeth comes to life, but it doesn't work as well as he hoped. Only one half of the kilt it up, the other is down by his knees. He gives it a hard yank, pulling it off, and shoves his shorts past his knees as he's fisting himself, stepping closer, looking.

"So good…" he says, teeth gritted and voice gritty. He bends a bit, trailing the head of his shaft against her maomao. So, so wet and slick and hot and _perfect._

He gives it another beat, waiting to feel her press up toward him, and the second she does he sinks all the way in, fast, deep, hissing because she feels so good.

"Fuck, Rey!" He says it through a still clenched jaw. He's moving fast, chasing his release, panting as he watches his body sliding in and out of hers. He can already feel the tension building, and his shaft getting fuller and harder. "So close." One thrust, and another, and one more… "Gonna spurt in you, fill you up, and then catch my breath, pull out, and lick" his voice stumbles, staggers on that syllable, as his body leaps off the edge of climax, pulsing into her.

Time stops, his sight goes dark, and there's just the _feel_ of it. Pulse after pulse after pulse of deep, wet, scorching pleasure.

He's leaning on his hands over her and panting softly when his brain comes back to his body. His skin is tingling all over, and his joints feel glued into place. "When I stop buzzing, I'm going to fuck you with my fingers and tongue and every toy we just bought, and by the time you've had a few spurts, I'll probably be ready for another go." Then he kisses the nape of her neck, and takes a moment to rest, breathing the scent of her in.

He feels Rey twitching slightly on him. He knows six thrusts didn't do it for her, but the Force of his climax probably did. "I took you over, too?"

"I didn't need a lot of extra help. A minute and fifteen seconds would have done it for me."

He smiles at that, face between her shoulder blades. "Shopping is fun."

He feels her smiling back at him, would see if if he opened his eyes and moved a bit. "I enjoyed that."

He makes a content little purr sound. "You still want to play more?"

"I know you do," she replies.

He's mouthing gently at her shoulder. "I know I do, too. Do you?"

She cranes her neck around a little, trying to look at him, but that really doesn't work in this position. "You suddenly getting sleepy and looking to back out of your promises?"

He grinds his pelvis against her butt. "No, I'm trying to get you to say, out loud, that you want me to fuck you in a bunch of creative and inventive ways and make you… come… as many times as you can take. Because I like hearing you ask."

"Kylo?"

"Rey."

She wiggles a bit. "I'm really not done, yet, and I want you to make me come in as many ways as you can think of."

He grins and growls a soft, content hum of sexual satisfaction against her neck.

* * *

He's still behind her, leaning up a bit, not exactly pulling back yet.

Rey can feel him shift, but she's not entirely sure what he's doing right now. "Kylo?"

"I don't spend nearly enough time just looking at you."

And she can feel it now, the flush of his eyes on her body. He's still a little hard, enough to stay in her, and he's staring.

His fingers slip over her buttocks, between them, hesitating for a moment, because he hasn't touched _there_ yet. He's not sure why, but he hasn't. Probably because he hasn't been invited to.

"Do I need to?" She wiggles her hips at him, and his shaft slips out. He watches the line of his spurt slip out of her, and feels stupidly proud of that. He gently trails his fingers over her wet skin, feeling how slippery she is right now. Rey sighs a bit at that gentle touch, and cants her hips, asking for more.

More. He's good with more. He's keeping his touch light. Right now, neither of them are burning too hot. So _more_ is soft, and slick, and light. His fingertips grazing her lips. His eyes following the line of his fingers.

Eventually, his brain gets back to what she just said to him. "Probably not, but I do like it. Makes me feel good inside when you tell me what you want or like." He kisses the small of her back, and each butt cheek, and lets his hand drift upward, still slick with their combined spurt, and slips it gently, slowly over her. "Good?"

She wriggles a bit. "I like this."

"This?" he increases the pressure just a bit, just circling around.

"Feels… different..."

"Good different?" He could know. Just focus a little more, but he's very much finding that her words light him up in an entirely different way from just knowing.

"Good, but… maybe not as good as some of the other stuff."

"It looks really good." Her butt does. It really does. Soft and round and high and wiggly when she bounces on him, and right now damp and still flushed from sex and wet with arousal. He just has to touch it. To lick.

She looks quizzically over her shoulder at him. "It's my butt."

"I _really_ like your butt." He gives it another little squeeze. "It's an excellent butt." He lays another little kiss on the right cheek, and then a soft nibble. "My favorite butt, ever." He steps a little further back, enjoys the view a moment longer, and gives her a little pat on the tush. "On the bed with you, woman."

"Your woman."

He grins at her. "Damn right. Get that dress off."

"You getting bossy?" she says with a grin.

"You minding?" Though he's asking mostly just to play. It's clear she doesn't.

"Not right now."

He wiggles a finger at her, and the dress starts to lift by itself. Rey grabs the hem and tosses it off. "There."

"Good girl."

She's naked save for her breast band. He steps closer to take it off, and then back again.

"Beautiful." He's standing next to the bed, staring at her. Then he notices he's still got his shirt, vest, shorts, and boots on, and quickly pulls everything off. Once he's done, he goes back to watching Rey. "I really don't spend enough time looking at you."

"You look at me every day."

"Lay back, get comfy." As she starts to scoot back to lay on the pillows, he says. "I don't spend enough time looking at your maomao. Don't spend enough time petting it, and kissing it, and licking it, and I've spent a criminally short time with your ass, and need to be slapped, hard, upside the back of the head for the lack of attention I've given your breasts."

Once she's laying on her back, he goes looking for the bag from the shop. He makes a show of picking it up and pulling everything out of it, laying them all on the side of the bed. He's standing next to them, trailing his fingers over all of them, when he grabs the flavored lube pack.

"Sixteen flavors… Probably more than for one night…" He reads down the list. "What do you think a banana is?"

"I know this one. It's a sweet fruit. They're green or yellow, and…" she giggles. "Kind of shaft shaped. Rose was joking about eating one once, and not knowing what she was doing, and all the boys around her just _staring._ "

Kylo does smirk at that. "You mean like what you did with the popsicle?"

"I was doing that on purpose. I think she didn't know what she was doing. Apparently, she was like fourteen or fifteen."

"The boys that old, too?"

She nods.

"Yeah, that'd do it. Granted fourteen-fifteen, a firm breeze would do it, so…" He picks up another pack. "Drathonmir?"

"No idea."

He pops out the banana and drathonmir. "Let's find out."

"You're going to mix them together?"

"Nope." He's smiling at her. "Not at all. You comfy? Not too hot or cold?"

"I'm good."

"Excellent."

He traces his fingers lightly over her breasts. The just pads of his fingers, and just barely touching. More stroking the silk fine hairs on her skin than the skin itself. Goosebumps, and her nipples, rise up to meet him, and seek more pressure.

"So pretty," his eyes are dark and intense on her skin. He hovers his hand right above her skin, letting the heat build, letting her nipple and breath press up into his touch. "So eager." He looks up from her breast to her eyes, and grins at her.

He kisses her nipple, just a warm little, hello peck. "I'm going to wear out the word beautiful, tonight. You mind?"

She smiles at that. "Yes, completely. You know lots of words, use them," but it's clear from the smile she's joking.

He takes her up on the challenge, getting comfortable on her left side, laying on his side next to her, and cupping her breast. He lays a kiss on the bottom slope. "Let's see. Beautiful." Another kiss, this one wetter, more suction. "Delicious." He licks across to her nipple, pulling it between his teeth.

"Small," Rey says.

He grins back up at her. "Yep." He mouths over her breast. Opens his lips wide, and sucks most of it into his mouth in one go, he licks over her nipple again and again, keeping the suction up, remembering that little tongue flicking away in the pearl pleaser. She's wriggling against him when he pulls back. "Perfect mouthful!"

She snorts a little at that. "You like big ones." It's clear they're both thinking of Amilie.

That gets a smile from him, too. "I can honestly say that at this point in my life I've never seen or heard of a breast I didn't like." He kisses hers again, and nuzzles between them. "But I love these." He kisses her breastbone, and wraps her in his adoration. "And I live for the person wearing them, so… It's not a contest." He rolls and scoots a bit, so he's laying between her legs, most of his weight on his belly and elbows. He rests his hands on the sides of her breasts, pushing them up and together a bit, so he can nuzzle his face between them and kiss both of them. Then he looks back up at her, eyes hot, mind on her. "Mine. Yours, but mine."

She threads her fingers through his hair. "Mine, but yours."

He scoots up a bit more, and kisses her lips. "Always. Yours always."

She strokes his face, fingers slipping along the mark she carved into him. "Mine, always."

He smiles at that, at the possession, at belonging, and then resettles himself to her right side, grabbing one of the lube packs.

He cracks open the banana blister pack and is immediately hit with a tacky, sweet… Wrong. It's just _wrong._ Nothing on Rey is supposed to smell or more importantly _taste_ like that. He immediately tosses it toward the waste basket. (Tomorrow morning, when he will manage to slip on the drips of lube that didn't get into the waste basket, he'll find out that it is indeed very slick, and doesn't dry out easily.)

"Don't like it?" Rey asks, watching him toss it over his shoulder.

He shakes his head. "Nope." He lowers his face to her throat, inhaling deeply, and then kisses his way to the flat of her chest. "You're supposed to smell like you, or maybe you and perfume, not… Whatever that is. I don't want it on your skin or in my mouth." He kisses the top slope of her breast this time. "I was thinking that I'd try the lube on you, and lick it off, but…" He looks up and shakes his head. "Nope."

"Not even going to open the drathonmir?"

He shakes his head. "You can use it on me later if you're curious." He's back to her breast. Face resting against it. "Your skin is just the way it's supposed to be." He kisses again. "It smells like you, and a little like the oil Amilie rubbed on you, and…" He starts to work his body down hers, kissing the underside of her breast, and her ribs, belly, and below, licking the flat between her naval and her muff.

A little lower, back to her maomao. "And here. This shouldn't smell like fruit. It should smell like you. Your skin, your spurt." He kisses her, softly this time, just brushing his lips over her hair. Blowing gently, and inhaling deeply. "Or your spurt and mine."

A deeper kiss, shifting her leg to the side so he's got better access. "It does. Tastes like it, too." He beams up at her again, kissing her inner thigh as he does so. "Perfect. It's glorious. So wet and pink and slick, and you and me, and fucking, and…" Another kiss, deeper this time. His tongue gliding over her delta, up one lip, down the next, not stopping or lingering anywhere, this is just saying hello right now.

Just… _getting started._ He thinks at her.

"Enjoying it?" Rey says.

 _Yes._ He doesn't pull back or stop licking, though the slow easy pace he's going wouldn't be too hard to interrupt. _It's… easier to focus on doing this for you, and on how it makes me… my heart… feel, after I spurt._

"Too much wrapped in how it makes your shaft feel, before?"

 _Much too much._ His eyes meet hers over the swell of her mound and belly.

He lays a gentle kiss on her muff again, and Rey makes a little disappointed _get back at that_ sound. He kisses her pearl, soft and easy, flicks his tongue over it, and then one more little kiss. "I'll come back."

Rey giggles a little at that. "You damn well better."

He kisses her belly again, tongue caressing over the dip of her naval. "I will." Then he pauses resting his chin against her belly, looking up at her. His eyes are soft, flitting from the rise and fall of her diaphragm, to each breast, to the curve of her chin, and her smile, before finding her gaze again. "I love you so much."

Her smile is a soft, melting kiss. "I know."

He bounces up a bit, and gently bites the underside of her breast. He tugs it a bit, just a little. "You _know._ " He sounds appalled, mock appalled.

She flips him, and settles on his belly, pinning his wrists with her hands. Then she lightly, gently trails a nipple over his lips. "I _know._ "

He's kissing it, wrapping his lips around it for soft, gentle sucks.

"I love this, too."

"Good." His voice, low, rich vibrating across her skin and through her mind. "I want you to love it." Another kiss. "Love me."

She starts to shift a bit, so she can kiss his lips, but he uses his Force to keep her in place. "No. Stay there. I like you here."

"Above you."

"Feels good." He sucks her nipple into his mouth again, and again, and again. Rey moans at it, soft and deep. "Oh, you like that."

Rey shivers a bit above him. "I like all of this."

He strokes his tongue over her again, wet and slow, before a long, deep suck. _I know. But this is really good isn't it?_

"It is." She does shift just a bit, lowering herself, so he's got an easier reach.

He doesn't struggle with the hold she's got on his wrists, but on the next kiss, he tries to match the sensation with his Force. He knows it doesn't work just from his side of it. Apparently, sucking isn't something he's got a handle on, yet. "Here." He licks a wide strip over one breast, and his Force matches that path on the other side. "Better?"

"Better."

Both of them make little content sounds.

Rey continues to support herself over him, and Kylo licks, slow, lazy, like he's got all the time in the universe, and nothing, at all, more important than pleasing her.

Rey sighs, long and low. "It's good, Kylo." She rocks a little. Her maomao against his belly, getting just a bit more pressure to go with the tease of his tongue.

He purrs at the praise.

"I can feel it as you do it." She rubs up against his mouth a bit. "There, on the surface." Another long, wet, sucking kiss. Just a hint of tooth. A little scrape to shift things, a bit. "And deeper." She rocks against his belly. "Inside."

That gets something too deep to be a purr. Too satisfied. He reaches up a bit, more depth, more pressure, mouthing eagerly at her breast. _Better?_

"Better."

They're flipped again. He did it this time. He didn't break her hold on his wrists, though in this position it's a bit less comfortable. She lets go, and he shifts his palms to the bed, beside her head, and in an instant, she's holding his wrists again, grounding herself with the strength of his arms. Her legs wrap around his back, and he rocks himself this time, trailing his chest over her nipples.

She's grinding against him, wet on his low belly, and Kylo smiles at that. "Can I try something?"

"Have I ever said no?"

"Well, not about sex."

She pokes him gently, but that does what he needed, frees his hands. He sits up between her legs, kneeling, and then resettles himself cross-legged, and tugs her forward a bit so her hips are between his legs.

"Perfect." He grins at her. "Let's see what else we've got." He trails a finger over her maomao. "Feels slick to me. Don't need this," and the lube goes skittering off. "And…" That box is the cockstrap. "Not for use on you." He hovers that over to the table. There are the boxes of slicks. "Maybe. Definitely not yet." He sets them aside, thinking that depending on where all of his fingers end up, maybe one'll come in handy. The strap-on. His shaft almost twitches at that, but for the time being it's still out of the game. "Later." The pearl-pleaser. He grabs that box and holds it up. "Exactly what I was looking for." He grins at her again, smile wide and wicked, and what he hopes are some very, _very_ good ideas in his mind.

Rey turns the tables on him. She sits up a bit, and says, "There's one more box."

He blinks, and looks at where he laid out their goodies. She's right. The present she bought him. That's still in there. "You want me to open the present?"

"Oh yeah."

He pulls it to him. It's a smallish box, wrapped in sparkly paper. It takes him a moment to figure out that it's a present, thus a surprise, and that's why it's got the paper on it, and no visible tags or name. "Right." He takes the paper off.

Two boxes are inside. The first one. He smiles at. "Oh." It's a very soft smile. "So, you do want me to sparkle." But unlike the sparkly stuff the man in the store was wearing, this one is a black base with rainbow sparkles.

She sits fully up, and wraps her legs around his hips. "I intended to get the stuff the guy had on, but…" she points to the name. "Black opal." There's a picture on the back of a black gemstone shot through with vivid blues, greens, pinks, and purples, dark and sparkling. "I just… sort of had to get you that." He's holding the tube of it, and she's kissing him. "My opal." She takes a moment to consider that, now that she's said it out loud, and he does, too.

He sucks her bottom lip between his, and then says, "Say it again."

"My opal."

He smiles a bit.

She pets his skin, cuddling close to him, kissing his collarbone. "Dark, precious, rare, and sparkly."

Of all the things he's been, The Master, The Supreme Leader, the Master of the Knights of Ren, The Jedi Killer, he's thinking Rey's Opal is the one he's liking best.

"Your opal."

"I know we're going to be out and about a lot in the coming months, and… who knows what sort of play opportunities we'll have, but… On your wrist, or ankle, collar bone, a lock of hair, wear a little somewhere I can get a glimpse of it. Everyone else will see the Master, but I'll see my opal."

He pulls her so close to him. He utterly _adores_ the idea of that. He kisses along the line of her throat. "Just for you."

She threads her fingers through his hair, reveling in the softness, in his lips on her throat, and his body against hers, and above, and beyond, through and supporting all of it, his love and devotion. This time it's Rey making the soft, ultra-content purr.

He draws his face up and away from her collarbone, looking her in the eyes, and for a moment they just share that. She caresses his face, and his hands cradle her back. And, for as much as Kylo loves words, craves being told that he's good and pleasing and hers, this, here… This is bliss.

For a moment. Souls happy and content, bodies… glowing… hers is further along than his is, wanting, the slow ache of need starting to rise.

He gently lowers her back, the other half of the present forgotten for now.

He pulls the pearl pleaser to his fingers, and opens the box. Unlike the one in the store, this one needs a little setting up, but there are instructions, and it doesn't take him too long to figure them out.

He turns it on to the lowest setting, and trails it up Rey's body, circling each nipple, and then buzzing over her lips, before trailing it down her arm to her hand, closing her fingers around it.

She sits up a bit again, looking confused. "Kylo?"

"I want to watch you use it."

That doesn't hit her wrong. "And what are you going to do?"

"Help." He's grinning at her, smile wide and easy, eyes hot.

She nods at that. "Help?"

"Yep. Help." His hand cups her whole maomao. "There's a lot more than a pearl here, and that's pretty much only for it, so I'm going to _help._ Make sure nothing feels left out."

She laughs at that. "You're going to make me come in an array of interesting ways."

"Or at least help."

Both of them giggle at that for a bit. He looks up from her maomao to her eyes. "Please?"

"Oh, you know it."

"I do."

She brings the pleaser down, and starts to play with it. Experimenting. The first level buzz is almost softer than the feel of Kylo's eyes, intent and heavy on her play.

She slips it around. It does fit into her hand nicely. Comfortable. Obviously designed by someone who'd used something like this before. Barely touching with it, letting the purr of the pleaser tingle her hairs is more intense than letting it touch her skin.

Kylo's breathing faster, and licks his lips. "Looks so fucking good, Rey."

She nods a bit, eyes closed, and hits the button, increasing the buzz. She hasn't focused down yet, still tracing it over her whole mound, looking for what feels best. She's got a good idea for what it's designed to do, but she still wants to play with it.

"You like it?"

"It's… different." That's probably the best way to describe it. It's… mechanical. Not necessarily in a bad way, but nothing human is going to buzz like that. She turns it up a bit more, and again, letting it rest on her mound, feeling the rumble through her. "What did you think helping was going to look like?"

"Very, very good." He grins.

"Smartass. You know what I was asking."

"I do."

She's started tracing it over her mound again, upping the vibrations again. It feels like her body's lighting up, all focus drawing to her delta. Kylo's momentarily distracted from her question by watching her play, then he remembers and jerks into action.

"This. I was thinking helping might look like this." He's tracing his index and middle fingers along her lips, getting them wet. Then he lifts them to his mouth to suck on them, wetter yet. His hand drops again, and he circles her maomao. "I was thinking," his fingers rest at her entrance, "that this was looking so lonely, and empty. That it was begging me for attention. Pouting at me." He slips his fingers in. "There. Not lonely."

Rey arches her back, reveling in the solid stretch, the still, full counterpoint to the buzz. "That's good," it just breathes out of her. She shifts the pleaser, going though the settings until it's lower again, and then slips it over her pearl. A long, sharp, "Ahhhh…" pours out of her.

"Better?"

"So much." She's quivering at it. Once she's got it doing what it was built to do, it's _very_ good.

Kylo starts to thrust his fingers, all the way in, all the way out, long and slow, wet, and slippery. Her hips arch to meet him. He kisses her knee, watching her body take his fingers, watching the flush start to spread across her skin, as her nipples tighten.

"Force, I love this," he says, mouthing at her knee. His shaft is starting to fill again, trying to rise up, replace is fingers.

Rey moans, and wriggles, turning the vibrations up.

"Look at you baby, all spread out and wet. You look so fucking good like this." He curls his fingers as he withdraws them this time, and she shudders. That spot inside her that she loves him to play with. He pulses his fingers over it, again and again. Rey's eyes close and her face grows tight. He knows that intense expression, adores it. "Yeah, just like that, love. Go get your spurt. Come all over my hand and the pleaser."

"Kylo!" She's wriggling a little, getting closer, not quite sure what to do with the pleaser. He nudges the control and ups the intensity.

Rey jolts, moans, and shudders.

"Oh, yeah," he thrusts deep with his fingers and pulls them out slow, curling up again. "You're so fucking delicious like this." His shaft is definitely raising to this. He scoots a little closer, and it's nudging against her, a bit below his fingers, and there's a mental image that makes his mouth dry, fuck her with fingers, and shaft, and toy all at once.

Another soft, open sound falls out of Rey's mouth.

"So beautiful."

"Keep talking."

"Really," his voice is amused. "You like this? Like hearing how soft, and wet, and _fucking glorious_ your body is?"

She hisses, body going tense, motions getting faster and choppy.

"How tight. How _good._ How pretty you are when you come. How I want to eat you and fuck you and live in your skin and love and," he fucks his fingers into her faster, curling a bit harder, as she grinds her hips against his hand the toy. "everything about you makes me so, so, so fucking happy all over."

He's not sure if she can even hear his voice over her moans, but he knows she can feel the intent of his words, so he doesn't stop.

"I can feel everything about you wrapped around me. It makes me so hard." He shifts his hips a bit, working the tip of his shaft further in, just resting below his fingers, snug between her cheeks, reveling in the slick of her skin. "You feel that? So hard, all for you. You make me _want._ Want hard. I want my cock and fingers and tongue in you. I want to make you come so hard you can't see. I want you to crave my touch, need me inside you."

Her back arches, as she keens, body twitching hard as she leaps over the edge.

"There gorgeous. Get that spurt. Come for me, love. Clench my fingers tight and make me wish it was my shaft. It's so hard watching this. When you stop twitching, I'm going to flip you over, lick you out, and then fuck you so hard you feel me for a week."

Rey collapses down, and Kylo pulls the toy away, and lets his fingers go soft and relaxed. He nuzzles her knee. "Force, you look so perfect like this. You always do, even when you don't, but…" He kisses her knee again, realizing that he may be starting to sound stupid. "I love you."

She doesn't open her eyes or raise her head from the bed sheets. "I know." She wriggles a little, but not really interested in moving yet. "You didn't open your other present."

He blinks. "Right," and gently pulls his fingers from her, quickly licking them off, and drying them on the quilt, before pulling the other box to hand. "Oh."

Rey smirks at that 'Oh', eyes still closed but very pleased with what she can feel of him looking at that box. "Yeah, I was pretty sure you didn't notice me grabbing them on my 'search for a basket.'"

His mouth is dry, and he's got to swallow hard, to answer. "I didn't."

"So, not that I want to table getting… licked out and fucked into next week… but, how about an addition to that plan?"

He's staring at the box of plugs in his hand. Because, of course, unlike the strap-on, he can try one of these _and_ do everything else he just promised her. With something like this, it's not an either or sort of situation.

His shaft pulses at the idea. Somehow, he manages to say, "Oh," again.

Rey strokes his thigh. "In about two minutes, I'll make good on that promise. You feel like scooting around so I can get a real cuddle for right now."

That jerks him out of the image/feel of what's in that box, and what's going to happen next, to the warm, relaxed, tired person in front of him.

"Right."

He scoots around to his side, pulling her into the curve of his body.

"You weren't kidding about hard, were you?" Rey asks, her bum cradling his cock.

He mouths along her shoulder while saying, "Not at all. It woke up with a rush about the time I got my fingers in you."

She nods, breathing deep and easy. "You want to try my present?"

"I _really_ do."

"Tell me how. What do you want me to do with you?"

There's a question that pulls the breath out of him in a long shudder. He's not even sure how to begin to put that into words. There are, of course, concrete actions, but… They're… ideas of how he thinks that feeling looks, but… They may not be that feeling. He spends a few more heartbeats trying to shape the sensation of it, but…

"Own me. Treat me like I'm yours."

Rey lifts the hand that's wrapped around her waist to her lips. "I always do."

"I know… I…"

She rolls over, and runs her fingers through his hair, staring into his eyes. "Mine. Always, completely, utterly, _mine._ "

His eyes slip shut and he inhales, sharp, at it. "Yes."

"My opal. My precious one." Her touch is soft, gentle, stroking his hair and the back of his head. Then she fists her hand in his hair and he groans with pleasure. "The fucking sexiest man I've ever seen. My man." She tugs his head back a little, and lays a kiss on his throat. Then she gives him a soft bite. "Mine!"

"Yes!" His head is back, and the expression on his face isn't pain, but that's because she knows how good he's feeling right now, and how intense that it.

"Get up, Opal, and go to the refresher, clean up a bit, okay? I'm going to take a moment and actually read the directions."

Kylo practically _leaps_ out of the bed to comply.

He's moving fast, eager, thinking very much about how he thinks being owned works, and he's not projecting, but it'd take only the barest hint of effort for Rey to know what he's thinking as he takes care of cleaning up.

He feels her lingering a bit in the back of his mind, and knows she did check in, get a better feel for the shape of what he's looking for.

When he gets out, he sees the plugs are open, and what he assumes is the smallest of the bunch, is lying on the bed next to the box of small slicks, and one of the non-flavored lube packs.

She pats the bed in front of her. "You go here, butt toward me, facing me."

He settles himself on his back, and grabs a pillow for under his head so he can see her easily. "Good?"

"Oh yeah. I want to watch your face and body as we do this."

He grins at that. "Yes."

She strokes her fingers up his shaft, which flagged a bit while he was getting washed up, but is rapidly perking up again. "Hello, you."

"You're talking to my shaft."

She gives him a little squeeze and looks him in the eyes. "No, I'm talking to _my shaft._ " She bends a bit and kisses the tip, and then meets his eyes with her lips still touching him. "Mine. All of you is _mine._ And I'm going to make him very, very happy shortly, so…"

Kylo relaxes back against the bed and quivers in pleasure.

"I want you to tell me how it feels. How I make you feel."

"Good. Content. Warm. Cherished."

Rey licks the length of his shaft.

"Fuck."

"I make you feel like _fuck?_ "

"Yes."

She gently whacks the inside of his thigh. "Smartass."

"You like it."

She licks him again. "I do."

"I like that. Your tongue on me."

She does it again. A long slow lick from the base to the tip. He's hard, but not so hard the cap's pulled back, yet, so she gently lips at the little whorl of skin around the tip. He shudders at that, groaning, and she feels the wet of his slick brush her lips.

"More. You make me want more."

She takes him in hand, holding the base of his shaft, pulling the skin up a bit, because he's rapidly swelling to the point where the cap will be entirely retracted. But for now, she holds him, keeping the tip enclosed, and licks gently all around the edge of his cap.

Kylo's eyes shut, and his mouth drops open. "Ungh!"

Her tongue worms in, caressing the head of his shaft, and he squirms, thrusting his hips at her.

"So good."

She grins up at him, and lets go of the base of his shaft, and lets the cap pull back. She starts to lick again, all over the tip of him, her wet, pink flesh against his.

He's whimpering. "Too fast."

"Too fast?" She knows her strokes are a good pace; he's really enjoying it. "Oh. Too fast." He's ramping up toward climax too fast.

He nods. "It's good, I love it, but I want to go slower."

"Slower," she shifts a bit, scooting back on the bed, lying on her belly between his legs, and then lays her tongue on one of his stones.

"Ungh!" He doesn't thrash, but only because thrashing might mean her mouth leaves his testicle. "Oh…" His breath is deep, and a little fast. "Perfect. So good."

She mentally grins at him, as she gently sucks on it. This, she can do this all night, wind him up like a top, but as long as she's not stroking his shaft, he won't go over on this. Not without help.

Rey lavishes wet, warm attention on him for a few more moments, and Kylo floats on it, blissed-out and wriggling, a collection of half groans and murmured, "So goods, yes, like that," coming out of him. It's clear he's trying to do what she's asked of him, tell her how it feels, but most of his brain isn't really working anymore.

That's okay.

"Love this, you feeling so good you can't think."

He whimpers at the loss of her mouth from his stones.

"Oh, we'll get to better soon." She holds up the plug. At the widest part it's about two of her fingers. "Look good."

"Oh yeah!" His eyes are gleaming as he looks at it.

"Good. We're going to take our time, and go nice and slow. I treat my precious things _carefully._ "

He shudders all over at that. No one else with a claim on him ever did. "Please."

"Oh, you know it, Opal. You know it."

She opens the smaller slicks, and puts one on her index finger. It's a bit big, but being able to just shuck it off when they're done, and go to sleep, rather than get up and wash, sounds appealing. Then she grabs one of the lube packs. "This stuff is supposed to be specifically for anal activities. Not sure why—" She squeezes a dollop of it on her finger. "Oh. It's really thick and…" She holds up her finger and slicks it over, and it's not his image of her stroking lube onto the strap-on, but it's close enough, and he just _groans_ at it. "Stays put." She kisses the tip of his shaft again, and smiles at him. "So, fucking gorgeous."

She takes the lube, and puts a little more on her finger to rub onto him.

That gets another long groan. It's cool and slick, and just the anticipation that goes with it has him whimpering for her.

"I love you like this, laid out and begging for me." She rubs the lube in a little deeper. Right now, she's mostly just making sure everything is slick. Then she starts a soft, easy circle, round and round as her other hand just gently trails from his stones to his shaft and back again.

He's not making any noise, but his head is back, eyes closed, and face tense. He's biting his lip.

"Not too hard, love. I don't like what's mine damaged."

He swallows, nods, and releases his lower lip. Pink, a little swollen, but there's no bruise.

"Good. That's good. You can bite, but no harder than that."

He nods at that, too. And Rey goes back to her slow, easy circles. "Does it feel good?"

He whimpers.

"I'll call that a yes."

He nods, one sharp jerk of his head followed by a sharp inhale as she licks the head of his shaft and starts to ease her finger into him.

"We're just going to go slow and easy. Just a little bit at a time." And that's what she's doing, slowly, easily slipping just a little of her finger in and then out and in again a hair deeper and then out again and…

He's panting and quivering at the feel of it, mouth open, breath harsh, legs splayed and toes clenched at the feel of it. "More!" It bursts out of him, single staccato syllable.

Rey pulls her lips off his shaft to say, "More?" with a grin. Then with steady firm pressure she slips her finger in to the second knuckle, and wiggles it just a hair.

She's not quite deep enough to get his prostate, close enough he can _almost_ feel it, and his hips roll toward her, trying for deeper.

"More?"

"Please!" a harsh, ragged breath. "Please!"

Another grin and her finger slipping in, still slow, still gentle steady pressure. He's melting into the bed under her, decades of practice in fine muscle control taking over, and letting him relax enough to let her in.

This time when she wiggles it, he groans, loud, with a long, shivered " _FUCK"_ following it.

She holds her hand still, and licks up his shaft again. "Gorgeous, love. So _wet._ You're dripping for me." She gives him another little wiggle and sees another tiny drop of his pre-spurt ease from the tip. "Shall I lick it off?"

"UGHRH!"

Rey decides that's a very pleased groan and does it.

She can feel the wave of pleasure at that cresting off of him. The deep, thrum of it through his skin and shaft and stones. She tunes herself in further, feels her finger, and begins a series of slow, shallow thrusts, each one ending with a little rub of his prostate.

She's fairly sure, that like with his stones, she can't put him over with this, not unless she's touching his shaft, so she sits back up, and watches.

Kylo spread out, head back, eyes closed, mouth half-open, face tight, neck tight, abs tight, hands clenched into the bedspread, skin flushed, a fine sheen of sweat starting on his skin. His hips are quivering, balanced between wanting to thrust hard and fast, try to speed her up, and staying here, in this sensation.

She kisses his knee this time, and stills her finger. "Not yet. You made some promises, Opal, and I mean to collect them."

That gets an eager whimper. Followed by a gruff, "If you want me to be useful for more than this, moving sooner than later is a good idea."

She smiles at that, gives his shaft a quick peck, and picks up the plug. "This?"

His eyes are bright and eager. "Yes!"

She squirts the rest of the lube from that pack onto it, and slips her finger out, tossing the slick into the trash bin, and starts with the toy. She knows he can handle her finger, so going slow with that was as much about winding him up than making sure it didn't twinge.

But this is new, and it's bigger, and the shape is different.

The tip is about the same size as the tip of her index finger, but the widest part is probably about twice the size of her finger. It's not big, not as big as one of his fingers, but it's bigger than anything he's ever tried before.

"We're going to go slow on this."

He nods, but it's clear slow isn't exactly how he wants to play this.

It's also clear exactly when she hits the point where there's a _stretch._ His breathing picks up, and she sees him pull it back, focus down. Decades, literally, of intensive physical control training are coming into play right now. He's settling back and down, which isn't his strong suit, but that doesn't mean he can't do it if he really tries, and it's easier to try when you _want_ what trying gets you.

"Good, love, so good. Relax and let me take care of you."

His eyes are mostly closed and right now he's just breathing slowly. In and out and over and again. His shaft is starting to flag a bit, too. The stretch, and yes, burn is pulling him back from the edge.

Rey tries something, easing the plug back, letting it slip back to barely inside of him, and he shivers a bit.

"Kylo?"

He blinks, a little surprised. "The… out sensation is really nice."

That's not really much of how they've played with this in the past. Mostly it's about getting in, to his prostate, and the in and out bit is more about how it gets played with. It's not anything either of them have done for it's own sake.

Rey slowly slips the plug in again, stopping just a bit past comfortable. Enough so he's breathing himself calm again.

And again, she lets his body just push it out.

He groans at it. "Really nice."

She's pressing back in. "But, you want this part, too?"

"Force! Yes. Out's better, all the way in is better, this gets me to better." He's breathing shallowly again, because once more he's at just a little past comfortable.

He's exhaling in a relaxing pattern, in once, out three times, in once, and breaks it to say, "I know it can't actually be half a klick long, but how close to done is this?"

She releases her pressure on it, and again his body pushes it out, and he whimpers in the pleasure of release.

Another long, slow, gentle pressure. "About two thirds of the way in, another centimeter to the widest point."

He nods, closes his eyes, and sinks into the feel of it.

Mostly it's the sensation of slick and pressure. Then the feel of burn and stretch. Each time the tip or… however much is in the range his body is comfortable with… is just a slide, and then there's the bit that's got him breathing to relax.

It's not the kind of pain he can ride. He can't or at least won't, feed his rage with it, so it's just… there… something uncomfortable to get to the other side of.

The part where she lets go of the plug and it slides back out. That's absolute fucking bliss. His body _adores_ the feel of that. And the part where the stretch isn't too bad, that's… pretty nice. It's getting to something he's enjoying.

He doesn't know how long Rey keeps doing it, in, slow and easy until his body says stop, then stopping, holding, and then out and the full body shudder that goes with the feel of that, then in again, slow, easy, each time, each depth better, easier, more… something he _wants._

His shaft is starting to quiver. He can see it in his mind, Rey with the strap on, fucking him like this, slow and shallow, a centimeter at a time, getting him ready, making sure he feels _good._

She's stroking the inside of his thigh. "You know it, Opal. Going to fuck you out of your mind when you're ready for it, but not a minute before."

He nods or whimpers or something. He's not sure. Again, there's the out sensation, and he's riding that, wondering if this could bring him over. He was fairly sure that without help from Rey's spurt, he couldn't get over without touching his shaft, but… That might not be true.

"Force, it's tight."

"I know, love, you're all stretched around it, pink and flushed, shiny and slick. Your body wants it."

"Yes!"

She gives it just a little tap and then… Kylo's not sure what happened. It was there, and then it… wasn't. He didn't feel the slipping out sensation, so he's got no idea what just happened. He sits up and "OH!" It shoots through him. He had to clench his stomach muscles, and his pelvis a bit to sit up and that must have shifted it and suddenly there's this bright pressure against his prostate and… "Ughhnngh!"

Rey's grinning at him. "Good?"

He whimpers and flops back on the pillow, but as soon as he's on his back, he can't feel it. Lying like this, completely relaxed, it's basically vanished.

It takes what he considers a stupidly long time for him to realize that just past the widest point, the plug narrowed down significantly, down to about the width of Rey's finger, and compared to the wide point, that's nothing, so… His body appears to be ignoring it.

He's not sure about that, but… Then Rey taps it again, and that's another sensation, and… "It's good. Weird. If I just lay here, I can't really feel it."

"But if you sit up you do?"

He tries again, and again as soon as he tenses the muscles in his core and begins to pull up, it shifts and… "Oh yeah."

Rey smiles at him, wide and brilliant. Then she moves a little, going from between his legs, to straddling them. A few more moves, and she's over his hips, her maomao just over his shaft. She angles it correctly, but doesn't slip down. "Thrust up, see how it feels."

He does it slowly, because he doesn't want to shoot off on one stroke. It's, "Exquisite." It's kind of like when she sucks him and fingers him at the same time, but… he loves oral, loves her mouth, but maomao is _better._ It just _is._ And this… All of his favorite spots are getting their favorite sort of attention. "Fucking amazing," or at least he attempted to say that, but she slipped down to meet his thrust and 'amazing' slurred off into a deeply satisfied moan.

That moan turns into a tortured whimper when Rey pulls off of him. "You've got promises to keep, Opal," and then she's scurrying up his body, settling her maomao right over his face.

He's staring at it, pink and open and wet and… His mouth waters. "Yes." This time it's a half-breath, a promise and prayer. He grins up at her, and pulls her a little closer, getting a good angle, wrapping his hands around her knees, and kisses her fervently.

She tastes _right._ Home and love and fucking and everything in his universe that matters, that's _good._ And maybe it's not anything he'd order a cocktail of at a restaurant, but it's hardwired into his ideal of _sex_. Of Rey. Of them as them, her light and his dark and their bodies together, making each other spark with pleasure and joy.

And it's _fucking perfect._ Her wet and his saliva smearing over his face, and her keening in pleasure at what he's doing to her, and his body under hers, supporting her, making her _sing._ And he's not exactly verbalizing any of that, because his mouth is happily, ecstatically busy, but he's definitely thinking it, and Rey's definitely enjoying it.

She's breathing fast, panting, ramping up fast, which is fine with him because he wants her to spurt on his tongue, and then again on his shaft, and… "Move your hips, Opal, feel it."

He can't disobey, and… He times his thrusts to what his tongue is doing, and it's good that she's close to the edge because this… Her body on his, the smell of it, the view, her maomao, her belly, the underside of her breasts, and her head back as she screams her pleasure. If he did that for more than a few dozen strokes he'd be over the edge, intentionally or not.

She slows, crumples, slips back a little, her face against his forehead, her bum on his chest. He wraps his arms around her, amazed and adoring how easily she fits into his arms.

There's a moment of both of them breathing, and then she's kissing him, with intent.

"I love how fast you get ready again," he says.

She flips them. "Especially when you're dying to 'fuck me so hard I'll feel it for a week,'"

He smiles down at her. "Especially, then."

She kisses him, and wiggles her hips. "Well… get to it."

"Oh…" He kisses her again. "I will. Just…" he shifts a bit so his tip is just stroking between her lips. "Savoring for a moment. This one's probably going to be fast, too."

She runs her hands through his hair, and tugs him to face her. "Fast, slow, do it how you like. Enjoy it, Kylo." She kisses him. "You've taken exceptional care of me, and I'm happy all over. Now, use my body to please yours."

That kills him. He's leaking just from the words. "Rey, I love you so much."

"I know. Now fuck me so much, too."

And he does.

He doesn't go so fast this time. Not slow either, just deep and steady to start with, getting a sense for what sort of move feels best.

Up. Up feels best, on his hands, arms extended, a bit of bend in his low back. Full extension of his lower body for each thrust.

Deep feels best, all the way in and all the way out, and his ass flexing with each thrust. There's this almost magic spark, where he's as fully in her as he can go, and she's got her legs around his hips, her right foot between his ass cheeks, and if she pushes just a bit with her foot she can just nudge the plug, which is already in a really good place because of the flex of his hips and its just…

"FUCK!" Not articulate at all, but extremely deeply felt.

Faster is good. A sharp, staccato thrust. In fast, with a snap of his hips, making the plug pulse inside him, making his body pulse, making him feel halfway over the edge, even as he's still moving, still pushing, deeper, seeking more sensation, more pleasure, more _her._ Eyes closed, mind open, letting the physical sensation of it roll through him.

Slow is good, too. Out slow, release the pressure slow, feel the cling and glide of her body slipping over his, take the time to watch her eyes, and the mouth, and the rise and fall of her breasts with each breath.

Again, fast, and the dizzying rush of sensation, of the inside-out-fucking from within sensation of the plug, and the sweet slap of his skin on hers. The sweeter yet choked moan of his name from her lips. The sweetest feel of her body clenching on his.

Out, pull back, release, ride the pause, the wanting and waiting for the next breath of rush.

Harder is good. Fast and hard and deep. That almost ache of the way his hips flex, the almost pulse of his spurt, the almost tingle of climax coming.

But not yet. Another pause, another slow, another quiet breath.

He knows the next one is going to take him over, knows it before it starts, knows it in his heart and stones and his hips snap, deep and hard, and his mind goes fuzzy and his body sings it's pleasure from one cell to the next as a deep, content groan falls from his lips and his spurt pulses from his shaft and Rey takes them, takes his pleasure and his love and his body and cherishes it, and reflects it back at him, filling him up, inside and out with her light and his.

And it's _good._

* * *

In the dim of the post-sex, low lights, glow; in the warmth of her body snugged on his; between sleepy breaths and the slow shifting of bodies relaxing toward sleep, he remembers grammar lessons, and how if someone asked you how you were, you had to answer with "I'm doing well," or some variation upon that theme, because good meant holy, and you weren't doing _holy._ Not just because you were having a nice afternoon.

But this, here, in the moments where they're cooling down and haven't yet pulled the blankets up.

This is _good._


	46. Darklings Unite

4/5/2

They're walking toward the kitchen, covered head to toe in warm layers to keep the wind at bay when Kylo catches a sense of trepidation from Rey.

"Are…" The wind is too high, it pulls his voice away. _Are you nervous?_

She shrugs a bit.

 _Why?_

That gets an eye roll. (Or what he can feel is an eye roll, between the scarf, hat, and cloak, he's got no way of actually seeing Rey's eyes.) _I've never done this with someone who actually knows how to do it right, watching._

He stops walking, stunned. _You think I know how to do this 'right?'_

 _Don't you, Mr. Formally Trained Jedi Master?_

He laughs for a moment, and then thinks, _Do you hear that? The soft rustling sound? That's Luke's spirit sobbing into the void at the idea that I_ know _how to do this. M'Gll knew how to do this. Kammun knew how to do it. I knew how to crash head first into walls of not doing it right until I got a concussion, and then kept doing it until I beat whatever it was into submission, or Luke decided I didn't actually have to Master it._

That pulls Rey up short. _So… How did you actually get the title?_

 _By being so good at the things I was good at that he couldn't afford to not let me teach them. It was a school, and… three Masters are better than one if you're trying to convince some parent to send their kid there, right?_ He's mentally quiet for a moment. _And I think my mom may have pushed him into it, too._

Rey knows Kylo's Force skills in and out. She literally pulled them out of his head. She doesn't know how they were categorized though. _So, what do you actually have Mastery of?_

He looks annoyed. _Fighting, physical training, empathy, telepathy, and calligraphy. M'Gll had, genuinely, seventeen or so levels of mastery, and I had twelve, but only after you broke fighting down to five specialties and physical training down to another four. According to Luke I had the making of a fine Jedi Knight, and that mastery of physical disciplines and different saber modes were very important, but I think he was just putting the best shine he could on the fact that I was worth shit at most of the light stuff._

 _Stop that._

He looks at her curiously.

 _Down talking your own skills. You're allowed to be bad at things. And if someone had tried to let you learn how to do things your own way, I bet you'd have had more luck with 'light' skills._

He shrugs at that. He's not sure what else he'd say to it, either, nor does it matter. They're at the kitchen, and it's time for him to see what the Maji actually learn from Mistress Rey.

* * *

They get into the kitchen and everyone goes silent. Not for Rey. Her coming in for lessons and lunch duty is just another day for them. Kylo though, he's still something of a surprise. They all know he's here, and they see him around with Rey, and every week or so he does another lesson in lightsaber forms (which generally turns into the lot of them wrestling around and climbing on him… He still hasn't quite mastered, or chosen to master, Finn's get the little boogers to snap to attention and obey skills.) but it's not like he attends lessons.

But, as he pulls off his cowl and cloak, and takes Rey's coat and jacket and scarf, and hangs them up with everyone else's, that appears to be exactly what's going to happen.

"Something special today?" Jacen asks. Kylo does a quick double take as he looks at the kid. Apparently, he cut his hair, and might have located a trimmer because his beard is shaped now. Maybe he's started to take Poe's 'how to be an attractive human' advice. As he steps a bit closer, he can smell the kid has also gotten better about laundry. Whatever reason he's doing it for, Kylo's appreciating it.

Rey shrugs. "Maybe. We'll see how the day unfolds."

Kylo can see the kids are all sitting around the different tables. They've got datapads and are working on something. M6, the teaching droid, nods to Rey. Apparently, they're in the part of the day where they're wrapping up the first slate of lessons, and then Rey's got Maji-stuff and lunch.

She heads over to the first of the counters, and hops up to sit on it, cross-legged, waiting for the kids to finish up. They do, wrapping things up, putting pads away, taking a few minutes to get up, stretch, wander around a bit, refill drinks or snacks, and then the push the tables and chairs out of the way to clear off the floor of the eating area in the kitchen.

Kylo joins in in helping out clearing stuff, and like the rest of them grabs a pillow for sitting on, and finds a place in the back. Jacen sits next to him, and smiles. _Slumming it with us today?_

 _Maybe. Perhaps I'm here to show you how it's done._

Jacen grins at him. "Perhaps. _Master._ "

The rest of the teens sort of converge in a loose pattern near Jacen, and thus Kylo. Rey gives them a few more minutes to settle in, and then opens the box she's got with her. Kylo had sort of noticed that she was doing something with the sewing stuff yesterday morning, but not enough to really pay attention. She lays out a collection of pincushions.

"Okay, those who can, fetch them for those who can't. And be careful, they've got pins in them."

He watches pin cushions rise from the counter, and all but one are hovering. That's when he realizes that one is his. So, he pulls it to himself. It's a small ball of fabric stuffed tight with more fabric scraps, and one pin stuck in it.

Everyone else has one, and for a moment he's wondering if they're mending clothing today, which some of them definitely need, but… Nope, it's one pin, no needle, no thread, and not even Master Yoda himself could mend clothing with just one pin.

"Now, yesterday we were talking about survival skills," Rey says.

That sounds good to Kylo. He's got survival skills coming out his eyes. If he didn't, he'd be beyond dead. He's not sure how a pin goes along with that.

"Yesterday we worked on calling out…"

Seems like a good plan. Need help, yell for it. And with this group, even the non-Force sensitive can probably produce enough of a mental yell to get one of the Forcelings to respond.

Jacen's apparently paying attention to him, and thinks to him, _Yes, they can. Wanna guess who's on permanent listening duty?_

Kylo smirks a bit at that, and Rey just _looks_ at them. He knows that look. Had it aimed at him _a lot._ Kylo mentally rolls his eyes and thinks to her, _You were with Luke for two days, and_ that's _what you learned?_

She smiles at that. _Behave, or I'll give you_ another _look._

 _I am chastised._

That gets a snigger, too, but from Jacen.

"Now, how to survive while you're waiting for help to come."

Kylo's expecting some sort of combat training, because that's how _he'd survive_ if he were waiting for help to come. He'd just keep killing people until help got there or he died.

This does not appear to be where Rey is going to take this lesson.

"Sometimes, the wisest course is to go still, go quiet, and pull your brain out of your body."

And that's where Kylo realizes what the pin is for, and that he's a good seventy light years in over his head.

* * *

Well, Rey wasn't wrong. He had about ninety-three lifetimes worth of calm, find your center, balance (meaning go light), and patience, and…

Yep. It's really not any easier. Okay, the go light bit is, but probably only because it used to be just a hair away from impossible, and now he can sort of focus on Rey and shape his own Force a bit more like hers. (An idle, and somewhat naughty thought is suggesting that part of why he's having an easier time pulling light right now is that he's likely still glowing from last night's beyond excellent fucking, but he shuts that down, _fast_ before Jacen decides to comment on it.) The rest of it…

For a second, Kylo's almost tempted to look down and double check, make sure that he's not, in fact, in a pair of beige trousers and a slightly darker beige tunic, sitting in the work room with Luke and the rest of the Padawan.

It's been a _long_ time since he's felt this helpless at any sort of Force task.

Which is not helping him focus or balance, but… He's just fucking _useless_ at this.

If asked, he'd call this passive defensive magic. Though, since they've got the non-Force sensitive kids here, apparently this isn't magic. This is just… he sighs… emotional and mental control.

Rey's got all of them with a pincushion, with one of the pins all the way through. The idea is to sit there, with the pin just gently poking you in the finger, and you pull your brain away from your body so you don't notice it.

There were times when this sort of discipline would have come in very handy for Kylo. Probably a lot of them, and hopefully vastly more than any of the kids in the room with him will ever have to deal with.

But… he trained himself in the opposite direction. Trained himself to dive into the pain, to use it for strength and power, to get him back up on his feet and fighting again, and this…

It's just a tiny pinprick and every synapse of his mind is on it like a homing beacon on a target. He wishes he'd asked what the fuck the lesson was before asking to come to this, because if he had, he would have known that pulling his brain away from his body so he doesn't have to experience pain is something he'd just fail miserably at.

Fuck this! He wants to leap up and just _leave._ He spent years, decades honing his ability to focus intently on pain, to pull himself into it, and pull it through him, and use it, and his desire, need to make it fucking stop, to keep him going. His internal battery, his dark, just screams at the idea of _this._ Of shutting it, and his connection to it down, and going _quiet._

 _Stop it._ His own voice in his own head. Or maybe Luke's. _Slow down, focus, feel it, and let it pass through you._ He mentally rolls his eyes, but he tries.

All he's feeling is the prick of the pin, and all the other Maji around him just zipping along, succeeding wildly where he's failing.

 _Focus. More on you, less on them._ Rey's voice this time.

 _They're succeeding. This is just like being back in school again._

 _You are not the only one having trouble._

He sighs, and doesn't exactly follow Rey's directions. He takes a moment to slip into something he's genuinely good at, getting a read for what's going on with the people around him. She's right. He's not, by a long stretch, the only one failing miserably ( _Not miserably, you're learning,_ Rey's voice in his mind.) at this.

He notices that Critt's pacing around as he works on this. That's probably a good idea. This is difficult enough without going perfectly still, and everything works better for him if he can move, so…

Kylo's just about standing up when Ostrae grabs her pincushion and throws it, hard, against the wall, yelling, "It's not fair!" She's up, stomping around. "I can't do this! The Forcelings just focus and they're pulled out and… I _can't!_ " She's so mad she's all but spitting. "It's _mean,"_ she's _glaring_ at Rey, vibrating with the need to hit, and hit hard, at everything in the galaxy pissing her off, "to ask non-magic people to do magic! You're all laughing at me, because I can't do it!"

And Kylo's suddenly feeling a lot less frustrated, and understanding why this lesson happened here, and now, and likely why he's here, and possibly where so much of the frustration he was feeling at this was coming from.

He speaks first, and then closes on her, kneeling in front of her. "I can't do it, either." He's somewhat aware of the kids behind him, many of whom are stunned by that. Adults can do everything, right? _Kylo Fucking Ren,_ Master of the Order, the _Last_ Jedi in existence, can do _anything,_ right? Then he lays his hand on her shoulder, and just rests it there, hoping it's calming. Then he slides one of the tables across the room. "It's not a magic thing. I've got gobs of it. It might be a sensitivity thing. You and I are just a bit too tuned in to our bodies and the people around us to pull out easy." He tries to remember who else here is a particularly good empath. "How are you finding this, Marrok?"

Marrok makes a face. "It's hard."

"Xanth"

He shakes his head. "I can get into other people no problem; this is killing me."

Limited empathy… "Jacen?"

"I'm out of myself just fine. Listening to the rest of you bitch and moan about it is a lot harder to cut out."

She doesn't glare at him, but she's not exactly buying it easily. "You can do anything. They can, too!"

He shrugs. "Eventually. Badly. You can, too. It just takes a _long_ time and way more work than it seems like it should, and you still feel like you're failing because everyone else can do it better and easier. And given some of the other things I can do, I probably won't attempt to master this, because we don't have to have mastery of every skill."

"Why not master this?" Cassie asks, curious. (Granted, for her, this is something she sees immediate, and intense value to, and on top of that, she's good at it, too. She just focuses on the feel of the weather around her, and she's out of her body, riding the pressure fronts and air currents.)

"This is…" Kylo takes a moment to figure out what he's feeling about this. "Defensive, and… I don't do defense, not really. Not this kind. My defense is offense. Mostly. I've got one really good defensive spell, for me and anyone else in arm's reach. If I'm covering anyone further away, I use the fact that I'm more… fight… than most people can defend against to my advantage." He rolls his lips together, realizing he's digging himself in deeper than he may want to be, on a topic that's not necessarily where they need to go. "Uh… there's no situation where I'd need this skill… Or… I suppose… If I'm in a situation where I might need this… It's already too late, I'm so close to dead that it won't matter." He can remember saying to Jon, 'Do I look like a person who's ever known where too deep is or how to avoid it?' because he can feel all through himself that he's in it up to his eyeballs and doesn't know how to get out.

Now they're all staring at him curiously. He looks to Rey, wondering what to do now, and she thinks back at him. _You're the one who hijacked my lesson, you get to get yourself out of it._

He glares a little at her. _Brat. I didn't set Ostrae up to explode._

 _Nope. But this clearly isn't my lesson anymore, so take it to its conclusion. Teach them, Master Kylo._

 _Fine. And yes, Jacen, we both know you're listening in. Stuff it._ "Okay, we're all going to have specialties. Things that are much easier for me or you or whatever. For me, I'm a fighter. And I'm dark. Breaking things, killing things, fu—fouling things up. I'm _really_ good at that. Galaxy class good at that. My balance spot is a lot further to the dark side than most of yours. And this skill, this is a clear your mind, center yourself, find your quiet spot, retreat into it, and… I don't… not really… have a quiet spot. I mean, everyone's got one, but unless I'm in the middle of a fight, it's really difficult for me to get there.

"So, this isn't how I'd go about surviving something. If this is the kind of skill I'd need… I mean… I can power myself off of pain. Rey and Finn both saw it. I can keep going, and going, and going, as long as I need to fight, and if there's…" He gestures to his face, and pulls the collar of his sweater and shirt over to show off the scar in his shoulder, "some big holes in me at the time, I can just use the pain, or make it hurt worse, to keep myself moving."

"Do you… like pain?" Critt asks, and Kylo knows he can likely, with some training, do a version of this, too.

"No. I _really_ don't. But I can use my desire to not hurt to keep going, to fuel the fight, to kill whatever's making me hurt, but I've got to be hurting to do it. So… I wouldn't pull away from something like this. I'd dive into it, immerse myself in the pain, and if it wasn't enough of a jolt, hurt myself worse, then use it to fight back."

He looks at the pin. "I'd… jam the damn thing through my thumb and likely break it off in there so I could jolt myself again easily, and then use that rage to obliterate whatever was attacking me. Then, after, I'd crash and hope the med droid could take it out."

They're all quite for a moment at then, before Ostrae asks, "And when you can't fight?"

"I can teleport, so I can get myself out. But… can't fight is a nebulous concept for someone who can break bones with his mind. Assuming I'm still conscious, I can fight, so… By the time I'd need a skill like this, I'd also be unconscious so I wouldn't need it."

"If you can break bones with your mind, why use a saber?" Jacen asks.

"I learned the saber first. And… I like it. It's one of the things I can do where focus, and quiet, and stillness will come to me, and it's physically exerting, but mentally restful, if that makes any sense." He thinks a bit more. "That's a defensive skill for me, too." He rubs his lips together. "If I break you with my mind, I'm probably going to kill you. I can disable you with my saber, or just deflect what you're going to throw at me." He thinks more, about the feel of the saber in his hand, and the way his body moves with it. "It's… just… something I'm really good at and like doing." He looks at Rey, and gestures to all of them sitting/pacing around. "Is this sort of thing… easier than fighting?"

She hasn't thought of that before. So, she takes the time to think. "It's different. I can probably slip into this a lot more easily than a fight, but… I'm not sure. All of my real fights have been in the part of my life where I've been tied into you, so…"

Kylo explains, "Rey pulled a lot of my lessons right into her head, which means that she got them through the filter of how they work for me. Anyway, I can't slip into this easily. Actually, right now, I'm not slipping into this, at all. I could probably ride it through Rey, but… I don't need help pulling myself out of her body, because that's normally where I am." He feels himself go white as he realizes what he just said, and immediately glances to the teens; Jacen especially looks like he just heard the best line ever. _I swear to the Force, Jacen, if you laugh out loud at that, I'll mentally smack you upside-_

 _Calm, Kylo._ Jacen is smirking vividly, though. Critt's the one who's attempting to quietly snigger, while hiding behind Jacen's back. And Magiit's biting her lip so hard it's almost gone white. But at least right now, none of the teens have broken into open laughter at that line.

Rey's just _looking_ at him. He can feel that she's suddenly understanding why Kylo might not have been the Master that Luke had perspective parents sit in on a lesson with.

Kylo sighs. "Some things are easier for some people. This just might not be worth the effort you've got to put into it to get the results you're hoping for. Or it might be. Especially while you guys are kind of little and don't have mastery of fifty ways to make people who try to hurt you not hurt you, this is probably useful. I know if I could have figured out how to do this for emotional pain, it would have been helpful to me." He bites his lip. "Still might be." He looks at Ostrae with soft eyes. "I can use physical pain to keep fighting until long past when I should have collapsed. I don't know how to do that with feeling like I'm not good enough at whatever it is, or that I'm failing at it, or that everyone else is effortlessly better at it." He squeezes her shoulder, "Or that everyone is staring at me, laughing at the fact that I can't do whatever it is." She blinks hard, and swallows. "That's… not motivating for me. That makes me want to hurt myself and other people, makes me sure I can't do whatever it is.

"I've been told, a lot, that the dark will lie to you. I guess the light does, too, but that's probably neither here nor there right now. But… Your dark will tell you you're worse at things than you actually are. It'll tell you you can never get better at it. It'll tell you you're worthless and empty and that no one will ever want or need you because you can't ever do whatever that thing is that everyone else can do. I'm not really good at shutting that up, either, but… We're learning, and learning to shut down that voice is part of this. Part of finding the balance spot."

Ostrae's looking up at him, very surprised and concerned, and he can feel the empathy bridging between them. One darkling to the other. He thinks to her. _It's not the magic, and it's not the tasks, and it's not any failing on your part. It's just the dark in your head being twisty and cruel. And, twisty and cruel can make you hard and strong. It can shape you into steel if you let it, and learn to control it. Or it can break you into a thousand shards of razor-glass, and let other people use you as a knife to cut others._

 _But you've got the power over it. It wants power over you, but you don't have to let it have any power you don't want it to._

"It's so hard."

Kylo, with a gentleness he didn't know he was capable of, outside of extremely intimate moments with Rey, gathers Ostrae close and says, quietly, to the top of her head, "I know." He pets her back while she cries against his chest.

He glances to Rey _I think we're going to go back to our place, okay?_

Rey nods at him, and he ports back to their living room, holding a small sobbing person to his chest.

* * *

When Kylo and Ostrae are out of the kitchen, Rey says, "If you've ever wondered what I mean by, 'The Force has a plan,' that's it. Neither of us had any idea that this was going to happen. No flash of precience, no clue. But it did. And right now, he was where he needed to be to offer that help.

"Okay, now, for the rest of you, how many of you feel like this is just impossible…"

* * *

 _The dark lies to you._ Force, Luke had said that to him, over and over and over, and… Well, he's kneeling here in his living room with a crying child in his arms, gently petting her back, apparently… comforting her.

Speaking of light side skills he _never_ thought he'd ever be any good with. All he ever really managed to do in the past was just agitate the other person more, too. Of course, in the past, he'd just pull that pain right into himself, and use it to be more… everything but calm and collected.

He sighs. With the exception of Rey, this is the first time he's attempted to comfort someone without the shadow of Snoke in his mind.

 _The dark lied, or Snoke lied. Both._ He decides it's likely both. Or maybe Snoke piled onto the dark's lies. Or maybe Snoke was the liar in the dark.

"I don't feel like I control it," Ostrae says as she starts to quiet down.

He nods, his chin against her shoulder. "I know that, too. Force, I felt like I was on fire, spinning completely out of control for decades, fighting tooth and nail for every heartbeat where I had some power over it."

Her face is red, eyes bright, as she pulls back to look at him. "What made it better?"

He sighs at that, too. "Time. Finding things I was good at. Surrounding myself with people who didn't need me to be perfect at things I was bad at." He bites his lip. "One of them… I'm good at fighting, and I'm good at angry and hurting and… It's really easy, and satisfying to just… rage, you know?"

She nods. She does know.

"One of them tried to push me too far in that direction, and… Wanted all anger, all rage, all the time. That was bad, too. But, at first, he was the only one who didn't try to constantly make me be calm and centered and light, so at first, that felt really good. Like I could be myself and breathe for once. But… Even I'm not all anger, all the time, so that wasn't me, either."

He wipes one of the tears off her face. "Figuring out who you are, and what you like… It takes time. And… I hate to say it, but some shit, you've just got to learn. I _hated_ math with a blinding passion, but, unlike pulling my brain out of my body, I really did need to learn that. There isn't a work around for that."

"I'm good at math." She smiles a little, enjoying the idea that there's something Kylo, who, in her eyes, can do _anything_ isn't good at that she is. "I'm really good at math. The numbers just dance for me."

He's watching her carefully. He knows that M6 teaches lessons here, but he doesn't know how far he can push a child like Ostrae. But… he can certainly have a chat with the droid. And he absolutely knows a place where a little darkling could join a lot of other little kids who are good at math and be fed an almost constant diet of math, because right now the Order is begging for Navigators, and anyone who looks even remotely like they might be able to do it gets fast-tracked into the Officer track, given as many perks as they can stand, as long as they're willing to be trained in math eight hours a day.

"Do you like making them dance?"

"Yes!"

"Like you like cooking?"

She thinks about that for a long time. Then finally says, "I like cooking better. I can eat what I bake. And I don't always know how the baking will turn out. I always know how the math will."

"Good point. Doesn't matter how good you are at math, you can't eat it when you're done." He thinks about that for a moment. "Do you think you'd like math if you couldn't see the answer just by looking at the problem?"

Her eyes narrow, and it's clear she's thinking he's asking her if she'd like to spend time failing at something she thinks she's good at.

"No, I mean, what if we found someone to help teach you how to see the answers to more complicated problems. What if it was like cooking, where you could set it up, and know the rules, know how it was supposed to work, and then… experiment and see what happens?"

She thinks about that, too. "Will they be mean if I get it wrong?"

It occurs to Kylo he's got no idea if his trainers are 'mean' when it comes to this. He really hopes not, because they are trying to grab and hold everyone who's got even the potential for that sort of work. He shifts the question a bit. "Do you think Rey is mean when she asks you to do something you're not good at? Or offers suggestions to do it better or easier."

That gets narrowed eyes, too, and then a very quiet, "It'd be easier if she were."

Kylo nods at that. "Yeah, I'd feel that a lot, too. Luke… That's the man who taught me a lot of Jedi skills, he was never mean, or cruel. Frustrated sometimes, exasperated, and I think, once, he got sharp with me, but he wasn't actually mean." _Until he was._ Kylo doesn't feel the need to share that with Ostrae. "But I knew I was useless at so many of the things he was teaching, him being patient and kind almost hurt worse." He offers a sad half smile. "The dark lies. I was being mean to myself, because the voice in my head didn't think I was worth kindness."

She's nodding at that.

"Rey doesn't teach me Maji stuff. I… got a lot of the basics when I was younger. She does teach me to be kind to myself. And sometimes she'll give me a little bonk upside the back of the head and point me in the right direction when I'm not being kind to myself." He gives her a little boop on the back of the head. "It's okay to be bad at stuff."

She snorts a bit at that. Then she looks up at him, eyes a bit narrow, thinking hard. "You like fighting."

He nods. "Yeah."

"It makes you feel calm."

He nods at that, too.

"But you try to make me make cookies."

"Cookies are good."

She nods. "They are. Can we fight?"

Kylo exhales long and low. By the time he was doing any training, he was eighteen, the youngest member of the New Jedi was ten, and though by that point he'd shot up twenty centimeters in one year, and was a good head and shoulders taller than the youngest member of the group, but he wasn't, literally, four times his size.

He's, at least, that much bigger than Ostrae.

He can pull his punches; he has in the past with Jacen and Critt. But… Force, if he slips, wavers, or she just moves in a way he doesn't expect, he'll crush her.

He bites his lip. "Against each other?"

She nods.

 _Fuck._ He's got scars all over his body from fights where he didn't get his physical person in the right place to avoid the hit. He's broken probably every bone in both hands, both wrists from hits that didn't land right. He's just… "No."

She looks like she's going to cry again.

 _Fuck._ He thinks of last night. Of the feel of working with Unthar, of… darkside love. Of deeply, passionate, active, _attached_ love. Love that shapes and changes things. And his hope to be and do that, for other people, even if he's not immediately talented at it. What… here… does that look like?

He's biting his lip. "If you and I try to fight, I could really hurt you."

"You wouldn't hurt me."

"I'd certainly try not to." He gently rests his hand on her shoulder and pushes her back. "Try to move toward me."

She leans all her weight into his hand, and pushes and, grunts and tries and…

Kylo nods at her. "You've got a lot of growing up to do before I'd be comfortable trying to fight you. Get to Critt's size and we can talk about it. But," he checks the chrono, they've got an hour between now and lunch. "I can show you what I do when I'm feeling twisty and darker than I'd like, and there's no reason you can't do it next to me."

Ostrae lights up at that.

He takes her hand. "Okay, we're going to go to my gym. Do you have an undershirt or something on under those sweaters?"

"Yes, why?"

"By the time we're done, we're going to be sweating."

"Oh."

* * *

And then they're at the gym.

He keeps it cooler in there than the rest of his rooms, but compared to their place on Lirium, it's warm. He's pulling off his sweater, and nods for Ostrae to get comfortable, too.

There's the one wall where a collection of training droids are standing, passive and waiting. Voice command will turn them on and get them moving, but that's not what today needs. There are weights, and training sabers, even one of the blast droids. (Critt likes using the dark saber against that, and he's okay with allowing that.)

He heads to his punching bag, and nods to Ostrae to follow him.

"Do you know how to make a fist properly?"

She nods. "Finn's shown us."

"Good." He makes a fist and whales on the punching bag. It rocks back on its chains. It's a good solid hit. He feels it all the way through his arm, through his shoulder, and the line of his force through the bag. "Part of it's getting your mind right." He punches very slowly, no real force. "It's a line, through you. Your Force—"

"I don't have any."

"Everything that's alive has Force. You do, too. You've just got to channel it. Take a moment, feel your power, your violence, your anger, and pain."

Ostrae closes her eyes and squares her stance in front of the bag. He sees her wiggle a little, grounding herself down into her feet. "Good. Get nice and steady on your feet, you want a good base for this."

She pauses and takes her boots off, and Kylo follows suit. "You're right, it's easier when your learning if your feet are on the ground. You get a better feel. Okay, face the bag, deep breath, feel it. All your anger, your hate, your frustration. You feel it, all red and jaggy."

She's nodding, fingers flexing.

"Okay, we're not going to hit this time; we're just going to think through it. Right leg back, left hip forward. Your arms are for aiming, for getting the power to land in the right spot. Your physical strength is going to come from your core and legs, your power, your real power is going to come from your anger."

She nods, and gets into position. Kylo circles to her left. He takes her left hand and moves it into the right place. "Left hand here. In front of your chest. You want to be able to use it to sweep a counter hit away or come around fast with a second hit." He circles to her other side. "Make that fist." He nods. "Good fist. Finn taught you right. Did he teach you to punch, too?"

"Yes, not like this."

"Not like this. It's the same body mechanics, but different mindset."

"He didn't talk about focusing anger."

"Because he didn't learn it that way. He'd likely have been good at it if he had. He was very good at anything he studied."

She looks curious. "I didn't think you liked him."

Kylo shrugs. "He doesn't much like me. That doesn't mean he didn't work very hard and practice and study to get very good at a lot of things."

She thinks about that, and is about to say something like, 'You didn't answer the question,' but Kylo redirects. "Okay, step forward with the right foot, and extend with the right arm. Feel the motion through your whole right side, feel the pivot on your left hip. Your hip is the hinge, the balance point. No force this time, and do it slow, you're just feeling the move."

She does it, a few times, just tapping the bag.

"Good." He taps her thigh. "Crouch a bit. Jacen hates that part, but physical strength is not what your upper body is for. Especially not yours. If it's above your waist, it's about getting the hit where it needs to be."

"What about?" She hits the bag a bit harder, and it's all from her arm.

"Yep. Now do it again." He grabs her arm. "Don't actually do it. I don't want you to hurt yourself. If your strength comes from your arms, you'll get a few good shots off, and then get tired, and then get hurt."

He gets into position, and pulls up his own frustrations with the pin. "When I was a Jedi we were taught to let go of our emotions, especially the dark ones, but dark emotions can give you a lot of power." Again, he hits the bag, and again it rocks back on the chain.

He grabs it, stills it, and then says to her, "Push the bag."

She looks curious about that, but tries, and rapidly discovers that the bag weighs one hundred kilos and she cannot push it.

"Exactly. I've got big arms, and a lot of strength in them, and if I was just hitting with brute strength the only thing that would have happened is me breaking my hand and wrist." As soon as it's out of his mouth he goes. "Oh, good point. Tape. We've got to have some in here. Hold on." He tries to remember where Critt leaves the tape. He doesn't have hardening his hits down yet, either, and Kylo doesn't want him breaking his hands. It's in a bin with the pads.

"Okay, hand out."

Ostrae holds her hand out, and Kylo tapes it up. "I don't want to explain to Rey why you've got broken fingers."

"You hit hard enough to break fingers?"

He stretches out his hands in front of her. There are small scars and some lumps and gnarls from where bones didn't quite heal right. "Every bone in both of them has broken at some point or another."

"But you pull from pain."

He nods. "Yeah, if I hit you hard enough to break a hand on you, you're going to die on the next hit if you didn't on that first one."

"Really?" Her eyes are very wide.

He nods. "Really." He nods at the punching bag. "That's the eighth one this year. When I'm angry I can punch it out. Just ball up all that angry and hateful and rage and slam into the bag again and again until it's tamed."

"That's how you let go of your emotions?"

"Yeah. I can't just…" he flitters his fingers in floating away sort of gesture. "I've got to do something with them. This is better than hitting anything else, or making stupid decisions, or… A lot of bad stuff I've done."

"What kind of bad stuff?"

"The kind I don't like talking about, because it's bad."

She nods at that. "They tell me I'm being bad when I hit or bite people."

"Well, you're not being good. I bit, one way or another, a lot of people, too. You like Finn, right?"

"Yeah. He's nice."

"He is nice. He doesn't like me because I bit him."

She looks really surprised at that. "Why would you do that?"

"Do you remember the war?" She couldn't have been much past six when it ended. Five maybe.

"Some."

"We were on opposite sides, for a while. And…" He pulls off his shirt, and shows her the scar Finn left on him. "He bit me. I bit him back. I bite a _lot_ harder than he does. It wasn't good. And… If I'd had better ways to deal with being angry and hateful and rageful and just…" he growls and she nods.

"I feel growly sometimes, too."

"Yeah. If I'd had better ways to deal with that, maybe Finn'd like me."

"Is Finn going to decide I'm bad?"

"Are you going to bite him?"

"No?"

"Good plan. Don't bite Finn. He's a good guy." He looks to the punching bag. "When you need to bite things, come see me. We'll bite the punching bag, together." He nods back to the bag. "Okay, so your arm aims. It makes sure the hit goes where you want it."

There's a red dot on the side of the bag. Too high for Ostrae, because it's there for Critt. Kylo hovers the bag off it's hook and gets it to where Ostrae can hit the spot. "Just tap that spot with your fist. Good form, and go slow, and get your fist where it needs to go, to that spot."

Ostrae does.

"Okay, now every time you do that, I want you to feel the motion of your arm. Feel the pull back, feel the extension of the line. Feel it as a channel for your Force. That line, from your shoulder to your fist, that's how your power is going to flow."

She does the motion a few more times.

"Good," he's nodding. She's actually taking to this really well, probably not a surprise. If this had been on offer to him when he was seven, he'd have leapt at it. "Okay, now, don't move. Just stand there, and punch with your energy. Feel the flow of it."

"Imagine it?"

"Sure. Start there. Can you think of your anger? Think of it as a growly, red ball. You got it?"

She nods, eyes closed.

"Now move it. Right to your shoulder joint. You feel it there?" He squeezes her shoulder. "All tangled and angry and mean, just sitting there looking to _hit_?"

Maybe he should be bothered by how savage her voice sounds, as she chirps 'Yes,' or the possible long-term implications of training a seven-year-old how to punch like this, but right now, it feels right, so he's going for it.

"Good. Do it with your mind a few times. Just like with your body, but don't move. Open your eyes so you can see where you're going to hit. Feel it, imagine the energy moving down your arm, through your fist, into the bag." He says it out loud, but there's Force in his voice. " _Hit the bag._ "

She doesn't move, and the bag doesn't either, but he can feel the impact, and he hopes she can, too.

"Good. That's a good solid punch. Three more times."

And she does. Then she tosses off her top shirt.

Kylo grins. "I told you we'd be sweating."

"I was expecting more running around."

"Training with your body and brain and Force is tough work. Ready to do it with your hand now?"

Ostrae nods.

"Good girl. _Hit the bag._ "

And she does, dead on perfect hit. It doesn't move. But there is a good solid, smack.

Kylo smiles at her. "That's it. All of your basic fight skills follow that pattern. Good form, practice, find your energy, send it through your body, strike."

"How do I hit something moving?"

"You prove to me that you've got good form and flow, and then I hold a target and move it around, and you keep hitting it. You'll miss, a lot, that's normal. But right now, let's get form and flow down."

"Flow?"

"Getting your anger all nice and balled up and then release it through your hit."

She nods. "Okay. Let's hit."

So, they do.

* * *

Poe looks shocked to see Kylo there when he opens the hatch to _Micah._ "You run away from a coup?"

Kylo rolls his eyes. "Apparently, I have off days."

Poe sniggers at that. "So, you're slumming it with us."

Elias and Jacen are behind Kylo, pulling the sledge into place, keeping the faviers calm. But, for once, it's not Kylo setting them off, it's the near black clouds pushing up against the white and gray ones over the sky above them.

"Gotta move fast, Poe, Cassie says the storm's less than twenty-five out," Jacen replies.

Poe nods. "And let me guess, you're worth three droids when it comes to moving heavy things all at once?"

Kylo smirks. "As long as they can keep the faviers from bolting away, yes."

"Well, have at it. My back won't mind not loading the hay."

Kylo settles in against the side of _Micah's_ hatch. He looks like he's comfortably leaning with his eyes closed. "You two feel what I'm doing?"

The boys nod, but Elias says, "Uh, Kylo, teaching is great, but we're a little focused on something else right now."

"Good point." The faviers outweigh the boys by a lot, and they are _not_ happy about being anywhere near open skies with that storm coming. Poe heads over to grab the reins, too, add his mass to the weight.

Right now, Elias and Jacen are working on keeping them _calm._

So, Kylo also gets to work. The reason he's doing it, and not, say, Marrok, who is very good at floating things, is that he's good at moving a bunch of things, all at once, together. This is just a matter of feeling for where the loose bits are, namely the lines of space between the bales of hay, and then filling them rigid and stiff with his Force, and then lifting the whole thing as one mass.

It takes a little longer than moving any one thing that size, but not as long as moving each bale by itself.

They settle onto the sledge, and the boys nod. Poe lets go of the reins, and Elias leans up on his toes, to talk to the lead favier. "Okay, love, let's go home, and get away from this. You can smell the food, right?"

Both of the faviers wicker, pleased, both at food and getting away from open skies. Poe looks around and sees the _Falcon_ isn't on the ground. "Cassie want me airborne?"

Jacen nods, looking back. "Yeah, get the fuck out. If it's not attached to the ground, this one's going to blow it to hell and gone."

"So much for a long visit then."

"I was hoping to talk to him," Kylo says.

Elias waves that off. "We can get 'em settled, and Rey can get us back home, after."

"Thanks," And Kylo follows Poe into his ship.

* * *

The cockpit is trim, and though it's designed for a crew of four, Poe and Rey and Rose refitted it to work with just him and BB.

Who is chirping at them. "Yeah, I know, but we're about to get blown away, so up we go again." He doesn't look to Kylo as he gets _Micah_ ready for take off. "Sit your butt wherever, and buckle up. I didn't like the look of those clouds when I was landing, but I was hoping to be _under_ them when they got too close."

"Yeah, I wanted to talk to you about that," Kylo feels the pressure of _Micah's_ jump to flight speed, followed by the heartbeat of free fall while it shifts from grav to anti-grav, and then another loopy second as Poe gets it into geo-sync-orbit.

"All, right we're set." He's looking down at the storm. "That one's a fucker."

Kylo looks down at the boiling clouds moving across the face of Lirium. "Yeah…" They're both quiet, both remembering stories of Hoth.

Kylo rubs his hand over his face. "How are we set for bugging out fast if we've got to?"

"Honestly, worst comes to worst? Five minutes. I can be out that fast. That little teleport trick you and Rey have'll mitigate a lot of damage, but if we're out in five minutes, it means we've left everything but the kids."

"Yeah…" He's quiet for a moment. "I can take the kids, and the rabbits, and the fowl…" He looks sheepish. "I don't have a space for faviers." That's not literally true. "I don't have space that won't drive them insane. They…"

"Don't like being in ships. I know. I brought them here, it was only a seven hour run, and if you ever wanted to see a mess, what eight faviers will do to a ship is terrifying. They're not people. You can't explain to them they've got to live on a ship for a few weeks until you get a new place for them. You'd break them if you tried."

"Shit, yeah."

Poe rolls his eyes. "Kylo, they're pets. If we've got to bug out that fast, you will not have a hard time explaining to the kids that it was either they got on the ships leaving or the faviers did. We honestly do not have room between the _Falcon_ and _Micah_ to take everyone and all the critters in one run. And… if only one ship is on planet and we've got to bug out fast, just getting everyone on will be a struggle."

Kylo sighs, watching the storm. "Well, that's half of what I wanted to talk to you about. You been to Achc-To, yet?"

"Nah. Someone's still getting me a weather sat."

Kylo blinks. He knows he'd asked for one, and generally when he asks for things they show up before he's finished the request. "I'll check. You should have had it already."

"Then it's probably sitting in a storage shed somewhere because the Order doesn't exactly know how to interface with me, yet."

Kylo thinks about that. "Right, you've got no official capacity with us as of this point. Likely aren't really in the system. I know C8 can fix that."

Poe stands up, and heads out of the cockpit, and Kylo follows him. "I've been thinking about that."

Poe can feel Kylo's curious gaze.

"Remember, there was this thing I was supposed to be doing for the Order of the Maji…"

Kylo blinks. "Right. Shit… I'm…"

Poe waves it off. "Completely swamped. I get that. I see what Jon's up to, and his billion details, and supposedly you've got all of his stuff and all of yours on top of it, and…" Poe's voice trails off as he's pulling out his coffee maker. "You're off? Jon doesn't get off days."

"Kinear literally told me to my face that everything in the whole bloody Order works better if I rest on a regular basis, and that's actually close enough to comments some other people…" and his look makes it clear that Poe's one of them, "have given me about how not to be a raging asshole all the time, so… I am taking time off." He says with a smile that only gets to his lips. "If I thought it'd do Jon more good than harm, I'd order him off, too."

Poe thinks about that. There are a lot of things he'd like to do with Jon on 'off time' and there is also a very real set of thoughts about what Jon might do with off-time, and right now, getting sad, and drunk, and likely doing stupid stuff, is on the top of the list.

He inclines his head at that. "You've got… maybe not your idea of fun, but fun stuff coming up, right? Rey's mentioned that."

"The idea is that we'll go to places and do 'recreational' type stuff and be a walking advertisement for The Order."

Poe nods at that. "Okay, you're probably right about him going a bit stir-crazy with full-on off time, but take him with you on some of the fun stuff. It'll be a bridge between not knowing what to do with himself, and no downtime at all. After all, there's nothing he's working on that Threepio can't keep watch on, and unlike Jon, Threepio legitimately does not have to sleep."

Kylo thinks about that for a moment. "That's… likely a good plan. Uh…" He rolls his lips. "Am I over stepping my bounds, or your comfort level, if I invite you along, too?"

Poe smiles. "The idea never threatened to occur to me." He's _obviously_ lying.

"Uh huh."

"And, if memory serves, you want me to go to places that don't love the idea of Order recruiting stations, sniff around, and find a way to work on sneaking people out. Jon and I have talked about that, too. Finding places like Jakku, and getting people out."

The idea of that is a burst of white hot need in Kylo's chest. "Yes. But… that's not the kind of place we'll go to fun stuff for."

"No, I wouldn't think it would be. Not… officially. But… Film festivals, food festivals, cultural stuff, that'll all be on the pretty and shiny part of the planet. The rich bits. Like… Coruscant had them year-round. Something like that was always going on. At the top. At the part of the planet that could still see the sky. Go to the under-dark, and there were entire generations who'd never had a full belly."

Kylo blinks, and nods, and _understands._ "Master Poe of the Maji. Lady Ren's good friend. Adjacent to, but not exactly part of the Order. He's bright, and shiny, and goes to fancy places, and asks good questions, and talks to people, and he finds out where the dark places are. Where the pretty people don't go. Where… the under-dark lives."

Poe's nodding. "Or, maybe he gets the names and places where the kind of people who go to fancy parties make their money. Where Lord and Ladies lord and lady, and we get the idea of places to go and… explore further. And then, when he gets back to the Order, he has a chat with a few people, probably not more than five or ten of them, and they make a plan, and start. It might be officially branded under the Maji. Ummm… I don't know, outreach or something. Print up some pamphlets, find a place, any place that's cheap and dingy, rent it for a year, and… spread the good word. And if… acolytes get trained off world…"

"Your… outreach members… bring them here, where they can… seek training."

"Something like that. Is it a deal breaker if they just use us as transport, and don't actually join the Order?"

Kylo shakes his head, a bit. "Honestly, no. A lot of people flat out do that with The Order. They sign up just long enough to get off their homeworld, and immediately bugger off as soon as they're somewhere better. We're starting to try and curb that, some. ID'em and if they've scarpered more than twice, we don't take them back, but… It wouldn't be the first time we were just a taxi service to a better life."

"But you'd make it worth their while to join up?"

"No more than I do for anyone else, but the idea is that it's supposed to be worth joining."

Poe nods at that. He hands a cup of coffee over to Kylo. "So, I guess the first bit is…" he can't believe he's saying this, "getting me set up as some sort of official… something…"

Kylo nods. "Master Dameron of the Maji…" He thinks about that. "I had command privileges, but not rank, in the First Order. I think I was about the equivalent of a… Shit, I don't know. I never had more than a few squads under me, but I could take them and do whatever I wanted with no oversight. The only one I reported to was Snoke."

"And let me guess, if you attempted something along the lines of doing anything with more than a few squads worth of men, he'd have fallen on you like a ton of bricks."

"That's my guess. But no one man would have said no to a direct order from me, including Grand Marshalls."

"Interesting. So, complete power, as long as you didn't abuse it."

"Basically. So… You going to make me regret something like that?"

"I absolutely won't promise you that. I will promise, I won't burn you intentionally, unless it's for a _really_ good reason."

Kylo thinks about that, and sips his coffee. "Probably good enough. So, what… do you… want?"

"I need some level of Order ID. I absolutely need access to all of the floors of the ship. I need a landing spot, and I need a place. I'm going to need people. You've got to have spies and people who work in the dark, and I'm going to need some of them. Or better yet, I'm going to need my pick of the guys your testing says would be good at that, but haven't been trained, yet. I don't want to have to beat obedience into them, or break them of your bad habits. And if I'm building teams for this, I want to build them from the floor up."

"Jon told you about his diplomacy floors?"

"Of course."

"A chapel of the Maji? Something big enough so if you and Rey ever figure out what it is the Maji actually really does, you're set, and something you can run _Maji outreach_ through, otherwise. Attach an apartment or two along with it so there's a place for people to crash, and…"

Poe's smiling at him, sipping his coffee. "An apartment or two, maybe a small dormitory. Somewhere for acolytes to stay, before they move onto wherever they go next. You seem to have at least some of a touch for this."

"Maybe it's in my blood." He sighs. "Been a long time since we've found a Force-sensitive one."

"Yeah, I know. At first, I was tripping over them, and now everyone I check out is on a long con." He eyes Kylo.

"Yeah, I don't know if demand is currently keeping up with supply, or what's going on with that. But, if we get it built, we'll have room for them."

"And what happens to Achc-To?"

Kylo sighs, and sits across from Poe. "I… like… and probably _need_ a place for all of this that isn't on the _Supremacy._ " He doesn't like delving into these feelings too deeply, but… "Right now… You ever feel like you're okay, but you're holding your breath waiting for something to go sideways?"

"Yeah."

"Okay, right now, we're okay, but… I don't know what, and it might just be how history rolls, but sooner or later something's going to take a swing at us again. That's just… going to happen, and… I don't want them on the _Supremacy_ if that's going to happen. I know I can't get Rey to stay off because of something like that, but… maybe I can keep them off. And I don't want every other person cozying up to them trying to curry favor, and I don't want them to feel like bugs under a scope because they're close to Rey and I, and…" He runs his hand through his hair. "And at the same time. I can get them better training on ship. I can get them more kids to be around. I can…"

"Give them the _normal life_ you didn't get?"

"Yeah." Another rake of his hand through his hair. "I can, as Jon puts it, make sure they're better prepared to be people in the galaxy, than the wolves that raised me did."

Poe sighs at that.

"You know I'd never bought anything until I was thirty?"

Poe blinks.

"Yeah. Stupid piddly shit like that. Or figuring out, two bloody nights ago, that toothbrushes have to be replaced. They don't… last forever… apparently. Just… stupid fucking stuff like that."

Poe nods at him, and sighs. "And let me guess, part of hating not wanting them near the ship, is not just because it mirrors your own life, but because you're making the decision your mom did?"

Kylo sighs so hard he feels it in his toes. "With a cherry on top."

Poe smirks. "Well, there's something; you know that phrase."

"Yeah, well… You knew her. She liked her sweets, and… when I was little, when she was back, sometimes we'd split a sundae, and she'd let me have the cherry."

Poe smiles at that. "She thought we'd be good at this, you know?"

Kylo snerks. "You, maybe. I don't know that she ever thought that I'd be good at anything."

Poe gently whaps him upside the back of his head. "Stop that. That's Snoke talking. I know for a fact she had some of your poems in that ring of hers. She liked them."

Kylo sighs at that, too. "Yeah. Great. This isn't me showing off my calligraphy skills by writing atrocious blank verse. This is—"

"She thought _we'd_ be good at it. You and me and Rey. Together. She…" Poe swallows. "She _came to me_ on the day of the Second Year party to tell me to get my ass in gear and start helping the two of you do this."

Kylo's turn to blink. "The… Second Year… party."

"Yeah. Ghost territory, right? The thing that guys like me aren't supposed to be able to do?" He'd meant it as a statement, but it ended up a question.

"Yeah." Then Kylo shrugs. "Hux shows up for me. You want to talk about someone who shouldn't be able to to things like that."

"Hux?" Poe looks horrified. "Why?"

"I think… Fuck… Uh… Okay," Kylo passes his hand over his face. "Maybe this is part of you seeing my mom. I'm… never entirely sure if he's actually a ghost or not. Like… You know, Luke, I _know_ he's a ghost. Or Anakin. It's… really… distinctive. Hux might be more… the part of my brain that has an idea of where trouble may lay, telling me what that trouble is. But, sometimes he says stuff my subconscious shouldn't know, so…"

"And you think… me seeing your mom might be like that?"

"Maybe not trouble, but… Hux is probably my idea of 'bad things' personified,"

"Hux?"

"He designed Starkiller and fired it. Personally killed more… people… sentients… anything, than anyone else. Who better?"

Poe thinks about that. He nods.

"You would have thought it'd have been Snoke, right?"

He shrugs. "Not my job to police your subconscious."

"Yeah, well… my subconscious is likely aware that Snoke showing up again isn't the sort of warning I can heed. Hux… I can at least listen to."

"Good advice?"

Kylo shrugs. "Maybe more along the lines of, if he thinks it's a good idea. I need to re-think it, HARD. Maybe… the opposite of that is true for you and my mom. Maybe she's your idea of… good advice? I mean, I wouldn't put it past her to show up. She showed up that day to talk to Rey and I, too, so… But… Was she giving you good advice?"

Poe shrugs. "I don't know. Maybe. I'm… trying some of it. It hasn't bit me in the ass, yet. Anyway, real or not, my… ideal of her… thought that we could do this." He smiles brilliantly at Kylo. "You'd need some help, of course. Someone older, and wise, to help guide the theme of things, but…"

Kylo snorts at that, too. "Five years. You are not _that_ much older, and we aren't twelve and seventeen now."

Poe smirks at that. "No, we're not. But… Look, I'm obviously, not going home today, so… Let's head back to the _Supremacy._ You go have a little chat with C8, get me set up and a place to land, and maybe a weather satellite in my hull, and we can move on getting the rest of this into motion."

Kylo nods at that, and they're both quiet for a bit, before Poe says, "Didn't you say you wanted to talk to me about two things?"

Kylo thinks back. "Not those exact words, but…"

Poe watches him for a moment, "Well…"

"How do you waltz?"

Poe laughs, and says, "Go find some music, and I'll get the coordinates set for the _Supremacy._ "


	47. New Alderaan

4/10/2

"I have our itinerary," Ellie says, passing a datapad to Rey. Today, she's in Kylo's office, sitting with Ellie and Threepio, being 'briefed' because the day after tomorrow, they're leaving for New Alderaan, and her first, (second) official, outing as the Mistress of the Maji.

Rey reads.

4/12/2, New Alderaan.

Leaving at 09:00.

Arrive 12:00 Supremacy Time, 16:00 New Alderaan Local.

Formal Greeting 17:00.

Introductory reception: 17:30.

Formal Supper 18:30

Retire for Evening 22:30

Informal Meeting with Queen 09:00.

Formal Breakfast with the Ruling Council 10:00

Head home 12:00.

There are small write ups on what each of those things is, and for the first bit, that's what Rey's reading. What they expect her to do, not when they expect her to do it, but after a few moments, she notices the times.

"We're going overnight?" Rey says, looking at the schedule.

"Is that a problem?" Ellie asks. "I know you have the children in your care, but with Kylo staying… wherever it is you go when you're not here, and your other friends, I—"

Rey shakes her head. She did clear time for this, but… She'd intended to be at home, sleeping, with Kylo, at night. "It's… not. I guess." She does have Poe and Rose and Finn in place, so the kids won't be on their own, but… "We're sleeping there?"

Ellie nods. "That is the idea. Traveling time means that we'll arrive close to what the locals consider late afternoon. There'll be a welcome dinner, which will normally be just sitting around and talking, but Threepio suggested that you wanted to know more about what made Alderaan _Alderaan_ , so there will be a historical/cultural briefing during the dinner. They'll offer you the highlights of who they are and who they want you to understand them to be. Then we'll break off for the night. Sleeping time. Which, I'll recommend you try to sleep, even though your internal clock will think it's early evening. Then breakfast where we'll get to actually talk some with the inner circle and go over some of the things that didn't make it into the treaty. And off we go. We'll get home a little after you'd normally have breakfast."

Rey's first thought is to say "No." This is nervous making enough without having to go overnight, but…

Ellie's watching, carefully. Rey can feel this is some sort of a test. And, for once, she's got the sense that Threepio is in on it, too.

"Is Pat coming along with us?" That's a… sideways way of flanking the issue. Maybe.

"Of course not, dear. He's got things to handle here. You, me, General Threepio. Colonel Jefferies, who actually wrote the treaty. We won't see much of him. He'll spend his time with his opposite number among the New Alderaan delegation. I believe we'll have two pilots and a squad of security, as well."

Threepio nods; she's correct about that.

"We're taking security to New Alderaan." That's distracting her from the overnight part of it. She's seen Order security, and the idea that they're going to walk in there with a pile of white-armored stormtroopers knocks the wind out of her.

It looks like Ellie is grasping the first aspect of the issue. "I believe we'll refer to them as our retinue. We will claim that they are servants of some sort, and a personal secretary who will take notes. They will not be formally armed or armored, though they will be the sorts of men who can kill a squad with a water glass and a spoon if need be."

Rey blinks.

"They will be experts in hand to hand unarmed martial combat, and at turning mundane objects into lethal weapons," Threepio says.

Rey's still blinking. "We're taking _security_ to New Alderaan?" That, of course, would be the other aspect of it. Not just how it looks but… the idea that they might even need it.

Ellie inhales swiftly as she grasps the issue. "Oh, yes. The chance of anything happening of an untoward nature is extremely low. That said, it is an entire planet, and we have not kept the fact that you are going to visit a secret. There is no chance at all that anyone connected officially to the government of New Alderaan will lift an eyelid, let alone a finger, against us—"

"But people connected to the official government of New Alderaan are not the only people who will be on planet, and like with all governmental buildings in New Alderaan, the public has free access to the palace. It would be… astonishingly easy for someone to land people on the planet, and then stroll on into the palace and take a shot at us," Threepio says.

Rey does not find that comforting. On several levels.

"And thus, security." Ellie says, "We will not call attention to them, and the Alderaanians will pretend to not know why they're actually with us, but everyone will understand why they're there."

"Couldn't I just bring my light staff?"

Ellie looks appalled. Threepio sighs, "No."

"But we can bring guards."

"Yes," Threepio responds.

"I do not understand." Which is just the barest hint of a scratch on the tip of this whole puzzling thing, right now.

Threepio and Ellie look at each other, and Threepio's the one who decides to take a stab at explaining this. "You openly carrying a weapon absolutely shatters the image of you as a peacemaker. More importantly, it shatters the fiction that we trust them. On top of that, I've carefully curated a collection of outfits for you that will attempt to make them see you and think of Leia, of Old Alderaan, and the Organa line, of a better, and yes, fictional time, and how working with us can get them closer to that 'golden-hued history,' and a weapon just wouldn't do."

Rey looks confused. "A weapon wouldn't do for _General_ Organa."

"Again, it's an image, not reality," Threepio says with a sigh. "Princess Leia, golden child of the glory days of Alderaan, not General Organa, who got involved in dirty, mucky politics where people did nasty things like kill each other."

Ellie's amused by this. "Leia Organa was, according to our records, a better shot with a pistol than Han Solo or Luke Skywalker, but I daresay that's not the image the General is going for for this meeting."

Rey looks surprised at that, but Threepio nods. "I wasn't along for too many fire fights, but… From what I saw and heard, that's accurate. That said, she was not a pilot. Decent gunner when needs be, but not a flier."

She shakes her head a little. "Okay." Rey looks back at the schedule. "Why are we dealing with transit time?"

"You mean why aren't we teleporting, or why, because we're in a ship, are we not putting the ship closer to Alderaan? Perhaps close enough to allow you to snooze with your man?" Ellie asks.

Rey feels sheepish, but she owns up to it. "The latter."

"Because parking the _Supremacy_ on top of New Alderaan, with its collection of City Killers, doesn't make them feel like we mean it when we say we're offering a Non-Aggression pact. Trust me, the _Supremacy_ will be, at most, twenty minutes from us, and the security with us will be able to hold off anything short of a thermo-nuclear attack for at least half an hour, but we're going to take a slower path, because no one on planet wants our biggest guns hovering right above them."

Threepio's sitting quietly, listening, and then says, "For, obvious reasons, New Alderaan has an… intense… series of buffer defenses throughout it's system. It's not enough to stop us, in this ship, though going through would hurt, but you can't get to within a light year of it without triggering their attack systems."

"So, the _Supremacy_ will be?" Rey asks.

"Knowing your husband and mine, literally hovering on the edge of Alderaanian territory, exactly one millimeter away from where their sensor range ends, and ready to jump to hyperspeed with most of the armada at a word."

"I thought they were peaceful." At least, even Threepio's image-shattering 'real version' of things didn't do anything to disabuse that idea. After all, in Rey's world, people who are looking to upend the political powers that be have a much wider range of tools at their disposal than rumor and innuendo.

"They are. They're also extremely well-defended by a wide-ranging series of satellites capable of producing lasers that'll cut most ships in half from the far side of the system. And several other mechanisms will throw so much flack into space that any lasers we aim at them will have lost significant power before reaching the planet."

"And my guess is, the day Starkiller fired, they began coming up with new ways to bend the light and bleed off the energy of a laser weapon. I know our shields use technology along those lines, so I can't imagine they aren't doing something similar," Ellie says.

"Once you get on planet, weapons are few and far between," Threepio adds, "but getting on planet is the issue."

"Oh," Rey says.

"They absolutely will not fire on us, Lady Ren," Threepio says. "They wouldn't think of it."

Rey smirks at that. "You did. And I did." And she doesn't mention, that if Pat thinks keeping the _Supremacy_ as close as humanly possible is a good idea, obviously _he_ thinks that someone might take a shot at them, too.

"But we are not New Alderaan."

Ellie's watching Rey, and thinking about what she knows about Rey and Kylo as Rey and Kylo, and about their magic. "When we get there, that first hour will be us being escorted to our rooms, given some time to relax and change, unpack if we so desire. Those rooms will be at the very least, wired for sound. They may be wired for video, too."

Rey's eyes close slowly as she drops her head down. She takes a deep breath, and lets it out slowly. Then she looks up. "You're saying that they'll be, at least, listening, the entire time I'm there."

"Yes. And they'll likely get… worried, if you suddenly vanish in the middle of the night."

Rey grits her teeth again. "Lovely. And if the room is wired for visuals, they'll likely be very surprised if someone suddenly joins me out of nowhere."

"Also correct," Ellie replies. "On the upside, if you're feeling like testing how closely they're watching you, having someone show up in the room you're supposed to be alone in would certainly do it."

Another sigh.

"But, then you'll have to answer questions on how he got there," Threepio says.

"Does this… have to be overnight? Can't I… I don't know, sleep in my ship?"

"That would be an appalling breech of hospitality. Part of doing this overnight, which is intentional, is a sign that we trust them to guard our sleep. Yes, true, we will have our own guards, but even guards cannot manage against all the mischief they could do if they so desired. This, more than the treaty, more than our words, shows that we are going with good intentions, and that we expect them to treat us with hospitality. If you leave during the night, we might as well not go." Threepio says. "It's one night, Lady Ren. You'll manage."

Rey sighs. "Of course, I'll manage. I don't want to have to."

Ellie pats her hand. "We'll keep that under consideration for further ones of these."

"Meaning?" Rey says.

"Well, sending an heir to the throne of a society we claim we're not about to do anything with is… rude. That said, there's only two places," Neither of them miss the way Threepio jerks to attention at that, "where Kylo cannot go right now, without causing a fuss, so for all the rest of them, we'll send him along, too."

"I'd appreciate that," Rey says, looking at the itinerary.

* * *

"It's overnight," Rey says to Kylo.

He looks at her for a moment, and then blinks. There's another silent moment in which his brows furrow and he rolls his lips. "But, you'll come back, right?"

"I'm not supposed to." She settles herself into his lap, and he wraps around her. "Leaving would be… rude. A sign we don't trust them to protect me."

Kylo can feel she's not thrilled on this, so he's fairly sure what the _right_ answer isn't, but he's got to try. "So… I go to you."

She hates the way this feels. "They tell me that the rooms are wired for sound and maybe video… And…"

"They'll notice if you suddenly have a guest in the middle of the night?" Kylo's lips roll again. "And… I imagine me suddenly popping up out of nowhere would likely cause a stir."

Rey offers him a limp half-smile. And a nod. "Depending on how good their security, and ours is, someone suddenly materializing in my room might involve a few squads of extremely armed people rushing in to remove said person from my room."

"Bloody right they will!" He glares. He wants to be able to sneak in. He wants every gun on the fucking planet to be aimed at anyone else who might attempt to sneak into Rey's room. And unfortunately, he doesn't know how to align those two things to his liking.

More glaring.

Another slow blink. And gritted teeth.

Then Kylo says, "I know, rationally, that we're talking about one night. I know that, in the grand scheme of things this is, _not_ a big deal."

She nods.

"I hate this."

"Me, too."

* * *

4/12/2

They're lingering over breakfast.

Rey's got time, they aren't leaving for a bit, and she doesn't have to be at the landing bay until 08:00, and Kylo's position on the subject is that the entire rest of the universe and whomever has his first appointment of the morning can fuck off royally while he sees her off.

(It's possible he's moping. It's likely she's encouraging it.)

They hear the rap of C8's knuckles on the door to their room, and then it slides open along with "Grand Marshall Frakes, Master, Mistress," and Jon heads in.

Rey blinks a little. They aren't exactly dressed. Kylo's in his pj pants, and she's in her robe.

"Come on, you can't be late for this." He lays a black garment bag on the bed, and heads over toward them at the breakfast table.

Kylo's the one who jerks into motion first. "What are you doing here?"

"Ellie didn't feel comfortable intruding, and it wouldn't have occurred to Threepio to do it, so here I am. Getting you two moving. Because," and he looks at them in their jammies, "it doesn't take a navigator to figure out neither of you were going to be excited about this."

"Does this _really_ have to happen?" Kylo asks.

Jon sighs a bit, sits at the table next to them, and pulls a muffin and the butter to him. "Honestly, at this point, yes. You can back out of a lot of things, but this is the first one, and it's important, and everyone else in the galaxy is watching—"

"Not helping," Rey says.

"Oh, please. This is whiffle compared to the K'Arans. You've got this, Rey. That said, another part of people watching is what happens when you leave. This isn't Poe heading off from some miscellaneous flight deck. This is the _Lady of the Order_ leaving on her first, real, diplomatic mission. People are going to be watching."

"You mean we don't get to say goodbye in private," Rey says.

Jon nods. He takes a bite of his muffin. "Which is why I'm here, having a bite, giving you a heads up. And reminding both of you to dress nicely for this bit here." He nods to the bag. "Outfit for you in there, Rey. You'll escort her to the ship, and then say your goodbyes, and then you'll go back to work, and she'll hang out with us for a bit while we get all the rest of the stuff ready to go."

"How many people will be watching?" Rey asks.

"Just our local newsie net. They'll film, and then broadcast, and then other newsies'll pick it up. That's the idea of this, right? Handsome Princing the shit out of it. So, go, give each other a good goodbye kiss: warm, affectionate, possibly lingering, but no tongue, and then off you go."

Kylo and Rey both sigh at that. Finally, Kylo says, "That's the most bizarrely specific set of instructions I've ever gotten."

"I'll bet," Jon replies, chewing. "These are pretty good." He swallows. "You're selling romance right now. The great romance of both the two of you, and also the long-lost Prince Ben sending his bride off to his homeland to make nicey-nice with them. So, romance, good. Sex, not so much, not on this one."

Rey raises an eyebrow. "So, you're saying there will be times when tongue kissing in public will be appropriate?"

"I'm not going to rule it out." He pats Kylo on the shoulder, stands up, and then kisses Rey's cheek. "Okay, I'm going to go linger in your office for a while. You two get dressed and ready to start Handsome Princing."

Rey and Kylo stare at each other, and then _sigh._

* * *

Threepio joins them as they leave the elevator doors. He doesn't say much, just falls into step, sort of, with them. He keeps up well enough, but he doesn't have the long, easily measured step of the other three.

"It's not my shuttle," Kylo finally says when he sees which ship the droid is moving them toward.

"Of course not. Your shuttle is a battle command ship. This one is a BR-AH-09. It's a top of the line personal cruiser, and, if you were above, and could see the wings, you'd see it's branded uniquely, for Lady Ren's personal transport," Threepio says.

Jon smiles a bit. "They could see it from under, too." Jon nods to Rey's pendant. "The Order of the Maji. Anything that moves you around is branded with that mark. The wings have the Order Hex on it, and the circle in the hex has the Maji spiral."

Kylo feels a flush of pleased warmth at that, and realizes that it's both his own, and also Rey's.

Jon grins at her. "One of the things she said to the K'Aar, which I really liked, was that her power was her own, not yours reflected. That you weren't her Master, and… Well, we're sending you off to a matriarchy, so how better to do that with your own symbol, your own style? We'll show that you're there on Order behalf, but that you are in and of yourself, a power to be reckoned with."

Rey does smile at that.

As they get a little closer, they noticed the two rows of six stormtroopers lining the way to the hatch. They also notice that the twelve of them are also wearing the Order of the Maji mark.

They're getting close enough to be overheard, so Jon keeps his voice lower as he says, "I didn't think that you'd mind if your lady had her personal escort."

Kylo nods.

"And did you think about what I'd think about it?" Rey asks.

"Yes. I assumed you'd be about as thrilled as he is to wander around with a guard trailing him, but, again, this is for the _look_ of it. Anything you go on by yourself, you will have a huge armed guard for. We're not advertising that you can level a man with a glance, because we'd prefer that if you have to do it, whoever you do it to won't expect it. If we could have kept that quiet for him, I would have welcomed it, but that ship's already jumped to hyperspace, so…"

Rey sighs. "Fair enough. The weapon they don't know about is the one they can't deflect."

"Exactly. So, where you're off being the Pretty Lady, you'll look about as dangerous as the average flower." Jon offers up a pleasant smile. "Just remember, a lot of those pretty flowers are poisonous, and more have thorns."

"Who picked them?" Kylo asks.

Threepio answers, "General Kinear did, personally, though C8 approved all of them."

That makes Kylo feel a little better. The fact that they're at the base of the hatch, and she's about to walk up that thing, and then he's going to just be stuck, here, with bugger all to keep himself properly busy… doesn't.

Jon gives his hand a quick, and discrete squeeze before heading up the hatch with Threepio.

Rey smiles up at him, but it's not a real, happy view. She thinks to him _Where do you think the newsie is?_

He glances around, but doesn't see anything that's obviously recording them. _No idea._ His hands come to cup her face. _I'll miss you._

 _I know._

He rests his forehead against hers, and she wraps her arms around him.

 _One night._ Her thought as she holds him close, and buries her head against his chest.

His chin over her head, and he holds her to his heart. _One night._

She pulls back a little, and kisses him, sweet and hard, and he, just because he can, does lick into her mouth, his tongue caressing hers before pulling back.

She breaks the kiss, looking up at him, giggling a little, touching his face, and he does have a bit of a smile on his face aimed at her. They kiss one more time, a brief caress of lip on lip, and then she steps back, turns away, and heads up the ramp to go Lady Ren the hell out of it.

Kylo stands there for a moment, watches her head up and in, and then turns to go back to the rest of his life.

* * *

It is a _nice_ ship.

Certainly the fanciest one she's ever been in. Granted, she hasn't been in a lot of ships, but this one is… nice.

She's on the bottom level right now, and can feel that just standing here is slowing things down. The stormtroopers have things they want to move into this area, including themselves, but they're nervous about crowding her, so they're all lingering, having a bit of a mental breakdown at the cognitive dissonance between orders (load the ship, get in, travel) and showing proper respect to Lady Ren (acting like she's made of spun glass and the merest hint of getting close to an inappropriate touch or remark will result in immediate death.)

Rey rolls her eyes, snorts inelegantly, feels a certain level of satisfaction at the feel of two of the stormtroopers just about passing out at that, and is very tempted to fart at them, but decides that's probably a bit too much being a real person, and heads up the spiral staircase to the second level of the ship.

"Why are we bringing so much stuff?" Rey asks once she's up there. Upstairs is even nicer. There's a lounge, a bar, a gaming table, a huge projector for entertainment. Threepio is already in there, next to an open box, programming a hairdressing droid.

There were huge bags of… stuff downstairs, and a few boxes, and… Her idea of bring themselves and a treaty does not require multiple metric tons of stuff going along with them.

"Because no one on Alderaan ever used one meter of fabric if fifteen were available," Jon replies, hopping back down to grab… whatever it is he's about to grab.

Meaning it's her, Threepio, the hair and makeup droid, and several people moving around getting things ready.

"We are going, in, as best we can, local style," Threepio adds. "We are… gently reminding them that Kylo Ren is the only legitimate heir of the Royal Alderaanian line, and as such, his wife, Lady Ren, Princess Rey, _will_ be given the proper respect."

"And you are taking a certain satisfaction in coming back and rubbing their faces in it?"

He'd smile, but he can't. "Yes, I am." He lifts the hair droid up, and gestures for Rey to sit. "This will take some time, Lady Ren, but we will have you looking the part before we land."

"Threepio…"

"We are not in private, Mistress."

Rey glances around, and yes, there are two pilots, and a few attendants, and, she's not entirely sure who everyone on the ship are.

"Will you introduce me, General?"

Threepio can't blink, but it's clear that's something that hadn't occurred to him.

"Yes, Lady, I can." Threepio turns to the first of the pilots, "Commander RE-9982, and Lt. Commander Xaviez Ralsh, this is Mistress Rey of the Maji, Consort to your Master. Lady Rey, today we have two of the highest ranked pilots in the Order taking us to New Alderaan. They are both ranked in combat and precision flying, both in low-and non-atmo flight."

Rey smiles at them, and offers her hand. Both pilots freeze, uncertain if they're allowed to touch their Master's lady, but she certainly looks like she expects, it, so… They gently take her hand in turn, very nervous as they nod to her.

"I thank you for the ride," Rey says, and they blush, and decide now is a great time to go check the flight data and ship specs one more time.

When they are, save for the other droids, alone, Rey says to Threepio, "I take it that sort of thing is not common."

"Generally, no. Many leaders treat the people who shuffle them around and make sure the things around them work and are fully staffed like furniture."

"Ah… Threepio, standing orders, any flight I'm part of from now on, any dinner we host, any… thing where there are any sort of sentients working for us, make sure I get introduced to them before whatever it is starts."

"Done, Rey." Again, he can't smile, but she can feel it.

"Threepio?"

"You are reminding me very strongly of… Leia."

Rey understands that pause is Threepio's fast mental struggle to determine how he should refer to his Princess. "She made sure she knew everyone?"

"As much as humanly possible. Her parents did, too. Obviously, on any given day they'd sweep through spaces with thousands of people, so getting to know _everyone_ wasn't possible, but anyone who they personally interacted with, down to the cleaning staff, they made sure to greet and get the names of. It made everyone feel valued and appreciated."

"And that's important."

"It is if you want people to feel secure in your rule. They want to believe you want what's best for them. That's significantly easier to do if you actually _know_ them."

Rey nods. "I'll remember that."

Threepio looks at the stairs, and then shakes his head. He takes his comm, and says, "Major RR-6892, before we hit atmo, Mistress Ren would like to greet you and your men."

She hears the other side of the comm click, followed by "I'll arrange it. Just let me know when the Lady is ready, sir."

"I will."

When the comm closes, she raises a brow to Threepio. "Not now."

He gestures to the hair droid. "Not now. When your hair is done, we'll greet the men."

Rey looks at the droid. "How long will that be?"

Threepio laughs. "Relax, Lady, this will take a while."

The little droid hovers over to her, and begins to play with her hair.

"To start, the braids. In Alderaanian culture, the length of the braid, the intricacies of the twists and turns, the value of the wrappings, all of these things are used to signal to the people around you what your intents are. There are braids for peace, for anger, for accord, for romance, for… Anything you can think to wish to convey."

Rey blinks. "Braids?"

"Some cultures use flowers to send messages, Alderaan used braids," Lady Kinear says, entering the second floor. "Good, you're getting started. Three hours may be cutting it short."

Threepio shakes his head. "Not with today's message. Alderaan of old also used flowers, too. That said, being in deep space, I didn't have the time or contacts to get the right flowers to put in your hair for this, so we're going for the braids and a circlet of silver."

Jon heads up, holding one garment bag like it's priceless. "Do _not_ let this get wrinkled."

"Did you make me a dress for this?" Rey asks.

"For this one, yes. For others, I can probably talk to my mom, but this one..." He shakes his head. "Fortunately, for what the General wanted, there are a _lot_ of images of Leia Organa out being Princess Leia, and even patterns for the outfits available. All I had to do was match your size and update the styles and colors a bit."

He hangs the bag up, and then steps over to Threepio, pulling something black out of his pocket. "Fresh off the sewing machine." He fits a black band around Threepio's arm and fastens it. "Got a nice little slit here for your hydraulics. Okay…" He fiddles with it a bit more. "Good. Perfect. In the Order, your first rank, Ensign, gets a pip," he touches one of his Order Hexes. "Usually, it goes on the cuff of your left sleeve. Next rank, Lt. gets a white stripe on that sleeve. Pip goes on the stripe, or above it if you're between stripe ranks." He taps Threepio's armband, which has three white stripes on the black band. "Three stripes is full Colonel." There's a large silver hexagon over all three of them. "The Order Hex emblazoned on them is your General's mark. I modified yours, given your… past." Threepio can't really shift around enough to see the mark on his armband without a mirror, which is why Jon's explaining it to him. "Like Rey, I gave you an Order of the Maji mark. You've got the Order Hex, with the Maji Spiral in the middle. Unlike mine," he taps his circle, "Or Lady Kinear's," both of which are the white Order circle with the rays slipping inward, bordered with silver, "You've only got the white circle. We've got the ring of silver, because we're both citizens with our full five in."

Threepio would smile if he could. "That was very… thoughtful, Jon." He gently touches where his mark of rank is.

"No problems, General." He sits next to Rey. "Okay, I'm off in a minute." He kisses her cheek, and then quietly says, "And don't worry, I'll keep him out of trouble while you're out."

Rey does smile at that. "I'll look forward to hearing about it."

Jon grins at her. "Oh no. First rule of boys' night out, is thou shalt not speak of boys' night out. It'll die with him and I and Poe."

"You're bringing Poe, too?"

"It sounded like fun." He kisses her cheek again, and flips Threepio and Ellie a lazy salute before heading off. He's just about down the stairs when he turns back, looks at Rey, grins at her, and says, "Just remember, like last time, you can kick everyone's ass at this thing, and they'll get down on their knees and thank you for it if you do."

They're both remembering a prince on the floor gasping for breath, literally thanking her for it and asking for another. Jon lips quiver into a smile, and by now, Rey can find it funny. She smirks a bit too, and says, "Oh, and that worked out so well last time!"

He winks at her, and heads off.

Threepio and Ellie watch him leave.

Rey looks back up to Threepio, trying to ignore the droid fluttering around her head. "Okay, keep going. No flowers. You were saying something about colors?"

"Indeed." He shuffles over to sit next to her. "On Alderaan each major family has it is own colors. The Colors of the Organa line were scarlet, rust, burgundy, mahogany, and deep, warm, dusty reds. In addition to that, the heir apparent wears white and or silver. And you will, whenever you are there, wear them."

"I take it we're not being subtle about my relationship with Kylo, then."

"Not at all, Princess," Threepio says. "We have Lady Kinear here as the Ambassador for the Order. You are going as Lady Ren, Princess of Alderaan."

Rey doesn't wince, but it feels _very_ odd to hear him say that to her.

He nods. "Get used to it. I am going to demand that you be accorded your correct title by marriage while you are there, and I'd rather prefer you didn't fight me on that."

"Don't we… I don't know… need a legally binding Alderaanian marriage or something?"

"The short answer is, no. The longer answer is that when you have that wedding, we will make sure to invite the higher ups of Alderaan to the event. They may claim we're jumping the gun a little, but they also claim to respect the traditions of all faiths, and your faith marries first and has weddings later, so they should, if they attempt to live up to the ideas codified in their constitution, go with it," Ellie says.

* * *

Hair takes _way_ too long.

"What is it even doing?" It doesn't feel like anything other than her scalp being yanked around is going on.

Threepio looks up from the datapad he's interfacing with.

"It's adding more hair to your hair."

Rey blinks at that. "More?"

"Yes, to get the correct look, you need at least waist length hair. So, right now, it's sewing more hair to your hair."

Rey looks startled. "Will it… come out?"

"Eventually," Ellie replies, also looking up from a datapad. "But for a week or so it'll stay snug to the roots of your hair, and you'll just have very long hair." She looks over a little more carefully. "You've added maroon streaks?"

Threepio nods. "Indeed. The effect, once braided, should be quite striking when the light hits correctly, and rather subtle the rest of the time."

Ellie quirks her head, and goes back to her datapad.

"And what will today's braids be signaling?" Rey asks.

"Today we're sending you in with braids of peace, accord, good wishes, all wrapped up in the traditional seven strand plait of the Organa family."

Rey would like to shake her head, but that sounds like getting poked in the scalp again. "And we're going to say all of that with my _hair._ "

Threepio gives off a sense of self-satisfaction at that. "Yes. For obvious reasons we do not want to attempt to prove that Kylo Ren is Ben Solo through a blood match. It can be done, but…" He waves that away. Ellie watches him carefully, and it's clear he's got to know the Amidala angle, too. "So, we are going to go in, so blatantly, visibly, Organa, that no one in their right mind will ever begin to think about suggesting that you are a fake. There's so much going on here that anyone outside the Organa line just… There are too many fine details for this not to be real."

Rey thinks about that for a moment, and then says, "Is it possible they'll decide _you're_ the pretender?"

It's clear by the way that Threepio's head twitches that _that's_ an idea that never occurred to him. That someone might suggest that he's the puppet master and these humans here are just his toys was just not in his understanding of how things could happen. He thinks more about that, long for a droid, not so long for a human, as he contemplates the idea that, to a certain extent, and to a certain point of view, that's basically what he is doing.

After six seconds, he says, "Well, if they were to suggest it, it would likely mean they've got a decent read on the subject."

* * *

Rey thinks that the part she's liking least about this is this bit here. There's just… nothing to do but sit and wait.

And get her hair pulled.

"This is really how they do it on Alderaan?"

Threepio looks up at her. "Lady Ren, would you believe me if I tell you that this is a fairly simple style, and that there were some occasions where Princess Leia had to sit for more than half a day while her hair was carefully and intricately braided?"

"I would, but I really hate to imagine it."

She has the sense that Threepio is pleased by that remark.

"She never much liked this part, either. Breha didn't, as well. 'Tradition demands' is a phrase I heard a lot while she was growing up.'"

"In a clipped, sarcastic, under the breath sort of voice?" Rey asks, looking to learn more about Leia.

"Occasionally yelled, too."

Rey sighs at that. "Demands does it? Aren't we," she gestures to indicate the whole Order and everything else, "trying to change things?"

"Well… Yes. But…" He thinks for a millisecond, the pause only noticeable to Rey because she can feel his electronic brain whirl. "Cultures are collections of lived experiences translated into histories and those histories become defining mores for people. A sort of living legend that binds them to each other.

"If we take advantage of those mores, we are more able to get them comfortable and willing to interact with them. We come not as strangers, but as… friends of a friend who we just haven't gotten to know, yet."

Ellie puts her pad down. "Call it the difference between greeting someone in their native language and greeting them in your own, just slower and louder. One of those two things is a lot more likely to make people respect you and what you've got to say."

Threepio nods. "So, we send you in local style, hearkening back to a golden age that only exists in memories and lore. You show up in a friendly, easily digested image. And you do that because you are an outsider. If, and it's a big if, Master Ren were to ever take the throne of Alderaan, and if he managed to do it with enough popular support to be welcomed warmly, then, and only then, could he, and you by extension, begin to start to shift those mores.

"And, honestly, we are going further back than is perfectly fashionable by Alderaanian standards now, but with good reason, our branch of the family has been estranged for a while, and aiming back to when it was a vibrant, living part of the tree, so to speak, will encourage warm feelings about the days of the House of Organa."

"So, I'm…"

"Fifty years out of date, but not exactly. Jon didn't copy the dresses precisely the way Leia wore them. He did update the looks a bit," Ellie says.

Threepio is gazing out at the stars whizzing by them. "Lord Bail had begun to shift things. The braids were getting simpler, and he shocked all of Alderaan by cutting his hair to match the fashion of the Republic. Breha also loosened some of the traditions, allowing Leia what her grandmother would have considered shocking freedoms in her styling and manners."

"I understand the current queen even wears her hair down from time to time, unbound, unbraided, and uncovered. Though she won't today or tomorrow," Ellie replies.

"What do you know about her?" Rey asks.

"Queen Heloise," Threepio says.

"Yes, what's… not in the reports? I know you know things that didn't get written down. Now's the time, right? When we control the sound and we're not in rooms wired to catch all of our thoughts?" Rey asks.

Threepio sighs. "Actually, before we left would have been the time, but…"

"There's distressingly little about Queen Heloise," Ellie says. "We actually…" Ellie looks genuinely distressed by this, like she, personally, failed, "put everything we could find on her in the reports."

Rey looks startled. "Really? You… and all your… whisper listeners… That's… it?"

Ellie has the grace to look a little embarrassed. "Well, she is rather young. It's hard to develop too many interesting secrets by the time you're twenty-three."

Rey blinks at that. "I was twenty-three when I left Jakku."

"And did you have any interesting secrets?" Ellie asks.

"It didn't take me long to begin collecting them," Rey says.

"Indeed. And I'm sure she's got a good number of them, but… The secrets she's collected are about other people, and we do have them. Her own life is… well… You read the reports. She's young, well-liked, has done exactly nothing to ruffle any feathers, and the various factions are happy, enough, with her that they aren't actively plotting to get rid of her, too much, but by throwing Kylo into the mix, things are destabilizing, because maybe she's not the best, or only, bet in town, and…" Ellie waves.

"Here we are, attempting to make it clear that we're not actually throwing Kylo into the mix," Rey says. "While at the same time also making it clear that anyone who prefers Kylo knows where to find him."

Threepio and Ellie nod at that.

Rey sighs. She fiddles with the armrest on the seat for a bit, and then says, "Who's… supposed to be next in line? Am I going to meet them?"

Ellie smiles. "We'll turn you into a politician, yet."

Rey looks alarmed.

"It's a compliment, Rey," Threepio says. "You've made a good leap there. Queen Heloise likely doesn't care nearly as much about Ben Solo being thrown back into the mix as much as Grigory Antillies' parents. Grigory is her, current, most likely successor, until, of course, the Queen marries and has children of her own."

"His parents care more than he does?" Rey asks.

"He is six years old. I daresay his current position of Prince Grigory is a bit nebulous to him," Threepio replies.

Rey thinks about that, and then says, "The ones who aren't trying to get rid of her right now, too much, but could, maybe, decide they wanted to, if things changed. They're the ones who really care about what the once Ben Solo might add to the mix?"

"Right, because he, right here, right now, has, whether he wanted to or not, joined their ranks of people who might benefit immensely if she were to suddenly no longer be Queen. And, of course, any potential child you may have takes that even further into the future, and a wider array of people."

"And I'll meet these people?" Rey says.

"It's likely you'll meet at least some of them. As well as a few who are jealously guarding Queen Helene's position, and hoping for that position to continue on for generations to come," Threepio says.

"But you didn't give me dossiers on all of them and their interests."

"No," Ellie replies. "Two reasons, one: we didn't want to prejudice you ahead of time. It's enough that we know. And two: you'll have a better feel for the impulses and emotions of those around you than our spies can gather, and you going in blind means we'll get a better check on what our spies tell us."

"You don't trust the spies?" Rey asks. Of all the things they've talked about that one confuses her the most.

Ellie smiles. "Not exactly how I'd put it. It's very easy to just get things wrong. Misunderstand, not see all the angles, something like that. Easier yet when you're dealing in rumors, half-heard conversations, and filling in the bits of what isn't said between the lines. A good spy does all of those things, but, good though he may be, he might just be wrong. And if he's been caught… The easiest way to neutralize a spy isn't to terminate him. You leave him in place and tailor your messages to and around him so he sends what you want him to send back to his handlers."

"At last count, there are six hundred and forty-three spies currently active in the ranks of the Order, and we keep close watch on them, and feed them a careful diet of assignments, conversations, reports and whatnot, making sure their handlers get steady intel of exactly what we want them to know," Threepio says. "How many spies we don't know about double checking those reports, assignments, and conversations is the interesting bit, but… That's just running any political organization. As soon as you're a power to be reckoned with, there will be spies."

"Wait, does Kylo know that?"

Threepio would look exasperated if he could. "I do not know, Lady Ren. I can say he has been sent reports about it."

Rey nods, and then closes her eyes, and hopes she looks like she's just pondering these ideas. Speaking of spies, Colonel Jefferies is just quietly sitting there, reading his datapads, not intruding, but he's certainly _there._

He was there for the K'Arans, and obviously Threepio trusts him to write up these contracts, but… What does he say, and to whom, about her and the things she's been doing?

 _Spies._

It takes a few seconds, but then Kylo's voice in her mind responds with, _Spies? What's going on?_

 _Did you know there's more than 600 of them, on the Supremacy?_

Quiet on his side for a moment, and then. _I think I read a report on that._

 _You read a report and that was that?_

She can feel the shrug. _Well, it's not like one could wander into my presence without me noticing, and… Kinear wrote the report, and he seemed to think they were useful. He also pointed out that just because we knew about 600 of them, didn't mean there weren't thousands, and given the size of our compliment now, maybe tens of thousands more._

 _Great._

 _Yeah, well, at least for the time being, I'm getting them to do work for me, so… Maybe they send reports back, but they still pilot my ships where I want them to go, and keep watch on the Rim, and… All the stuff._

 _I guess so._

More quiet. _How's it going?_

 _Boring. I'm getting my hair done._

 _Braids?_

Lots _of braids._ She can feel his amusement. _What are you doing?_

 _More reports._

 _I'll let you get back to them._

 _Thanks._ And she feels Kylo's mind fade from hers.

* * *

As Rey and Colonel Jefferies greet the men downstairs, Ellie quietly says to Threepio, "That's a very Naboon hair piece you added to that look."

"Is it?"

She stares at him coolly.

"Have they taken you deep enough into their confidence to tell you what name they use when they're… flying under the scanners?"

Threepio cannot raise an eyebrow, but he can cock his head a little, so that gets the job done.

Ellie smiles. "Amidala. Tell me General, if this goes well, will we make a play for Naboo? I intend to take Lady Ren there for… a pleasant few days of sightseeing and getting a feel for palaces and how… Queens behave sometime the month after next."

"They know." Threepio didn't know that. He should have, as soon as Kylo asked if that was his grandmother… There's no way he should have been able to identify her, let alone from an image in his head, but… They know.

"They know. I'm… doing my best to not understand how they know, but they know."

Threepio's voice is nervous when he says, "How?"

"Vader is dead, isn't he?"

"I have no reason to believe otherwise."

"Nor did I, until Kylo mentioned that's who told him about Padme."

Threepio snorts something that could be a laugh. "Have you not heard? As per the will of the Force, no one is ever, really, gone."

"Ah… Ghosts in a somewhat more… literal… sense than we generally mean."

"Exactly." He's quiet, remembering another lady of dark hair and dark eyes and gentle manners all wrapped around a spine of steel. "Tell me, Lady, can we make a decent play for Naboo?"

"If there's a girl child of the right temperament… I won't live to see it, but you will. It's… possible. Long, but not impossible, odds."

He nods. "What's more likely is an alliance, a… Princess of Alderaan, and perhaps, a Prince of Naboo… I understand there are currently ten of them of… what will be reasonable ages, and likely several more in the next few years."

Ellie certainly looks intrigued by that idea. "An eventual granddaughter. Her Royal Highness of Naboo and New Alderaan… With a very good chance, should she so desire, to stand for election to Master of the Order. Both cultures are… fond of each other. Warm bonds that go way back, though from what I can tell, they don't precisely know _why_ Bail and Breha were always so… accommodating to them. And… were the Order to move into this, you'd have a perfect supportive triangle.

"I know Rey and Kylo don't want it. The… daughter… you're envisioning would have to have much more of her grandmother, and great grandmother, in her than Kylo does."

That's so blindingly obviously true that Threepio sees no reason to evade about it. "He's still… very angry… at Leia for how he was raised. I wonder what sort of politician we might have seen out of him if he'd not been… Ben."

"And who was Ben?" Ellie asks.

They hear Rey starting to move back up the steps.

"Ask him. I daresay he trusts you enough to tell you."

* * *

Rey's feeling a bit nervous as she steps out of the refresher, hair done, in her new outfit. Unlike some of her previous finery, there are… expectations that go with this. An ideal along with an image.

But, as she steps out, she feels Threepio relax.

"Good?" she asks.

He's silent for a moment, and she can feel his brain whirling, too many things at once to make a coherent sentence right this second, and then it clears. "Yes, Lady, it is." He waves to the window. "Come, look. That tiny blue dot," though the tiny blue dot is rapidly getting closer and closer to them. "That's New Alderaan."

"How did they end up here? Is this part of the Alderaan system?"

"No," Ellie says, standing up to join Rey and Threepio at the window. "Alderaan was the only planet in its system that could easily support human life. Thirty-five years ago, this was Glendevia IV. It was the Emperor's personal pleasure planet. This is where he'd come for his own private time. He'd entertain officers here. And occasional heads of state he wanted to impress. His Mistress's unofficial court was here."

"Unofficial?"

"She held her official court on Coruscant. Imperial City. This is where she'd take people who wanted or needed time with her, or her man, outside the gaze of the rest of the Empire."

"Have you been here before?" Rey asks.

"No." Ellie answers, "This was the palace of his last Mistress, and we were not friends. Selina Beau, his third mistress, kept her official and unofficial court at Imperial City."

"And after the war, as part of the Concordance, Glendevia IV became New Alderaan," Threepio adds. "And yes, I have been here before, but after it became New Alderaan."

"Did… Leia and Han never lived there, did they?" Rey asks.

"No. Officially, Leia was one of the Senators from New Alderaan, but she lived wherever the senate was, and that was never New Alderaan. She did, once they got some suitable buildings up, have a suite here, and occasionally spent a night or two, but that was it. Kylo has never set foot here."

Rey nods at that, looking at the bluish-green orb rapidly getting larger in the window. She rubs her lips together. "Should I be… setting up… a court, or shadow court, or…"

Ellie's very pleased to see that question. "Rhetta, The Emperor's Fourth and Last Mistress, set this up because Selina, his third one, had been his Mistress for going on to twenty-nine years. Many of her favorites held a grudge, or suddenly weren't favorites any longer, and wanted a discreet way to… either mend fences, build bridges, or whatever metaphor you like."

"And they wanted a way to do it without looking like they were doing it," Threepio says. "By the time Lady Beau fell, the Rebellion was going strong, and we used… friends in the right places, to… gently shift certain opinions and feelings, and occasionally, offer a dose of discreet poison at the right time."

"What?" Rey says.

"Apparently, if you had been very well situated in the friendship of one mistress, and suddenly she was no longer in favor, which meant you, too, were now longer in favor, you might decide that, just possibly, the Empire wasn't all it was cracked up to be, especially since the Rebellion was starting to win some battles, and, if, just possibly, the right person whispered the right words in your ears, then maybe, you might decide to… do something about it," Threepio says.

Ellie smirks. "Poison has long been the weapon of a smaller force going up against a larger, better armed, and better equipped one. Get the right person into the kitchen at the right place, and you can do more damage to an army than you can with an entire brigade of of stormtroopers."

Threepio inclines his head. "I was gratified to see how thoroughly controlled the kitchens of the _Supremacy_ were."

Rey's not sure what to do with that, so she sits back, and contemplates the blue green orb below them.

* * *

Rey feels it the moment they break atmo and begin the process of venting the atmo from the ship and importing the local air to acclimate them and average out the pressure.

It's… real… in a way atmo on a ship, even one as big as the _Supremacy_ just isn't.

And this… She breathes deeply. It's rich and warm, humid. How long has it been since she's tasted warm, damp air, alive with the feel of trees and plants and… They haven't even opened the hatch yet, and already she wants to leap out and just _feel_ a living planet under her feet again.

"You look very eager, all of a sudden," Ellie says as they feel another shift in the motion of the ship. They've hit final descent, the last few meters where they gently hover down.

"I think I am," Rey says, even if it is just eager to smell air that isn't reprocessed through a billion scrubbers or sucked clean of any moisture or life by soul-stealing cold.

There's a very slight rustle of sensation as the landing pads touch pavement, and then, they hear the captain say, "And we've touched down. About ten minutes to get everything settled, the hatch open, and the men out, and you'll be free to deport."

"Well, then," Ellie says, trundling toward the refresher. "I'll touch up, and then down we'll go."

"We're the last ones off?" Rey asks Threepio.

"That is the idea, Lady Ren. For this bit here, our 'entourage' will exit, form two flanking lines, and we'll deport between them. Then we'll be greeted by whomever our handlers will be. They'll take us into the palace, and to our rooms. We'll have another hour to change into formal outfits, and then dinner."

"We're changing again?"

"Oh, yes, Lady, this is… Not nearly _Alderaan_ enough for a formal dinner."

Rey looks at her outfit, the long-sleeved gray dress, and the maroon and silver over-dress. "We're not doing my hair again?"

"No. You can undo it when you sleep, because we'll do a different style, with a different message, tomorrow, but this part will stay the same."

She's relieved to hear that, then another thought hits, "What happens with all of this clothing when we're done. I mean… I'm not supposed to wear this again, right?"

That takes Threepio up short. "I'll admit I've never thought of that."

"Does it just get… tossed out… sit in my closet forever?"

Ellie joins them, linking her arm through Rey's. "Depending on how serious you and Kylo are about the Handsome Prince and His Lady bit, and how successful you are at it, some of it will end up in museums, some in fashion institutes, some will go to costuming workshops, and some will be recycled into other outfits."

Rey blinks, hard, at that. "Museums?"

"Certainly, people find clothing interesting and like to look at it. When we go to Naboo, we'll have to visit the palace. There are displays of the fashion of the various queens there. I imagine at least some of the gowns will be of interest to you, and perhaps pictures of them will be of interest to Kylo."

They hear the sound of the hatch opening, and boots marching. "They don't sound like an entourage," Rey says.

"Yes, I know. You can take the stormtrooper out of the uniform, but you can't take the trooper out of the man," Ellie says.

Rey doesn't think that's true, but it likely doesn't matter.

"Time to go," Threepio says, beginning the long and laborious descent down the stairs to the lower level.

Rey takes a breath and begins.

* * *

The air is sweet, heavy with moisture, perfumed with flowers and trees and… Alive. They're not in a standard space port. Unlike most of the landing pads Rey's been on, crowded with ships, reeking of fuel, mechanical lubricants, and the men and droid who tend the ships, this is a small, flat disk hovering over a garden.

She closes her eyes for a second and just breathes.

And then on a long exhale, she opens them, and walks with Ellie and Threepio to the small crowd who've gathered to greet her.

They're a few steps away from the ship, with her honor guard keeping pace when Threepio stiffens. It's… physically imperceptible, but Rey _feels_ it.

Ellie does, too, "General?" she says, voice quiet.

"The smaller woman with the black hair in the light green dress. That's the Queen."

Ellie grins like this is the best news she's ever heard. She barely whispers, "We're not supposed to meet her until later."

" _I know._ " Threepio's voice is tense.

Rey's not sure what to do with this. Ellie and Threepio are… tense, nervous, not scared, but thrown. Unsettled. They don't know if this is good or not. And… On the far side of the walkway… Rey clears her mind and lets herself _feel._

It's not much use. There are too many people all around them. The stormtroopers are too close. The Queen's entourage is at least twenty-five people, and, all she can get are impressions from this distance, and she can't pinpoint who is feeling what.

Nervous. That's the main feeling she's getting, everyone is _nervous._

For a moment, Rey's on edge, and then something occurs to her, _everyone_ is nervous. Everyone. That's bloody stupid. No one's armed. There are no guns aimed at anyone right now. The worst that any of the people around them right now could possibly do is just insult one another.

It's… silly. She supposes a certain amount of nervous from the New Alderaan side makes sense. They don't know how this will shake things up.

But, for them… She relaxes. Kylo had said it, taking a non-aggression treaty to a pacifist government that they can crush with two-thirds of the armada in reserve is playing on the easy level. It'd be _nice_ if this works out, but if it doesn't… It's not like the deal with the K'Arans where they'd be out eight billion credits. After all, if they don't take her up on her non-aggression deal, it's not like New Alderaan is suddenly going to develop a galaxy class navy and attack with it.

She feels the nervousness start to peel away.

And standing here, on a planet alive and vibrant, about to meet… her queen? Rey wonders if that has to be true, after all, if she is, somehow, Princess Rey of New Alderaan, then that would make Heloise Talmaash her Queen. She has the sense that if she did something to indicate that, it's entirely likely she'd so thoroughly surprise Threepio he might somehow, defying anatomy and logic, manage to get a nosebleed.

She doesn't know why that idea amuses her so much, but it does.

Three meters away from the New Alderaan delegation, Princess Rey of New Alderaan, smiles.

* * *

Helene Talmaash, current High Viceroy to Queen of Alderaan, takes one look at Rey, in her finery, in her dull gray and maroons of the house of Organa _,_ sprinkled with the silver of the prime heir,standing next to a golden droid, and just about swallows her tongue.

She doesn't hiss at Organa, _You didn't tell me they had Threepio,_ but only because Organa is too damn young to know why it matters. So is the Queen, who demanded to come to this, and is currently standing, as Lady Ren clasps her hands, bringing her cheek to Rey's, and warmly welcoming her.

This is _not_ how this was supposed to work out. Organa had a simple job, go to the _Supremacy,_ make sure that Kylo Ren _wasn't_ Ben Solo, and then leave. It really shouldn't have been that difficult. Ben Solo had been happily, blissfully, gloriously _dead_ as best anyone knew, and all Organa had to do was make sure he stayed that way.

Come back with one, easy report, 'Nope, not Ben Solo, no idea what he's on about,' and done.

But no, that bastard came back with news that, as best he could tell Kylo Ren was Ben Solo, and that they'd be negotiating a non-aggression pact with the Order, and the entire remnants of the Organa House and their allies lit up like the Critherine Lights on First Spring Day, and…

And then some asshole, and she knows which asshole did it, Frasier Antillies hasn't been happy with the Talmaash branch of the royal family for years, and as soon as Ben Solo was a going concern again, he dug as far into the records as he could, hoping that that stupid bloody contract that took the Organas out of the running had some fucking wiggle room in it, and that bitch! Leia… Three days after his fucking birthday. THREE DAYS.

And there's Threepio. Droids can't smirk. They just can't, but he is. She knows it. The last time she saw him was at the signing of the treaty that withdrew the House of Organa from the running, and here he is again, with a new Organa, all dressed up in the colors of her house _,_ proclaiming her Princess Rey, which… fuck, legally, she bloody well is.

Unless Kylo Ren isn't Ben Solo. Even if the contract had been signed before his birthday, he'd still be granted the stupid title just as a courtesy. And thus, so would his spouse. After all, they'd written the damn thing to make it look like Leia had just shifted her focus, not like they were booting her, body and heir, out of the running forever.

 _Fuck!_

She eyes soldiers who supposedly aren't soldiers who are here with their Queen, because whatever the hell it is Rey may be on New Alderaan, she's obviously their Queen at home, and… She blinks, really seeing the people in front of them, not just the golden droid and Leia Organa's doppelganger. That's not standard Order branding. She thinks hard, trying to remember what Threepio said as he introduced everyone because there's no chance he didn't mention why they aren't wearing standard Order branding…

"Mistress Rey of the Maji, Lady Ren of the Order, Princess Rey of New Alderaan…" That's what Threepio had said. The old biddy next to her was Ambassador Kinear of the Order, and he's General… a fucking General now, sigh… General Threepio of the Order of the Maji.

That's it. They're the Order of the Maji. Interesting. Lady Ren has… some backing of her own…

She watches as the Order of the Maji contingent greets their way through the line of higher ups among her own contingent. They weren't able to find out much about Lady Ren. Young, obviously. From… maybe Jakku. Maybe. Orphaned, or at least no acknowledged family. No name beyond Ren. Possibly part of the Resistance, for a little while, maybe, though several New Alderaanians had also been part of the Resistance, and none of them knew her, and there were no records of her in the official documents. But, given her current position… Well, Kylo Ren is a young man, and if the only way to shift the Order to Organa's liking was to honey trap him… She wouldn't put something like that past Leia Organa, especially if she got some fat, happy grand babies out of the deal. And, while very little is known about Lady Ren, Lord Ren… How hard would it be to tempt the man who used to be a monk with a willing and enthusiastic woman? And how likely would a man, tempted away from his vows, rush into a marriage immediately thereafter to salvage whatever was left of his soul?

That is, assuming anything of his days as a Jedi stuck. They must have, at least on some level.

And, of course, what would a lonely, sad man do, in order to make that pretty, and enthusiastic woman, happy with him?

No, she wouldn't put dangling a pretty girl in front of her son past Leia Organa.

Rey continues moving down the line. She has a pleasant open smile, and seems to be enjoying herself. She does fiddle a bit with some of the finery, and it's obvious to Helene she's not used to this level of _fashion._

But that makes sense, too. Orphans generally don't find themselves rolling in piles of expensive material goods. Even here, where they have a very plush safety net for children without parents, they don't generally wear designer, bespoke clothing worth thousands of credits.

And if she's an orphan, that would make another bit of intel they got about her make sense, she may teach or run an orphanage. There have certainly been times when she, and occasionally Kylo, have been seen with a collection of children. They don't _think_ any of the children are biologically theirs, but they also do not _know._ The youngest of the children they've seen is the wrong color to belong to both of them, and most of the others are too old to belong to Rey, or realistically to Ben Solo, who would have had to have still been Ben Solo when he sired them.

Helene keeps watching. There's nothing… special… about Rey. She's attractive, but not beautiful. She can't immediately see why Ren would have chosen her as his mate, but… Again, if women weren't exactly a common occurrence for him, just having a fairly decent looking one around who seemed, or even was, genuinely interested in and cared for him may have done it.

The only thing they could get concrete intel on was that apparently she and Lord Ren have a tendency to wander about on the _Supremacy_ and scandalize some of the watchers by being obnoxiously in love. So, however it is things started with them, they appear to have moved in a direction that's to the satisfaction of both Rens.

Knowing they're honeymooning isn't the kind of information that Helene was hoping to have, though.

Knowing that fucking Threepio was going to show up for this thing, let alone that he'd have designed it to make everyone take one look at this girl and see Leia and Breha, would have been useful.

She glares, mentally (It wouldn't do for any of this to be seen on her face.) at Organa, wondering now how much of his slip ups on this come from not knowing any better, and how much of it comes from looking forward to a day where the House of Organa is again on the top of the heap, not supporting it.

Organa, standing next to her, a bland, pleasant smile on his face, greets Rey. He also takes her hands, and kisses her cheek, and says, "Greetings, my cousin. We'll be hosting you in my family's section of the palace."

Rey's voice is soft and light, and she seems quite pleased by this. "I didn't realize the Organas still had a place in the palace."

"Well, palace might… give the wrong impression. It's a massive compound where most of the main political players have at least an apartment, and often a floor of rooms for entertaining. It's just easier to live where you work, and have a place to put the people you need to meet with." He smiles gently. "That said, my aunty, your mother-in-law, still has a suite. We figured that it'd be fitting to open it up and air it out for you."

Rey's smile is genuine. "Thank you. I appreciate it." Then she steps over to greet Helene.

* * *

When they get into easy speaking distance, Threepio takes a step forward. He's not exactly in front of Rey, he's still to her left, but he is closer to the New Alderaanians who are here to greet them.

"Queen Heloise, we are honored that you would come to attend upon us."

She nods at Threepio and smiles at him. "General Threepio, I found myself impatient, and uninterested in dithering about, waiting for later this evening. I hope I have not upset the delicate balance of plans too badly."

"You are a Queen, madam. We shall rebalance for you. May I present Mistress Rey of the Maji, Lady Ren of the Order, and Princess Rey of New Alderaan, and Ambassador Kinear of the Order?"

The Queen smiles at both of them, and steps forward. Her hands, both of them, are extended, and Rey understands that it's her job to step forward. She does so, meeting the Queen between their delegations, and grasping her hands. Queen Heloise gently kisses each of Rey's cheeks, and smiles at her, while quietly saying, "As you were walking toward us, it looked like you'd found a good joke. Care to let me in?"

Rey feels the smile on her face. Heloise is young, and warm, and just… feels _good_ to be near. "I'm not sure if it's a good joke, but I'll share it. I was feeling how nervous everyone around us is, and… It's funny, isn't it?"

Heloise offers up a small, naughty grin. "Well, on my side, they're unhappy because I'm not supposed to be here, and now they wonder why I am. And on your side?"

"I think, on my side, most of the nervousness was my own."

"Is my reputation that imposing? I keep telling them to stop spreading the rumors about being half-dragon."

Rey laughs a little. She doesn't know what a dragon is but understands from Heloise's feelings that they're supposed to be angry and scary. "Dreadful. I was expecting fangs and claws."

Heloise squeezes her hands. "No claws."

"Nope. Uh… I'm sorry, I'm new to this and still learning. Do I introduce you to my people?"

"I wouldn't mind, and then I introduce you to mine."

"Okay," and Rey gets to it. As she's naming her cohort, this is going well. There's… something… behind the friendly demeanor of the Queen, but it's not… bad. And she is a little nervous about it, but… She wants Rey to think well of her. That's definitely part of this. And… if she manages it, then… Something. She's not thinking of it, mostly working on the more surface levels of being calm and pleasant and making Rey _like it_ here, and like _her_.

That's very important to the Queen.

As they move to the other side, to the New Alderaan delegation, Rey begins to get… maybe… a better idea of why it's so important that she like the Queen. A good half of the people in this group are loyalists to the Talmaash family. But the other half are not particularly tied to the Talmaash faction. No one here is actively hostile, but a few of them wouldn't mind, at all, if Talmaash wasn't ruling forever.

She has the feel that right now, the status quo is acceptable, but only because change is unpredictable, but if anything about change began to look good… Status quo could move into second place.

Rey gets it as they're shaking hands with a few Antilies. Some of the people here are afraid of Ben Solo coming in and upsetting things by adding himself to the list of contenders, but some isn't most, or even a strong minority. Some of them are hoping that if he, through Rey, can be wooed to supporting a faction, that will give them that much greater a position of power. And some of them fear that.

After all, Alderaan is peaceful, and, of course, inner-Alderaanian politics wouldn't dream of raising an armed hand against each other, but that doesn't mean the addition of a huge military force, one with a massive population base, at least compared to their own, and the ability to shift the tides of the wider galaxy, wouldn't make a good friend on the local level, too.

And the Queen… She's also interested in Ben Solo… And… The conclusion Rey's drawing doesn't _feel_ right. The Queen very much wants Rey to be her friend, her ally. That's clear. She's going out of her way to make Rey like her. But she's also, as they're moving and greeting other members of the higher ups of Alderaan, very aware of the fact that this is a birth right monarchy maintained by marriages and bloodlines.

Rey's making her brow _not_ furrow, because the most obvious level of what she's putting together here is that the Queen, who is not married, wants to secure her position by a link to Ben Solo. A marriage link. That would absolutely guarantee her own position, and the position of her offspring. She's the child of a link between the Antilles and Talmaash families, and if she could hook Ben Solo into that line, that would make their children Antilles-Talmaash-Organas, all three of the surviving family lines… But that's… wrong.

It's the right conclusion but… not for this? Kylo is _beyond_ married. She is here as his _wife_ and _everyone_ is aware of that.

She's about to get more confused, when they step to Samanth Organa. For a heartbeat, Rey's afraid that that feeling of frustrated anger is coming from him, but he smiles, grasps her hands, calls her cousin (speaking of exactly how married Kylo Ren is, she's being called _cousin_ and then granted access to Leia Organa's rooms) and makes her feel welcome.

That frustration is _next_ to him.

Oh. Interesting. Everyone else has referred to her as _Lady Ren._ This one… The Viceroy, calls her Mistress Rey. Not Lady Ren, and _not_ princess. This is the one who wants Kylo Ren to be a pretender, though she's mentally glaring daggers at Threepio…

Threepio who is slightly behind her and _gloating._

Oh… Very interesting. This is one of the ones who slipped the knife into Leia Organa's back. One who… she's not thinking about why she wanted Leia gone so badly. It's there, under all the other thoughts, but it's so foundational that Rey can't untangle it enough from the higher level ideas to figure out exactly what it is.

But whatever it was, Leia was _not_ someone this woman was fond of, and having her… Apparently, Threepio's costuming worked exactly the way he was hoping for, this woman is staring at Rey, but seeing Leia… just show up all of a sudden…

Interesting.

Viceroy Talmaash, who very briefly touched her hands, then says, "You should find the Organa suite comfortable. It's been closed for quite a while, but we've maintained it, never sure when Leia might be back. Is it possible that Leia will be joining us again? She's, obviously, no longer busy resisting, so there's no reason why she couldn't return to us, is there?"

That flatfoots Rey, because she's not sure if they know Leia's dead. Fortunately, Ellie's screaming in her head, LEIA IS NOT DEAD.

"As I'm sure you know, Leia is a force all her own. I'm sure if she desires to return, she will do so."

Helene has a sly look on her face, like she knows exactly what Rey's skirting around with her comment. "I was under the impression that Lord Ren had mentioned to Amelda Long that his mother was no longer among the living."

 _Name drop,_ Ellie thinks to Rey. _She wants you to know she's on good terms with the Longs._

Rey thinks fast. That was at the Last Night party. Long... Who was she? She sat next to Kylo on the other side, so she was a big deal of some sort... Leader of the largest system in the galaxy. What was he saying... He was letting Ben Solo out into the galaxy. What did he say… "He did mention that perhaps her spirit was with us that night, though her physical body was not."

Talmaash nods. "Ah, easily misunderstood."

"May I introduce Ambassador Kinear?" Rey asks the Viceroy.

Helene takes Ellie's hands and they both nod at each other.

Then Threepio goes off script. He steps up on his own, and offers his hands. He hasn't done that with anyone else here, because his hands just aren't very good for shaking, but… "Helene!" His voice is warm and pleased, and Rey knows that if he had the kind of face that could emote, there'd be a warm smile and icy cold eyes.

She feels Ellie go still next to her, and revisits what just happened. With a quickly inhaled breath, she gets it. Even here, on New Alderaan, Threepio is still a _droid._ He's a servant, and at best an adjunct. He's not… a person.

And he just walked up to one of the most powerful women on this planet and used her first name, like an _equal_.

Rey lets the smile crest over her face.

Helene is staring at his hands, and she invisibly, but tangibly (at least to Rey) grits her teeth, and takes Threepio's hands. "Threepio. It's been a long time."

"Yes, it has. It's good to be back, though."

"I'm glad you think so. Perhaps we could tempt you into regular visits?"

"Perhaps. I know Colonel Jefferies will be eagerly speaking to Lord Antillies as they go through the negotiations to see about setting up an Order embassy here. I'm sure something along those lines would call me here frequently."

"Of course." Talmaash's smile is perfect. "I'm sure you're tired from your trip. And I know Samanth would like to lead you to your rooms. It was his idea to air out the Organa suite. Though, I'm sure you don't actually need a guide, do you?"

"I do not, but I appreciate the gesture." He glances to Samanth. "And I certainly wouldn't mind getting caught up on how the rest of the family is. We didn't speak of your father much last time, though I hope you remembered me to him?"

"Of course, I did!"

Rey feels how annoyed Helene is by that. Organa didn't remember Threepio to _her,_ and she does _not_ want him here.

Threepio carefully takes Rey's hand, or at least tries, and Rey understands that she's supposed to loop her arm with his, and does so. He then pats the back of her hand. "At some point before we leave, we'll have to sneak away for a bit to visit Almath's bakery. If for no other reason than to get Ostrae a few new goodies to sample."

Samanth is very pleased by the fact that Threepio remembers his father is a baker.

"His shop is still near the center of town?" Threepio asks.

"Of course," Samanth smiles, while leading them away from the larger crew toward the palace, and their rooms. "When we broke ground here, Papa wanted to be near the center of things, but away from politics. Back then Resilience, the capital city, was only a few intersecting streets, around a park."

"You built a park first?" Rey asks.

"Built might be an overstatement," Samanth says. "A space was left open for one. If there's anything that an Alderaanian loves, it's a garden. And… well… they were starting from scratch, laying things out with a plan for how they'd grow, so… There was room for gardens built in."

"I've been told Resilience is a beautiful city," Ellie says.

"It truly is. When we get to your rooms, you'll see. Leia had a good eye for locations, and… From the east balcony, you're overlooking the Remembrance Garden, and to the west, there's the city of Resilience."

"We aren't in the city?" Rey asks.

"Not for another twenty years, probably. Right now, we're about three klicks to the east of the edge of the city."

"And city is used… advisedly," Threepio says. "When last I was here the population was 1.26 million and growing. A good-sized settlement, but…"

"Nothing to make Coruscant blink. I know," Samanth replies. "More hope than reality, but so much of New Alderaan works that way. We're building toward our hopes, and living in the service of making them reality."

"I think that's an excellent way to build," Rey says.

"And it's certainly what we're doing with the Order, too," Ellie adds.

"The dreams may not be obtainable, not within our lifetimes," Threepio adds, "but there is value in the work of trying to achieve them."

"Well, put, General," Ellie says. "And, given the time frame you work on, perhaps this will happen in your lifetime."

"Perhaps."

* * *

They follow a gently sloping path away from the flight deck… landing bay… any word Rey knows for a place ships land and stay feels oddly out of place describing the hovering disk.

 _What's it called when the landing bay hovers over the ground? s_ he thinks to Kylo.

A moment later she gets a somewhat surprised, _Hovers over the ground? a_ s a response.

 _Yes, we've landed, and there's this… huge, probably half a klick across, hovering disk. Our ship and several others are on it. Now we're heading away, toward the palace, but I don't want to sound like an idiot when I talk about the landing bay._

Quiet on Kylo's side for a moment. She's got the sense he may be asking C8 or looking it up.

 _Is it on a suspensor field, or is it built above the ground?_

 _I think it's on fields._ She glances behind them, and doesn't see anything attaching the landing zone to the ground, but she does see field generators. _Definitely fields._

 _It's a heilio-pad. Apparently, they use them when the ground underneath is unsuitable for providing a stable landing spot for crafts. Swampy under there?_

Rey looks closer, while trying to not look like she's gawping around, but under the pad is dark, so it's hard to make out details. _Rocky. Big boulders._

 _That'd do it. How's it going?_

 _Interesting. Warm welcome so far._

 _Good._

 _The Queen's very interested in you._

 _In a good way?_

 _Not in a bad one._

 _Why does that feel ominous._

 _Yeah, that's what I'm thinking, too. On the upside she's very friendly and wants me to like her quite a lot._

 _So, that's probably good, right?_

 _I hope. I'm wondering if she's intending to ask a massive favor, though._

 _Ah._

 _Ah?_

 _Ah. You're the one on the ground. What do you feel?_

 _Less intimidated than I was expecting to, and acutely missing a world where there are plants and weather other than snowy._

She feels him smile at that. _Well, we are supposed to carve out some time to go visit Achc-To soon. I bet there are places there that aren't arctic wastelands._

She mentally sniggers at that. _Okay, they're talking to me, I need to focus._

 _Love you._

 _I know._

* * *

Kylo sits back at his desk, staring at his datapad, and the quick research he did. He's fairly sure that Rey had absolutely no need, whatsoever, to find that out. She just wanted to touch base with him a little.

And that makes him feel good.

* * *

From the heilio-pad, down the path, through… a garden. Everything here looks like gardens to Rey. There's nothing untamed or wild about this area, though everything is brimming with carefully tended, verdant plants.

Graceful trees, carefully shaped shrubs, flowering plants, so, so, so many flowers.

She once said she hadn't known there was that much green in the universe. And that was true. It's also true right now that she hadn't known, hadn't dreamed, or guessed, or imagined that there were this many _flowers_ in the universe, let alone on this one path on this one town of this one planet.

She's not entirely sure she's even _seen_ most of these colors before, let alone the flowers that they grace.

 _Would it be a horrible breach of etiquette if I ask about the flowers? s_ he thinks to Ellie.

Ellie smiles. "I've been in space a long time, Lord Organa, and haven't seen flowers like this in even longer. Would you do an old lady a favor and tell me about them?"

Organa beams. "I'd love to. In addition to civics and politics, I studied horticulture at university, and I rarely get to do anything with it."

* * *

It is, on the most literal of levels, a different world. Not only on the level that they are walking through a garden devoted _just to roses_ , and that all of these flowering plants, with their myriad colors, shapes, and blooms are all variations of the same species, but also in that Samanth Organa, who is not all that much younger that Kylo, grew up here, in Resilience, and at the age of fifteen, he began to work with the Alderaanian government, as an adjunct to the Talmaash house. At that point, the Organa House as a political entity was literally just Leia, and she was off being the First Senator from New Alderaan most of the time. As he got older, he was sent to Septin to study political theory, and supposedly to learn more about 'good' governance, and while there, he also took a concentration in horticulture, because, the _ideal_ Alderaan is a place of agriculture.

As they walk through a crushed stone path, and bushes and trees and carpets of flowers, so many flowers, Rey tries to imagine Ben Solo, born on New Alderaan, though, given his birthday, there wasn't yet a New Alderaan to be born on. But, brought here as a child. Raised among people building a town and society, growing things...

Part of her likes the idea. She can see bits of Kylo, the part of the man who is tearing down old things and replacing them with new. The one who wants living things surrounding his own court on his ship. The farm boy who spent more than a decade with Luke, even if he didn't much like it, nurturing plants and building.

And she thinks about his dark. His will to destroy. His violence. His almost effortless ability to tune into the ability to rip down and hurt…

She thinks that Leia may not have been wrong, that there likely wasn't a place here for a Ben Organa-Solo. That peaceful Alderaan may have been worse for him than Luke's school, where at least he could pick up a lightsaber and use it to learn how to turn his violence toward defense.

Another thought hits as they walk through the gardens, General Organa, and Rey wonders how much this world was a home for Leia, too. How much of being in the Senate, of staying off world, of not chosing to be Queen Leia was an acknowledgement that she also wasn't as peaceful or light at Alderaan needed?

It's an… interesting thought.

So much of this is interesting. Rey just wishes she had a better handle on if interesting is good or bad.

* * *

They're in the Palace when something occurs to Rey. They just _walked in._

Through a wide open, unguarded, gate.

Easy as they pleased.

She looks back at the gate, and tries to get a good feel for it. There's… that's interesting, too, when she thinks on it, she can feel the monitoring equipment. It's wired for 360 degree visuals, and sound, but there are no guards.

Samanth sees her looking at the gate behind him. "Not how you do it on the _Supremacy_?"

"Not exactly. You need permission to land, and then only people with the right access can get to where Kylo and I live."

Samanth nods. "Ah… Well… Getting on planet is a bit trickier than for most worlds, which I suppose is similar to your needing permission to land, but we take the idea of public work and public buildings seriously here. This is the heart of our government, and thus it belongs to the people. Any citizen of Alderaan has access to this, at any time, for any reason."

"Isn't that… dangerous?"

He winces a little. "Sometimes. We've had a few people who were… not as mentally stable as we'd have liked, come and attempt to do some untoward things, but… We do have security here, just not as much as many other places."

"And they do not appear to be armed," Ellie says, looking at what appear to be a collection of extremely physically fit gardeners working on the different plants.

"I don't know what you mean," Samanth says, face blank, lying for the first time since they've met him.

"Of course," Ellie replies.

Threepio adds, "The idea is that the value obtained by being truly accountable to the people is worth the risk of low security. Unless things have shifted radically since I was last here, all of the public rooms are open, all of the offices are wired for video and sound, and the apartments are wired for sound. There are no behind closed doors meetings here. No one can conspire in the shadows."

"That is indeed the idea, General Threepio. Any citizen can, at any time, come and visit. Not necessarily interrupt, but certainly listen in, and, of course, all of the feeds are public, so they can watch and listen as they're interested."

Rey blinks at that, horrified. "But… people… live in the palace? The Queen… while we're here… us?"

Samanth smiles at her, understanding what she's reacting to. "Refreshers are unwired, private chambers are only wired for sound, and… I understand a lot of the universe thinks we have a very… permissive set of attitudes about certain things, but… It's easier to just ignore, or skip over, the private bits, than to risk the corruption that can creep in by allowing someone to edit them out."

"The bedrooms are wired for sound…" Rey's still flabbergasted by that. Not that the room that she's going to be in is wired. She knew that would be the case. The idea that _everyone's_ rooms are similarly enhanced is staggering.

"We're very good at just… ignoring bits and pieces, Lady Ren. For example, while your 'intimate moments' may be recorded, no one in their right mind, or even out of it, would attempt to use anything in them against you. There aren't too many crimes here, but that's one that will get you exiled so fast your head will spin."

"But people would still… know."

He shrugs a little. "The cost of a public life is the loss of your private one. The perks of the public life is the ability to do real, solid, tangible and meaningful good. A lot of us will tell you it outweighs the loss."

Rey blinks, stunned by that. He's not even lying about that, too much.

 _Force, no wonder your mother never let your family set foot here._

 _Rey?_

 _Can't think too much now. When I get a chance._

 _Okay._

* * *

Well, that's not ominous at all, Kylo thinks, sipping his coffee and hitting send on the receipt of yet _another_ report.

He tries to remember back to before he was in charge of this, what it was he possibly thought he was doing.

He's fairly sure reading reports all fucking day wasn't on the list.

* * *

They're in another garden. This one feels different. It's… somber… in a way the rest of the palace grounds just aren't. There are fewer plants here, more benches, and in the center of it is a square of crushed stone, flanked by low walls, with small torches burning in each corner.

In the square there's a large, jagged stone, a finger of minerals clawing up into the sky. It's maybe twenty meters tall. The bottom two of them are starting to wear smooth, but much above that is still shattered and ripped.

"We're not a terribly religious society," Samanth says, voice hushed. "This is about as close to holy ground as we have."

Threepio's voice is also quiet as he says, "The memorial garden. That obelisk is the largest piece of Alderaan they could find. On the far side, there's a memorial projector. Anyone who wishes can put in a name, and see pictures, read other people's memories of them, or add their own."

No one else is in the garden right now, and Rey wonders if that's common. "Do people come here frequently?"

"Less so now than when I was a child. They're more likely to come on festival days, now, or on Concordance Day."

"New Alderaan still follows the Republic calendar," Threepio says.

"We see no reason not to. As I'm sure you know, the Republic did not actually disband after the Starkiller attack, though it has been… made smaller. We are still active members of what's left of it," Samanth says, looking at the obelisk.

Rey thinks that's a diplomatic way to put it. It's also the first she's heard that the Republic is still a going concern, and apparently something she needs to ask, and likely think, about, but not here.

"Will the Republic mind you…" she's not sure what to say, making peace obviously isn't right, they've never been in conflict… "developing ties with the Order?"

"I imagine it with ruffle some feathers. But feather ruffling is a permanent state of affairs in the Republic, and… well… Those who survived didn't exactly wreath themselves in glory with how they'd handled the First Order affair, so… It's complicated."

"I'd imagine." They're getting closer to the buildings on the far side of the garden.

Samanth points up and to the left, at one of the wide, but not particularly tall buildings flanking this garden. "That one is Leia's suite. All of these are ambassadorial or governmental flats. I have one," and he gestures a bit below Leia's. "Your men will have the adjoining suites on both sides," that pleases Ellie, apparently, it's good to be located _between_ the soldiers.

* * *

At the doorway, Rey wonders how much like _Leia_ this space will feel.

And then she wonders if she'd be able to tell. It's not like she really _knew_ Leia. Not like they spent long afternoons lingering over tea chatting about… Whatever it is mothers and daughters-in-law chat about. The man that made them family?

She's amused at the idea of what _that_ might have looked like. Sitting with Leia and talking about Kylo. Ben. She'd probably want to call him Ben. That feels off in her heart, weakens some of the pleasure at the idea of it.

Samanth opens the door, and then hands the keycards to Rey. "And here we are, Lady Ren. Supper is in an hour, and I'll be back to collect you fifteen minutes before. It's in the formal reception garden, which isn't difficult to find, but… if you're not used to which garden is which, they do sort of look the same."

Rey smiles at him. "Thank you, Lord Organa. If you like, you can call me Rey. That's a thing cousins do, right, call each other by name?"

He's pleased by that, and Rey can feel that he's starting to hope that throwing Ben Solo into the mix will rise all of the Organa fortunes. Interesting. "I'd like that very much, Rey. I'll be back in a bit."

Apparently, he's not comfortable entering his aunt's home. Or maybe that's just a cultural thing, don't enter someone else's dwelling without explicit invitation. Maybe in a world with no real privacy the trappings of it are important.

Rey doesn't know. She steps into a tidy, warm, inviting, and… empty, this apartment is, beyond anything else, empty. No one lives here. No one ever lived here. It may have been hand designed by Leia Organa herself, or not, but it doesn't matter. It's…empty.

"Is this how it was," she asks Threepio.

He nods briefly. "As best I can tell. If they've changed anything it's so subtle my sensors cannot discern it."

"Ah. So… Now what?"

"Getting changed again, dear," Ellie says. "Formal clothing this time. I'm sure there'll be some food in the cooler, so we'll get a bit of a snack, too. Then going out again."

Threepio heads to a door, and opens it. "This is the view Samanth was talking about." They're in what she assumes has to have been Leia's room, and two of the walls come together into an all glass corner. On the one side, she'd looking out at the Remembrance Garden, and at the other side, down a long manicured hill, dotted with copes of trees, and a bucolic winding road, is the city of Resilience.

"It's most lovely at dusk. The sun sets behind us, so we get the golden glow of sunset, and the lights of the city, and the remembrance park all glow together." He pauses for a moment. "Twenty-three minutes from now."

"I'll make sure to look."

"Excellent. I'm sure you have thoughts and questions, Rey," he meaningfully points to three spots in the room, and Rey knows that's where the mics are, "and we'll discuss them later."

"Thank you, I do."

"I'll exit now, and leave you time to change."

"Thanks."

* * *

She spends a moment just looking around, hoping for some… line of connection really. Something… Leia or Organa or… Something.

She finds it, eventually, tucked into a drawer. It takes a moment to understand why it would be, but there's probably something that comes in here and cleans, and its job is likely easier if the tops of the tables are clean.

It's an image cube. Like the one that had the memory of Ben and Han. She gently taps it, and it comes to life, and much to her surprise, it's not holos. It's six pictures, two dimensional, flat, images.

They're personal. Or at least none of them look staged or posed.

And they're _young._ Her mental image of Leia and Han and Luke are people in their fifties/sixties. These people are _young._ Maybe her age, definitely younger than Kylo.

The one in her hands, now, looking up at her is Leia, pregnant, lounging on the ground in a tree covered place, between Han's legs, her back to his chest, his hands resting on her belly, protective of the still forming Ben, as both of them grin at the camera. They look happy, and she can see why Leia would have wanted to keep that memory. She wonders who took it, Chewie or Luke or…

There's a shot of Han, crashed out on his back, asleep, with a small boy on his chest, also asleep. Han looks, even in his sleep, tired. And Ben… Her fingers trace over the ears, and his nose, sharp even as a toddler, and he looks tired, too. Babies shouldn't have black circles under their eyes, but… Maybe they'd had a cold or something. Maybe it'd just been a long day. Maybe the marks of Snoke in the background were already visible on her love, even with his chubby baby fat cheeks and his whole body fitting between Han's chin and hips.

Rey doesn't know the three people in the next picture, but she can guess. The girl is young, maybe twelve, maybe fourteen, small beside her mother and father. Her hair is brown, her skin pale, and her coloring doesn't quite look like either of her parents. It doesn't matter. They're all at a table, from the looks of it, having supper, and… It's probably a family meal, at home, and Rey wonders how rare a thing like that was for the Organa family. Wonders how rare it was in the Solo-Organa family, too. There's a window behind them, and in the glass she can see a reflection of tall, blurred gold. Threepio in the background.

There's a shot of Luke, looking… wistful. He's in black, lightsaber on his hip, staring off into the distance, over a desert that looks like home. She never noticed before how blue his eyes were, and wonders if this is Tattoine, and this was taken right before the attempt to save Han. Or maybe right after?

Her breath hisses as she inhales fast, at the next one. Kylo, who was Ben then. He's… so young. A man, barely. Probably about Jacen's age, maybe a little older. And… smiling. Sort of. There's just the barest hint of sardonic pleasure in his eyes, and a tiny lift to one corner of his mouth. His hair is shorter than she's ever seen it. He's got a bit of stubble around his lips and on his chin, and attempt to grow a beard that doesn't appear to be working. He's wearing Jedi robes. He still looks tired. She'd thought that most of him being a bad sleeper was Luke Skywalker waking him up with a lit blade, but now she wonders if he was ever any good at shutting down. It's easy to imagine that he wasn't.

The shot after that is probably why he looks pleased. It's a picture of a scroll, covered in elegant, ornate, handwritten, beautiful words. Rey can feel the kind of concentration and passion that had to go into each stroke. She knows the words, knows what she's looking at. The Code of the Jedi.

She wonders if that picture is twenty-year-old, freshly minted Master Ben. Probably. That's the kind of thing Leia would value.

She jerks a little, looking at the chrono, realizing she's spent too long just looking, and grabs the garment bag.

And then rolls her eyes. There are three fucking dresses in there. This is what Jon meant by not using one meter of fabric if fifteen were available, didn't he?

Rey sighs, and heads back out to where Threepio is standing on a balcony, looking at the memorial garden, and Ellie, already in her new outfit is nibbling on some sort of fruit. They do not appear to be pleased to see her in the clothing she was wearing when she left. Then they notice her holding the garment bag. "All right, which one, now? And don't say the white one. Three of the four of them are white!"

"The one with the silver collar, Princess," Threepio says.

Rey mentally grumbles, but grabs the correct dress. There's a thing she wants to ask, but isn't sure if she should because… wired for sound and all, but… Well… Fuck it.

"Here's what I'm not understanding. We're here with a non-aggression treaty. We are not making or going to make a claim to the throne of Alderaan. Kylo and I have no interest whatsoever in ruling this place. So, why am I going out of my way to look like Princess Leia?"

Ellie smiles. She likes how Rey took the listening devices into account.

Threepio replies with, "Because, Princess. You _are_ the wife of the only legitimate heir to the throne of Alderaan. That's the beginning, middle, and end of it. It does not matter that we have no interest in ruling this planet, just in allying with it, you _are_ Princess Rey, wife of Kylo Ren, once Ben Solo, son of the Leia Organa, Princess of Alderaan, and they will remember and act accordingly."

"What does act accordingly mean?" Rey asks.

"That's mostly, for the treaty to work out. For right now, it's about respect and station," Ellie replies.

"A warm greeting, as you saw, use of your correct title, and with any luck, a warm and close relationship between our nation and theirs."

Ellie's expression is a bit jaded as she says, "Happy family ties."

It's clear, from the look on her face, and the way she's thinking at Rey that she's _completely_ aware of how well she and Kylo have personally done when it comes to _family_ ties. Then, without the jaded expression, she adds, "The families we find are often more… accommodating… than the one's we were born into." And it's clear that this… political relationship, or whatever it may be, is her idea of 'found' instead of 'born' family.

Granted, she may be making that distinction because 'found' family has worked out for Rey.

Either way, she's got the answer to her question. Rey picks up the dress, and heads into her own room.

* * *

 _Can I distract you?_ Kylo's voice in her mind.

 _Please._

Quiet, but the feel of contentment.

 _Okay, I didn't really have anything to say, just wanted to check in. What are you doing?_

 _Getting dressed, again!_

 _Again?_

 _I'm on my third outfit of the day._ She can feel the expression he made at that. _Then off to dinner._

 _I think you'll like that. Not like we did a lot of 'this is Alderaanian food' at home, but everything was good, and I know that was part of what I grew up on._

Him growing up gets her thinking of what she found. _I found a picture of you._

She feels his eyes roll as he thinks of what sorts of pictures might be on New Alderaan. _Force._

 _No, it's a good one. Or, at least, you look satisfied._ She picks it up and stares at it, trying to get the image to him. Apparently, it works.

She feels him sigh. _That's a billion years old. I don't know what your image of Master Ben is, but, that's him, appalling beard scruff and all. Find any other secrets?_

 _Not yet. Maybe. All the rooms here are wired for sound. All of them._

 _Okay._

 _No, I mean,_ all of them. _The private family ones, too. Anyone in the government is basically under constant surveillance._

She feels it when he gets what she's thinking at him. _That's what you meant about maybe not bringing us there was a good plan?_

 _Yeah. I guess, on the upside, the room is only wired for sound, but the only place you can have a private conversation is in the refresher._

 _Eww! I… Would not have voluntarily lived there, either. Always listening in?_

 _Always. To the point where Samanth felt the need to point out that, 'using intimate moments' to undermine your political rivals is completely out of bounds and will get you exiled._

She can feel he's just sitting there, shocked and disgusted. _You know, I'm not feeling any need to ever go and Prince Ben on their territory._

She laughs at that, slipping on the skirt. _Yeah, the same. I mean, I know sometimes you get off on the idea of people watching, but…_

 _Not for real. Really, not for real. Not… Wait, who listens to the recordings?_

 _Anyone, they're completely open to the public._

He's mentally recoiling in shock at that.

 _Exactly. Okay, I'm dressed. I need to go._

 _Wait, let me see?_

Rey goes to the mirror and looks at herself. She feels his eyes in the back of hers, and hears, _Fuck it, I'd go if it meant that I got to stand next to you, hold your hand, be there with you, like that. You're beautiful._

She smiles in the mirror so he can see it, feels the sense of a kiss, and his mind retreating from hers.

 _I love you, Kylo._

 _I know._

* * *

It's several minutes later when she comes out. Threepio cannot take a deep steadying breath. Nor can he blink tears out of his eyes. But oh, if he could…

She's not the spitting image of Leia. But, it's close. If Leia had had a daughter… or, he supposes, a daughter-in-law…

She's wearing the long, flowing gown that he'd specifically requested from Jon. The cut is… close. Not exact, and of course she wears her Order of the Maji hexagon pendant, not the plated platinum necklace Leia had, but…

As close as time, and genetic variance, and memory can allow, she's the spitting image of Leia Organa, standing tall and proud, unbent, unbroken, ready to offer medals to the men who destroyed the Death Star.

That image was blasted all over the galaxy. On one level, it was the Rebellion, hurt but triumphant. On another it was the signal to all who could read it, that the Empire, for all it's might, all it's power, all it's weapons could not crush one, single, unarmed, planet. That anywhere, everywhere, resistance, and the ability to strike back and strike _hard_ was true and real.

She was light, and warm, and a symbol of purity and justice, untarnished by the corrosion of the evil around it. The flame that may gutter low in the storm, but never burns out.

Symbols aren't real. They aren't people, and that morning, Leia had been sobbing, knocked to her knees by finally having time to begin to think about what had happened. But the show was set, and the image had to go on, so she bathed her face in ice water, steadied her breath and straightened her shoulders, got made up and dressed, and did what needed to be done.

Rey stands there, in a dress that _everyone_ at this meeting will be able to read. They'll all _understand_ what they're seeing, and why. And Threepio feels… nervous… maybe? Excited? Eager, that's there. And, above, beyond and through, proud.

Anyone who can read what she's saying can tell that the Order is not making a play for Alderaan. Rey's hair says that up and down. But they are letting everyone on the planet know that should they wish, there's another route they can go. That if the current situation isn't what they want, hope, and a new start, is available.

Alderaan ceased to be about geography in a flash of light and a scream of terror, and it became attitude, belief, and ideals. And Rey stands there, showing that if the current version of Alderaan isn't all it's wrapped up to be, that there is another option.

That not too far from here, there is a prince in exile, and the opportunity for a different sort of life, but one that is still, Alderaan.

* * *

They hear the knock at the door, and one of the 'entourage' goes to open it. Rey notices that they've all 'dressed up' too, and are waiting to join the party.

She can feel that they're, actually, for the most part, rather excited about this. It's not how _security_ generally works, and being in somewhat more comfortable clothing, going to a party where they've been instructed to _act like guests_ (which they're a little fuzzy on, but talk to people and eat seems… doable) is interesting to them.

Samanth comes in, takes one look at Rey, and smiles softly. "Oh." He swallows, and glances to Threepio, and then back to Rey. "You," he blinks a little. "Look so much like my aunt right now."

"Good memories, I hope?"

He nods. "Uh, yes. I… We weren't terribly close. She wasn't on world much, but…" There's a certain tenor of hero worship in his voice, "She was… is…" his eyes are searching hers, looking for help, and Rey understands that two things are true right now, he absolutely does feel warmly about Leia, and he's also, absolutely, trying to find out if she's still alive.

"Larger than life?" Rey supplies as an end to his sentence.

"Yes."

"I felt that way the first time I saw her, too."

"When was that? Did B—Kylo bring you home to her?"

"Maybe the other way around," Ellie says, slipping between them, taking Samanth's arm, and Rey's.

And Rey, having an idea of what to do with the story, starts to tell about how she met Leia Organa, which is really the story of how she met Han Solo, and a bit more of a story about how she met Kylo Ren, and… As they move toward the reception, she manages to tell the whole thing without ever making is clear that Leia, or Han for that matter, are dead.

Threepio's a few steps behind her, and she can feel him _beaming_ at her.

* * *

Eat and talk to people.

Put like that, it's really not all that tricky. Right now, the job is to stand around, talk to people, and eat or drink the little nibbles that are moving around on trays between and through the people. Rey likes eating, and so far, the talking is not bad.

They're in yet another garden, this one filled with shrubs and flowers and the theme of it seems to be white and rust. The flowers are white, the shrubs have mottled rust-toned leaves, tiny white fairy lights flicker among the plants. The tables are a deep, cherry stained wood, the place settings, also white.

Rey blends.

Except, well… She's the only person here wearing white, and… On her own that's a little… not nervous, she isn't nervous about it, but it does feel like she might be transgressing.

Though every time she focuses on Threepio he's just as pleased as pleased could be by this. And Ellie seems satisfied, so…

The Viceroy. Right. She's watching Rey. Trying not to be obvious about it. She's deeply in conversation with one of their 'entourage' and charming the socks off of him. He's younger than Rey is, and has very obviously never had anyone he's considered at high up as the Viceroy pay him any attention, let alone this sort.

He's also a few seconds away from blowing any and every cover he's ever had about being anything other than a security expert, so Rey decides now is a good time to wander over and see what's up.

As soon as it's clear she's joining them… R4Q8-7, that's what he was introduced to her as, snaps to attention. She smiles at him, and takes his hand, and he doesn't exactly die, but he does look like the world could swallow him whole and he'd be on much less shaky ground about what to do next.

"Pleasant conversation?" Rey asks.

"Yes, Mistress!" chokes out of attention stiffened lips. She squeezes her hand and does her best to subtly indicate _relax_ without actually thinking it directly to him, because if he's this tense with her nearby, he'll have a stroke if she actually starts thinking directly into his head.

He seems to get the unspoken message, because he does relax a little, and she lets go of his hand.

"Your _secretary_ was telling me all about the trip here, and how he's never been on a planet before," Helene says.

"Really?" Rey asks.

"Yes, Mistress. I've been on the _Supremacy_ my whole life."

"Oh. I didn't know."

"There's no reason you should have."

She smiles and nods at that. "It feels odd to me, too. I've never been anywhere this alive and green. I was born in a desert."

"We have deserts," Helene says, her mouth on automatic small talk, filling in piles of information about Alderaanian geography. But as she's talking, she's eyeing the dress.

A lot.

She'd never, of course, say the sorts of things she's thinking about it. That would be horribly impolite and impolitic. So she's talking about cute little animals that live in the desert areas, and how they power two thirds of their energy grid off of solar collectors out there, and the challenges of keeping the collectors in good condition what with all the sand and… Rey's fairly sure she can do this all month.

But Rey's feeling an urge to poke her about the dress. Pull her out of that carefully concocted cage of polite behavior. Get her to lay some of her cards on the table, so to speak.

She doesn't aim for it, outright. That would be putting her cards on the table, specifically, the ones that show she's aware of what isn't getting into the spoken conversation. She does spend a few moments just feeling about how _satisfying_ it would be to just _say what she's thinking_ for once.

How… good it would feel.

"That is a lovely dress," Helene says, and Rey mentally gloats. She didn't even have to say anything. This is… the mind trick on a non-verbal level, and she can't _wait_ to tell Kylo about it.

"It is. Jon made it for me, and I love it. It's just…" She's never even contemplated doing this before, but for some reason she feels like it's necessary, so she _spins_ letting the dress flutter around her when she stops.

"Have you seen the original?"

"Yes."

"Really?" Helene looks very interested in that, as if Rey's just let something slip. "It's in the museum of the Rebellion here."

"Oh. I mean, I've seen pictures of it. Who hasn't? But…"

"But, I assume, since you claim them to be your in-laws, those images would take on a different level of meaning."

Rey's mentally smiling, Helene looks like she can't believe that sentence got out of her mouth.

"I think you mean, they claimed me."

"Of course. Large, happy family wedding, right?"

Rey smiles. "No. Nothing like that. Not yet. We marry first, and hold weddings later."

"Of course. And how did your mother-in-law take the news of your marriage?"

Rey smiles at that, too. This woman knew Leia, well enough to not like her. "She told me it was a bad idea and it wasn't going to work out the way I thought it would."

That gets a startled blink. Then a laugh. "Well, she never did believe in feel-good nattering."

"Nope. Later, she told me that it seemed to be working out a lot better than she thought it would. And with any luck, she'll chose to attend that wedding when we have it."

Helene just watches. "She and Ben are still estranged."

Rey shrugs. "It's an ongoing situation. Did you know him when he was Ben?"

"No. Leia wasn't fond of the idea of letting him come here. I'd only occasionally hear bits and pieces," a vivid memory, Leia looking at Helene and a few others, 'You can't… My son doesn't know who his grandfather is… Just… Give me time to tell him myself…'

Rey makes herself not blink, not respond. Leia had to be lying, buying time, something, but… Helene's memory of it feels _real._

"He was training to be a Jedi, right?"

"He did. He obtained the rank of Master about twelve years ago."

"Oh. She never said."

"I believe that would have been… after you and her ceased close relations."

A small smile. "That's a nice way of putting it."

"Isn't that how things work here? Everyone's _nice?_ "

The viceroy smiles. "Exactly. And everyone _knows their place._ "

"Do they? I don't get the sense that this is how you'd generally treat a royal princess of Alderaan."

That smile is icy. "Really? Based on what, the warm and close relationship Leia and I had?" _I deposed one queen, taking you out would be child's play._

Rey mentally smirks at that. The Viceroy doesn't understand what Rey wants out of this deal, which also means she can't do a decent job of thwarting it.

"Fashion speaks volumes," Helene says.

"So, I've been told. It's a language I'm still learning."

"Ah," Helene looks over to Threepio, standing gold and bright, with his black armband and general's rank. Now she's wondering how much Rey knows about what she's wearing, and doing wearing it. "White is the color of royalty, here. More specifically, the color of the heir apparent to the throne."

"Unless I've deeply misunderstood how you do things here, that would be Kylo, and I am here in his place."

"That would be Ben Solo, assuming he's still alive, and Grigory Antillies, who is not here tonight because it's past his bedtime, if he's not."

"You know he's alive."

"I know Kylo Ren has not, to anyone's, let alone everyone's satisfaction, proven himself to be Ben Solo."

"And yet, everyone here, including you, knows he is. Truth will out."

"And what is the truth?"

"That the Order seeks an alliance, one that has no up or downside for us, your place in this drama is insignificant on our scale, but a great amount of upside for you."

"Only a fool thinks any deal has no downside."

"Then the converse would be true as well. Only a fool believes the abstaining from a deal has no downsides."

They hear a loud clapping, and a voice speaking loudly, corralling the guests to the seated part of the meal.

"Lady Ren," Helene nods her head, and walks toward the tables.

* * *

Dinner is easy. They've gone from eat and talk to eat and listen.

It's a cultural history of Alderaan through food.

Apparently, Alderaan of old was broken into seventeen administrative districts, each one fairly geographically distinct from the others, and having moved to a new planet, they've attempted to recreate that as closely as possible.

With… varying levels of success.

The chef is pointing out that, for rare and valuable plants, there were botanical gardens all over the galaxy that had specimens and were willing to give them back to New Alderaan once they got settled in and began to try to recreate what they lost.

But for common ones, like the grain that made up the majority of their breads… A complete and total loss. They've been, over the intervening decades, attempting to genetically rebuild some of the staples of what made Alderaan, Alderaan, but that is a _slow_ process, with new plants coming online every year or so, but only a few of them. So this, isn't quite, a taste of Alderaan, but it's as close as they can get, and there is the hope that before everyone who remembers what home actually tasted like is gone, that they can get most of the staples worked out.

Each zone… They carved out bits of the planet that matched most readily what they'd had at home. Some of them were easy, Alderaan was covered in mountains, and New Alderaan has a good portion of them, too. But Old Alderaan had long rolling grasslands, and several tundra, and a few arboreal forests that are either not on New Alderaan or significantly smaller.

But, so are the populations that settled in those places, too. A population of more than two billion dropped to about six million in less than a minute. In the intervening thirty-eight years, that population has grown to ten million, and there are slightly more than a million here, in the main capital zone, and a bit more than half a million or so in each of the others.

Each dish is supposed to represent one of those zones.

Each dish comes covered in some sort of fine field, to keep the scent in. When the first one is served, the chef points out that each of the little morsels are the most popular or iconic foodstuff of the area, and that the bloom on the plate is the flower that represents that zone.

The first plate, chosen specifically for Rey, is from their desert zone. Through the field, she can see three small bites of some sort of vegetable matter, and a tiny white cactus blossom. Releasing the field bathes Rey in the smell of dry air, dust, sun-baked soil, and the tiny plants that bloom in the cool shade, thriving on the few drops of water they can coax out of the air. It's so much like sunrise on Jakku that Rey almost gasps.

Niima was poor. People lived hand to mouth, scrabbling for the water and calories they could get. So nothing on the plate _tastes_ like home, because… because she never got a mouthful of pickled cactus, or some sort of grain mixed with honey and toasted golden and warm, let alone the pulp of a different kind of cactus mixed with herbs and berries into a porridge-like consistency. She wonders if on Jakku there were places where food like this was available. She supposes it doesn't matter if there ever were.

When they finish, the bloom, the small white desert flower, is placed in a basket next to Rey's plate. At the end of the meal, she'll have a collection of blooms, Alderaan, in all of it's flowering glory, laid out next to her.

* * *

Rey's seated next to the Queen, on her left, and very happily tasting everything. At one point, between courses, she says, "I have a feeling I'd have a much easier time with history lessons if they were all this pleasant."

Heloise smiles at that. "You and me, both. Does your homeworld have traditions like this?"

"No. Or if it did, they were never shared with me. My cultural history would be lumps of hydro-activated protein powder gnawed down fast to make sure no one else steals it."

"Oh… I'm… Sorry, doesn't feel like it even begins to edge the bounds of appropriate for that."

Rey takes a sip of her drink. This one is a mix of fruit juices. "It's appreciated by not necessary. You didn't put me there, and weren't in a position to get me out."

Rey watches understanding bloom on the Queen's face. "And now you are in a position to get people out, so the Order does."

"That's the idea. Do you ever think of offering New Alderaan as a refuge to people who need one?"

"That is a topic that hasn't come up. Beyond, of course, Alderaanians who were left stranded when our home was destroyed."

"In addition to them. The galaxy is filled with people who need better homes, and would likely do well if they could just get to a better place."

That gets a small smile on the queen's face. "I imagine that is true." Rey understands that to mean that there's no chance at all of Alderaan going out to adopt lost people who don't already have an attachment to it.

 _Well, it was worth mentioning…_ She thinks to herself.

Then the chef is heading toward the center of the quad of tables, bearing another meal, and small plates of something else are being settled in front of them.

* * *

 _I'm going to die._

 _Rey!_ Kylo sounds alarmed.

 _Food. Too much food. We're doing a cultural history of Alderaan through food. Each administrative region is being wrapped up in a few bites, which is great, but… Kylo, there are seventeen administrative regions._

He's sitting at his desk, looking at more reports. He's got a cup of coffee next to him, that he's slowly been nursing all afternoon, and doesn't, off the top of his head, even remember what lunch was.

 _Poor baby._ That seems like a safe enough response.

 _I'm so full. And I can't turn anything down. And there are still six courses to go._

Okay, that legitimately sounds awful to him. He tries to mentally hug her, and feels her relax a bit with him. _Poor baby. And this time I mean it._

 _Thanks._

 _Is it good?_

 _Actually, yes. It's just a_ lot!

He twitters his fingers against his desk. _What's everyone else doing?_

 _Eating._ He feels her mentally groan.

 _Smaller bites, chew more slowly, talk more in between?_

 _I'm trying. They're lecturing on what everything is, where it's from, and why it's important to the region, so not much time to talk, but I am chewing_ very _slowly._

 _So, Threepio got you out of having to make small talk by feeding you a ton of food?_

 _Yes, and yesterday I would have thought that was an awesome plan, but today I'm just_ full.

 _Hide some in your napkin?_

 _I think I'm going to have to. There's a long tablecloth. How bad is it if I start stealthily dropping bits of food under the table?_

He laughs at that. _It never worked when I tried that with my nannies._

She mentally laughs a little, too. _The Queen's talking to me, I need to pay attention._

And he lets her get back to it.

* * *

Finally, they're on the last dish. On the upside, Rey feels like she's got a really concrete idea of at least the different cultures and people of Alderaan. On the downside, she's so full she wants to die, and that's with half of each course ending up under the table.

Fortunately, this last bit is _small._ And it's only one thing, and one flower. A sprig of what looks like a branch, with little white flowers and small red berries on it. Next to it is a cup of near black liquid.

As soon as the chef says, "Our final region is Madonia, the mountainous region where Aldera, the former capitol of Alderaan was. Now it's several thousand kilometers from where we are here, and the settlements are small but growing," Rey knows what's on the plate.

The chef continues on, talking about the old capital, and the new region that most closely resembles it.

Leia Organa, as a child, didn't much like tea. It was okay. And as she got older, she didn't much like wine. It made her head fuzzy in a way she didn't enjoy. But she did like coffee. And on Alderaan, in the mountains surrounding the capital, the ones she could see outside her window from her bedroom in the palace, there was an ideal climate for growing coffee.

And though it was a much sought after trade good, commanding huge prices, there was always some available in the royal house, for their princess, to sip on, rich with milk and sugar as a child, and then as she grew older, darker and stronger.

As soon as the field releases, the scent of mountain air, of a lake nearby, of long, warm afternoons, and cool damp mornings, of _coffee,_ rich and deep and black, all swim around Rey.

She inhales deeply, pulling the scent into her lungs, and lifts the cup to her face, to breathe it in. Then the sprig of blossoms, and then puts them in her basket.

She doesn't reach to drink the coffee though, just holding it in her hands, and then looks to the Queen. "Would you be horribly insulted if I asked to save this for Kylo?"

The Queen looks slightly confused by that request, but the Chef steps in and says, "Lady Ren, just ask, and I will send you home with another portion, made fresh before you go."

Rey smiles, and sips, and _understands._

"His mother loved coffee. And his father would buy it for her. Any new place, new market, he'd go and try to find her a little taste of home. And she'd smile, and say thank you, and drink a cup, but it was never right. Not… this."

She can feel everyone at the table attune to that. _Feeling it._

"That's how Kylo got a taste for coffee. It never tasted right to Leia, so she'd give most of it to him, and he'd never had the real version, so whatever his dad brought home was good enough."

She sips again, understanding that this had to be one of the plants they could get cultivars for. That this would have been in botanical gardens. And she also understands that coffee takes close to twenty-years to get properly up and running, and that they've likely only really been able to produce a functional crop here for the last maybe ten, more likely five, years.

"I think he'd like this, very much."

There are, not counting her security, maybe thirteen people here under the age of forty. _All_ of them have some version of that story. All of them have a memory of a parent holding something that just wasn't quite _right._ All of them remember that yearning for a home that was no more, even as they tried to rebuild it.

And, no matter what their private thoughts may have been going into this dinner, it's clear that none of them doubt, at all, not anymore, that Kylo Ren was, once upon a time, Ben Solo.

* * *

 _So tired!_

Kylo perks up as he feels Rey's voice in his head. _All done?_

 _Thank the Force, YES! I'm back in my room, laying on the bed, working up the energy to undress._

He smiles at that. _I'd help you with that if I could._

 _I know._

 _How'd it go? Sounds like you survived all ninety-seven courses._

 _Barely. Next time, I want to go beat on some idiot with a staff again. That was a_ lot _easier._

He laughs at that. _I'll see what I can arrange._ A brief pause. _I've got a meeting with the accounting department next week. Want to beat on him for me?_

Another bit of quiet. He's got the sense she's sitting up and starting to work on undoing her hair. _The accountants normally have things you need to hear._

He glares a little. _I know. That doesn't make my desire to smack people when I hear it any less intense._

 _Poor baby._

 _Yeah, yeah, yeah. Did you talk shop with them at all? Or was it all puffery?_

 _Just barely. Did you know the New Republic is still a thing?_

He blinks at that, and then says, "Thank you," to C8, who is just bringing him his supper. _I didn't._ "C8, is the New Republic still active?"

"Yes, sir. Though current membership is down to fewer than three hundred worlds representing less than a trillion people. It's military strength is down to less than two thirds of ours, though because the members who are still willing to maintain the New Republic are wary of sending their defenses away from their home worlds."

He nods, and decides that's more than he's capable of pondering for tonight, though he does make a note to check up more on it later.

 _C8 tells me that yes, they are still active, but they're still locked in their traditional problem of how strong the Republic as a whole is compared to the individual systems, and the systems not being sure they want to take the personal hit to support the whole._

 _Mmmm…_ She feels distracted to him.

 _You're tired._

 _I really am._

 _Sleepy?_

 _Some. Ellie says we should try to sleep. It's dark. I've eaten. Part of me can easily believe it's bedtime, but part is fairly sure that it's just about dinner time._

Kylo looks at his plate. _It's just about dinner time here._

 _You eating while you work?_

 _Yeah. The idea of going home and sitting in our kitchen alone isn't appealing to me._

He feels her smile at that. Then he feels the tired in her mind, and an idea hits. He grabs his plate and mug, and heads into his room. He's not sure entirely how this'll work, but it probably doesn't need an audience.

 _Is your hair still up?_ He thinks to her.

 _Not anymore._

 _Good, get undressed and flop onto the bed._

He feels her curiosity at that, but doesn't challenge him.

 _Let's see if this works._ He settles into their bed, and focuses on her. That part is easy. And he can feel how readily he could just let go and find himself straddling her hips. A moment and his Force would take him there. But that's not what he's aiming for, not right now, and certainly not to a room where any sound will be recorded.

Instead he holds the focus, and lays his hands on her shoulders. It's… real… sort of. He can see it behind his closed eyes and feel… some of it. The pressure and some of the heat is there. The texture and… Rey… of his skin on hers isn't.

 _Feel it?_

 _Enough. Ghost touch._

 _Fitting._ He thinks, mentally stroking his hands over her shoulders and back. _Good?_

He feels the content sigh on her part.

His hands wrap around her shoulders, and his thumbs start to press into where they join with her neck. _Your hair is different._ He'd, obviously, noticed the new style when it was up, but now there's this huge mass of it on the pillow next to her.

 _According to Threepio, they added more hair to my hair. It comes to my waist when it's down now._

He's almost tempted to ask her to stand up so he can see that, but decides it'll hold for when he sees her in person.

 _You like that,_ she thinks to him.

 _Probably._ He strokes over where her hair would be if she were with him, and again, it's ghost touch. He can make out very little of it, but she should feel the pressure of his hand moving over her scalp.

 _Do I look much like your mom?_

That stops him cold. He's just mentally hovering over her. And she's waiting. Finally, he thinks, _I don't think so. I mean… You've got similar coloring, but… so do a quarter of humans. What's got you thinking about that?_

 _One of the Alderaanian powers that be was thinking about it. Threepio's got me here, intentionally trying to evoke the idea of Leia, but the Viceroy is now wondering if you've got 'mommy issues.' And if that's part of why you chose me. She had a lot of bizarre opinions on the subject._

He just sits there for a moment, then bites his lip, and thinks, _It's abundantly clear I've got 'mommy issues' coming out my and her ears, but being attracted to you isn't one of them._ Though there's a little squirmy part in the back of his mind that really hopes that's true. He does his best to ignore it, and Rey does, too.

 _Other than disparaging my sexual preferences, anything else interesting happen?_

 _The last course was coffee, and I asked if I could keep it for you. That got a no, but they're making an extra one to send home with me. Anyway, when I told them the story of Han trying to get Leia a taste of home,_ everyone _else got it. The part where she gave you the thing that wasn't quite right, and her smiling at Han for trying to help her with it, they've_ all _got a version of that story._

 _Oh._

 _Yeah, there may have been some doubts about you having been Leia's son. There aren't anymore. That's just too much of an Alderaan story to be faked, apparently. One of those things they've all done, but no one talks about._

He thinks about that, pressing his thumbs into the flesh beside her spine. Press, hold, move down. Press, hold, move down. Experiences that apparently were widespread, but for which he had no context, because he never got to be with the other people who'd had them, too.

Granted, if being their meant constantly being wired for sound and visuals…

He refocuses on Rey, on her breathing below him, on her skin and the back he's trying to stroke, and realizes that she's fallen asleep. He smiles a little, that was the point of doing this. Then he lays a kiss on her shoulder, and pulls himself fully back into his own room.


	48. Boys' Night Out

4/12/2

It's not late. By Kylo's clock it's twenty minutes past the usual end of dinnertime.

And it's not the first time he's had dinner alone in recent memory. There are nights the pile of crap in his inbox is so high, and so frustrating, that he works through. There are nights where he eats with company, but not Rey, because he's working with his Generals.

But…

"Grand Marshal Frakes, Master."

He looks up, surprised. He and Jon don't have an appointment.

Jon follows C8 in. He's in his casual relaxing clothing. "Come on. Get up, get changed, we're going out."

Kylo blinks.

"No one in the universe is better off with you sitting around here moping. So, up you get, and out we go."

"Uh…"

"Poe's meeting us up on the F-Deck. Have you heard of the term, 'Boys' night out?'"

"Never."

"Well, get dressed, you're having one."

So, Kylo gets up and goes off in search of his 'out with the boys' clothing.

* * *

"So, this boys' night out thing. It seems to involve a lot of standing around in elevators," Kylo says as he pulls on his sweater.

Jon rolls his eyes. "Yeah, if only one of us had an apartment on the F-Deck, and knew of a nice, quiet bar that makes good drinks and snacks a few hundred meters away, and the other one could magically get us there in a tenth of a second."

Kylo, head through the neck, most of his hair still in the sweater, looks at Jon and says, "Right. I'm…"

"Moping. It's one night, Kylo. She's not moving to New Alderaan, never to be seen again."

"Yeah, I know… I…"

"Can talk to her with your brain, too."

"She's sleeping."

Jon rolls his eyes. "You are being a big baby about this."

"Probably true. I just…"

Jon squeezes his hand. "Miss her and your nightly habits, yeah, I know."

* * *

They're in Jon's apartment a moment later. He looks up at Kylo. "You doing the do-not-recognize thing?"

He shakes his head.

"Well, here's your chance. Poe doesn't know you're coming with me, so, you're going to Creither's. Get to the market section, make a left, hug the wall, and it'll be the third shop. Doesn't look like much, but I've warmed a seat there enough that one of them has a permanent cast of my bum. Poe's waiting. I'll come a bit behind you. Let's find out how the spell works."

Kylo admits that's of interest to him. He pulls up the spell, and heads out, aware of Jon a few moments behind him.

* * *

It's very much a small bar. Not that Kylo's had much to do with bars, small or otherwise, in the past, but this fits his mental image of one. There is, of course, a _bar_ , on the right side of the room, and a collection of tables on the left. It smells… clean. And there aren't a lot of people in here.

He's honestly only been in a bar a few times, and most of them were not for fun, so being hit in the face with the scent of bar wax, floor polish, and the tang of some sort of juice and alcohol is a surprise.

He sees Poe. He's at one of the tables toward the back, obviously waiting. There's a heartbeat where he looks a bit pleased to see him enter, and then his hopes are dashed. Apparently, he may indeed be blonde, because he knows that's what Poe focused in on, first, and then noticed the rest of the person _really_ wasn't who he was looking for.

Kylo heads straight back to Poe's table and slips into the seat across from him.

Poe looks mildly surprised. "Look, it's not that I mind the direct approach, and on a different evening I'd at least share a drink and shoot the shit a bit, but tonight, that seat's taken."

Obviously, the spell works with his face. He tries his voice. "Doesn't look like it."

Poe sighs, and then perks up because the real Jon is entering the bar, smiling at him, and heading to the counter to get them drinks. He nods to the bar. "See the blonde. Not only is he coming here next, he also outranks you by a light year. So, out you get, and let me have a nice drink with my boy, okay?"

Kylo's very amused by that. Not just the pride in Poe's voice at 'outranks you by a light year' but the warm, possessive flare of 'my boy.' He just smiles at Poe.

"Seriously, Tall, Blonde, and Can't Take A Hint, get the fuck up. You're in the wrong place."

Kylo smirks, and glances over at Jon, then back to Poe. "I don't think so, _your boy_ invited me. Though now I'm wondering if I should bow out because I think I'm crashing your date."

Poe's mouth drops. "Kylo?"

He smiles. "What do I look like?"

"What do you mean what do you look like? Wait… How? Shit, this is a Force trick, isn't it?"

Kylo nods.

Poe looks at him a lot more closely. "Oh… That's… weird. It's… Almost dissolving, I can see through it now. Huh. Uh… Well, actually, you do look like you. The face isn't all that different. You're holding it differently though. Not one of your usual expressions, and that changes things a lot. No scar though, and big spectacles. It's the hair. It's… uh… short and the most wrong blonde color you could possibly put on your face. It looks like you bleached it yourself to an orange color, and then laid some blonde dye over it. It's just really wrong."

Kylo rolls his eyes. "Lovely."

"And you're wearing an orange jumper and a dark green kilt. Really?"

"No, not really. I'm in my usual black."

"Kilt?"

"Okay, technically, it's black and gray."

Poe blinks for a second, decides there are deep, unplumbed depths in the psyche that makes up Kylo Ren, and then says, "Good, I was about to think the galaxy was going to explode. The idea that you'd intentionally purchase, and then put on your body, something orange is shattering."

"Even as a disguise?"

"Even as a disguise." Poe takes a moment and thinks and says, "Right. Alderaan. That's why Rey's not with you."

Kylo nods. "I've been told we're having a 'boys' night out.'"

"You say that like it's some sort of exotic species you've never contemplated before."

"That pretty much wraps it up."

Poe sighs. And then looks behind Kylo and smiles brilliantly. And then budges over a bit, making it clear which side of the table Jon's supposed to be sitting on.

Jon does slide into the booth next to Poe, and lays three drinks on the table. His is something perfectly clear in a small tumbler. Kylo and Poe have pink concoctions in tall glasses with fruit sticking out of them.

"I got both of you the floofiest thing Zurie knew how to make." He takes a sip of his own drink. "Bottoms up."

Poe sniggers, and takes a sip, and Kylo just looks at his, attempting to figure out how to drink it with all of the… stuff… sticking out of it. He's about to ask, "Do we eat the fruit," when another thought occurs to him. "How can a drink be floofy?"

"Just means it's got lots of juice, or mixers, and you can't really taste the alcohol," Jon says.

"It means you've still got some taste buds left, and don't feel the need to show off how much shaft you've got by drinking straight paint thinner," Poe replies, nudging Jon's drink.

Kylo stares at the two of them, and then his drink, and back to them. "Why is that floofy?"

Poe shrugs. "It wasn't in the world we grew up in. On Yavin you'd drink whatever the hell it was you liked. Dad's favorite was a citronen juice with vodka and some ginger fizz. Really tasty. No one was ever going to question how narrow for women he was. Granted, no one also would have cared." He nudges Jon, "But where he grew up…"

Jon sips his tequiya blanco. "Ladies and floofs liked pink drinks. _Men_ drank clear or brown ones."

Kylo looks at his very pink drink. With some sort of chunk of pink fruit. It smells good. He removes the garnishes, and lays them on the table, and then takes a sip. It's good. Sweet and a little sour and if there's alcohol in it, he can't taste it, though he can sort of feel it as it slips down his throat.

"So… why are you still drinking a clear one, and if you prefer things that taste good, why are you going through the brandy at my house straight?"

Jon lifts his glass and takes another sip. "First of all, I actually like vodka. Like most other things, if you put the work in to learn about it, and really taste it, you can appreciate and enjoy the nuances. That said, tonight this is tequiya blanco, which goes really well with the food."

Poe doesn't really believe that, but he doesn't challenge it. He does say, "I'm not about to barge into your house, rifle thought your stuff, and mix my own drinks. You have straight booze, and it's not like I'm unfamiliar with how it works, so that's fine. You'll note, when I'm pouring at home, I'll mix it."

Kylo thinks about the doctored coffee. "Oh. I thought you just didn't want us to notice we were drinking." He takes another sip of his drink. "Something like this would have worked better."

"Yeah, well, I didn't have a liter of watermelon juice at home, and I was trying to sneak the booze into you and Finn because I knew you wouldn't drink otherwise, and if I'd put something that looked like this on the table, he would have known what it was in a heartbeat."

Kylo acknowledges that with a tilt of his head, and then says, "And Jacen would have asked for two or wet his pants from laughing at it."

Poe nods. "Likely, the former, but I don't have too good a feel of where he's from, yet. He tries not to talk about it too much."

Jon looks from the one to the other, and then back to Poe, "Why are you getting them stealth drunk."

"We were sitting the boys down for _the chat,_ and he and Finn are already tense with each other, and add in what we're talking about, and how neither of them were exactly eager to expound upon the glories and mysteries of adult male life, I figured that lubing their brains a bit would help.

"But, like I said, tense, with each other, and neither of them would have taken a sip in the presence of the other if given the chance to say no, so… Coffee, rum, the facts of life. It worked."

Jon looks supremely amused at that, but before he can say anything, the server comes over with a plate covered in small crispy crackers, and three bowls of some sort of dip. "Thanks, Zurie."

"No problems, Jon. Keep the drinks coming?"

He nods, and points to him and Poe. "For us, yes." He nods to Kylo. "For that one, his next round is ginger fizz."

Kylo raises a brow at him as Zurie smiles at the three of them and heads off.

"You're going to take it easy and pace yourself. This is an area where Poe and I have _experience_ that you don't. So, ginger fizz is tasty, non-alcoholic, and won't leave you wishing you were dead in the morning. Later tonight, you want more alcohol, fine, but I'm not drinking you under the table on the second round."

Kylo nods at that. "Thanks. What are these?"

Jon just blinks, and then slowly says, "Chips?"

"Yeah," Kylo replies.

Jon rubs his forehead, and shares a look with Poe, one that immediately translates into, _mentally slapping the shit out of everyone involved in raising you_. "They're disks of ground maize, water, fat, and salt, rolled out thin, and fried up crispy. You use them to transport" he takes a chip, and dips it into a red sauce, "the salads into your mouth," and demonstrates.

Kylo's looking at the bowls with the "salads." They're a lot wetter and drippier than anything he'd call a salad. He'd likely have classified them as soups.

Poe grabs a chip and likewise has some. "Red one is sort of sweet and garlicky, the green one is thick and creamy with a little heat, the yellow one is a fucking bastard, that first taste is fruity and sweet, then the heat kicks in and peels the skin off the roof of your mouth." Then he grabs another one and gets some of the yellow salad. He winces as he bites, and chases it with the drink, but looks pleased as he says, "I'm going to regret the fuck out of this in a few hours, but… Oh… It's _good!_ "

Kylo follows along in his head. It's not as easy as with Rey. He can't just effortlessly pull the flavors out of Poe, but he does feel the searing hit of pain that goes with the sauce, and decides to yank his senses right back out of Poe's head.

"Why did you do that to yourself?"

Poe shrugs. "If you're wired for it, it feels good."

"And in a few hours?" Kylo asks.

"It's really not. I'm going to be slorping down antacids like there's no tomorrow and cursing the universe that I'm not twenty anymore, when I could do shit like this and not wish I hadn't, but now," he takes a good swallow of his drink. "Now, is good."

Kylo peeks again, and does get the sense of a shot of rush that goes with the burn. Poe's kind of floating on top of the pain. It hurts, he knows it hurts, but it hurts _good._

Jon also has a bite of the yellow salad. "Not everyone is. Lane hated stuff like this. My guess is it's not your idea of a good time, either."

Kylo eyes it, and settles a little closer in on how Jon and Poe are feeling…

Poe can see him contemplating it. "Try the green first. If you like how that feels, go to yellow."

Kylo eats a chip by itself first, getting a taste of what's going on. He can see why people like them, and he's likely to bring Rey here at some future point to try them. "Rey's not big on hot things." He puts some of the green on his chip. "So far, it doesn't bother me." He tries a bite and… Okay, salty, crunchy, the green salad is a bit squishier than he prefers his textures, but it's not terrible, likely because of the crunchy chip under it, and the flavor is… sort of… green, and creamy, little sour, there's some citronen in this, and some salt, that herb Rey doesn't like because it tastes like soap to her, and as he swallows the heat sort of blooms in his mouth. "This is good. I guess, I'm easier with flavors, and she's easier with textures," he glances at Jon, "and cooked levels. I… uh… don't do rare or raw meat."

Jon blinks. He knows Kylo's telling him something. Then blinks again. "Fish! You don't do raw fish."

"Yeah, the texture just… It tastes fine, but… We lucked out and Kiro was willing to cook mine, because otherwise I'd have been in the refresher puking. Cold, squishy things… meat, especially meat, just… gets to me."

"Oh shit!"

"Yeah."

Poe's looking between them.

Jon shrugs and looks a bit embarrassed. "I didn't know, and I sent them to a jarquterie for a nice dinner out."

Poe laughs so hard he coughs. "Oh no."

Kylo puts a chip into the yellow sauce, just a tiny little dab of it. He knows it's going to hurt. He doesn't know if it's going to feel good after. And Poe's absolutely right, the first few seconds are just pleasant fruity and sweet on the salty chip, and then his entire head is on fire, and he is choking, and he _does not like this at all_ and…

Poe's handing him more chips. "Just eat the plain ones, and take a drink of… shit…"

"Zurie, could we get some water?" Jon asks.

She sees Kylo dying, and smirks, "Sure, Jon."

A moment later she's got a small pitcher of water and cups for their table. "Newbie?"

Jon nods. "Yeah. Never had salsa before."

"Oh my," she looks at the tray. "Oh, good, you've got the mild."

Kylo's gulping down the water. When he's finally able to talk again, his eyes feel red and swollen, and his nose is runny, and his mouth is never, ever going to forgive him. He feels like he intentionally attempted to fellate his lit lightsaber. "I don't like that."

Jon and Poe nod. "Yeah, you don't look like that's a good time for you," Jon says.

Zurie comes over with another plate. "These may be more your speed."

Kylo looks at a platter covered with more… chip like things, though these are smaller, thicker, and fried a deep golden brown, surrounding a few more 'salads.' "What are they?"

"Tostones, fried jamranths," Zurie says, with something of a purr in her voice.

Poe nods. "You'll like them."

Jon smiles at Zurie, a warm, flirty, pleased look, and she preens at it.

And Kylo does not, for an instant, miss that Poe would prefer that look aimed at him, and now he's wondering if Jon's slept with Zurie. Kylo's not sure if he should, but… _Yes. She's remembering it fondly right now, and planning on seeing if he's up for something after her shift._ He thinks back to Poe. Poe mentally, groans, and thinks back _Not helping._ That confuses Kylo, because none of the emotions Poe's experiencing right now are any that he'd expect. _You aren't jealous?_ Poe rolls his eyes, and says, "Jamranths are sort of like... potatoes, but they're a bit on the sweet side, and grow on trees. They're fried, sweet, and salty, and especially good with," and he dips one into a golden brown sauce. _No, I'm not jealous, I'm envious as hell, but not jealous._

Kylo attempts to contemplate that while he has a tostone. "You're right, they are good." _Why aren't you jealous?_

 _Why should I be?_

Zurie wanders off, and Jon quietly says, "Stop talking about me in front of me."

Poe sighs. "Good friend of yours?"

Jon smirks at him. "A few times." His eyes follow her at the bar, and it's clear to Kylo that Jon's hoping to make Poe jealous, but apparently that's not working, assuming there really is a difference between envy and jealousy.

Kylo turns to look at her, and… She's _nice._ In a way he feels bad about noticing. He immediately slams his eyes forward.

Fortunately, Poe distracts him by asking Jon, "Is there anyone on this ship you haven't slept with?"

"Me," Kylo says.

Jon laughs. "Not for lack of trying, though."

Kylo blinks, completely stunned. Yes, he noticed Jon was interested, at no point did he ever notice Jon was _trying._

Jon waves it away. "I was pretty sure you were narrow for women the first time we met. Tried a few tentative passes that one," he nudges Poe with his shoulder, "would have picked up on in a second, but when the first two went whizzing right by your head without even a hint of a dawning of recognition it was happening, I knew you weren't up for it. I found out about Rey later, and…"

"Aren't good Imperials supposed to be mopey and forlorn if a fling doesn't result in marriage bands and fat, happy children?" Poe asks, watching Zurie and thinking about _a few times_.

"My mom certainly would have been," Jon takes another sip of his tequiya. "But a lot of people on this ship aren't and never were good Imperials, and… Well, anyone with a number instead of a name never got those lessons, and adjuncts like Zurie come from all over." He shrugs a bit. "You two can see she's not human, right?" They both nod. Zurie is certainly human shaped, mostly, but neither of them missed the ears or the violet undertone to her skin. "Zurie would have never had the chance to be a good Imperial." Jon sips his drink… "And we weren't supposed to be Imperials, not anymore, right? We were all _happy New Republicans._ And the Republic was… relaxed… about some things that the Empire wasn't." He's again looking at Zurie. Any sentient was welcome in the New Republic, but the Empire only wanted humans. "And some of those things worked out well for me, and some…" He taps the drink. "Some of them may have been such a big deal to my family and how I was raised because it was a way to signal which team I was part of. Walk into a bar, order a vodka or a whiskey neat… It's a signal." He flashes Poe a look. "A subtle sign of _resistance._ "

Poe smirks at that. He touches his black vest, and the shirt under it. It's occurring to Kylo that the style looks a whole lot like something his dad would have worn. Thirty years ago. During the _Rebellion._ "Yeah, I might know something about _that._ "

Kylo watches them, and realizes that these are the sorts of things that Ellie wants him to be able to read. That he should be able to sit down with people and understand the messages their clothing and food and drinks offer him.

He supposes his natural empathy should give him an advantage on this, but mostly right now what it's picking up as Poe and Jon talk about blending in, or not so much, and being on the 'losing' team, is multiple metric tons of barely, _barely_ repressed sexual tension and desire.

He wonders idly if this is what sitting next to him and Rey feels like to another empath. He supposes he could find out, but the only one he's even remotely comfortable asking something like that of would be Jacen, and that level of empathy's not in is toolkit.

He decides likely not, because part of the tension for Jon and Poe is that they haven't crossed that line yet, so there's a lot of anticipation that he and Rey just don't have anymore.

Jon's whole body thrills when Poe brushes his hand as he's grabbing a chip. And Kylo knows he and Rey don't affect each other that way anymore. He adores her and her skin, but a brush against the back of his hand isn't, in most circumstances, going to make his shaft twitch. Though maybe if they go shopping for fun stuff again…

They could come here, have some chips and whatever it is he's drinking, and then go off exploring again…

That'd be fun…

And apparently, he's visibly moping, because Poe breaks into his plans for him and Rey with, "Holy, fuck. It's _one_ night, Kylo. You can go a night without getting your fuck on."

Kylo glares at him, and takes another drink. "It's not about sex."

Jon snerks.

"Okay, it's a little about sex. Sex is part of it, but… not all or even most of it."

The other two are not buying that for an instant.

"Really. It's… the sweet at the end of the meal. And maybe that's my favorite part of dinner, but it's not the meal, and it's not like I can't cope without my dessert."

They're still both looking at him with expressions that most readily translate to _bantha shit._

Kylo rolls his eyes and takes a good swallow of his drink. "You know this," he says to Poe, then he looks to Jon, "And I guess he doesn't unless you told him."

Jon looks curious.

"Apparently, not. I was celibate for almost thirteen years. Okay? Like, really celibate, not pretend celibate. Not, just didn't-have-penetrative-sex-with-women celibate. I had sex, any sort, with myself or someone else, fewer than twenty times in that more than a decade." Jon's jaw literally drops and metaphorically hits the table. "One night… Not a big deal."

When Jon gets his jaw off the table, he says, "Were they drugging you?"

"It'd have been a hell of a lot easier if they had been."

"Gods, no wonder you were in such a fucking bad mood all the time. I'd be breaking shit right and left if… No, I wouldn't. I couldn't do it. I'd… I'd… Just… Couldn't do it."

"Yeah, well…" Kylo rolls his eyes. "It wasn't exactly a choice. On one side, Luke Skywalker's talking about how it was okay to do it, occasionally, as a way to increase wisdom, but really after the first few times you'd probably learned all you could from it, so there was no need to do it again, and giving into your wants was a surefire way to the dark, so… Very risky, very little reward, and anyway, if you'd let it, your body would just take care of it on it's own, with no risk to your soul and light at all."

Jon's staring at him, and then he shoots back his drink, blinks very slowly, and then says, also slowly, "Luke Skywalker was under the impression that you could wank a few times, and learn all you needed from it, and that was that?"

Kylo takes another sip of his drink. "I honestly think he was asexual. At least by the time I knew him."

The other two men, nod, slowly.

Then Jon blinks. "Snoke was worse, right?"

Kylo nods, swallows more of his drink. This really is nice. Sweet, sour, something in there with a little warmth… He'd happily have this again.

"Oh."

"Yeah… uh… he… liked me breaking things and angry all the time and… Well, like you said…"

Jon opens and closes his mouth. There are things he could say about that, but he doesn't think any of them would come even close to helping.

Kylo nods. He takes another drink, and scoops up some of the greenish stuff on the chip. "Anyway, if it's just about getting tuffed, I've got… coping mechanisms, and…" He offers up a somewhat naughty smile. "I'm… uh… a little behind when it comes to… accumulating wisdom in regards to taking care of myself, so… time for occasional experimentation is… nice." Kylo smirks a little. "Contra Luke's advice, I'm fairly sure there's still a lot to learn on that matter."

The other two snigger at that.

"Unexplored depths?" Poe says with a giggle.

"It's not virgin territory," Kylo replies, smirking widely and finishing his drink before he says, "but I'm certainly interested in a deeper and more thorough exploration." He sniggers to himself, and thinks about Rey exploring, and how it feels to be in her hands, her care, and turns a bit more inward, and less naughty. "But I can't snuggle myself, and… I sleep like shit without her. I just… My brain whirls too fast, and yes, I can meditate it into submission, some." He glares at his drink. "The focus necessary to keep the meditation going means I'm too focused to really sleep. It's just better if she's curled against me. I can shut down, and then actually sleep, and… Apparently, I'm something of a raging asshole if I don't sleep, so…" Kylo raises a brow at Jon, pulls Poe's drink to hand, and Poe smacks his hand, so he hands the glass back, and says to Jon, "I've got it from the context, but I have no idea what the term pussy-whipped actually means."

Jon looks startled because apparently Kylo just yanked that right out of his head, and generally, he doesn't do that, so… Granted, he also doesn't generally make glasses move across the table seemingly 'magically,' so…

Poe just smirks at him. "Boys' night out with the mind-reader. Brilliant plan. His mental walls get sloppy when he's drinking, and so do ours, and next thing you know, overshare, whether you want it or not."

Jon rolls his eyes and takes another drink. "It's what I sorely miss."

"Oh."

Poe looks quizzical at that.

Which Kylo responds to, as well. "He means belonging to someone not… not the pussy part of pussy-whipped… pussy…" He thinks he might like that term a little too much. It sort of slips off his tongue in a nicely sexual sort of way. "Pussy…" His lips caress the syllables, and he's enjoying that, and then wondering how the fuck much alcohol was in that drink. Poe and Jon are just _staring_ at him. "That's a term for…"

"We all know what it's a term for, Kylo," Poe says.

"A minute ago, I didn't."

"I really need to slap Luke upside the back of the head," Poe says.

"I also don't know what it's not slang for."

"Pussy… Cats…" Jon's looking expectantly at him. "They're little furry things that live… pretty much everywhere. They eat rodents, like to live with humans, and purr when they're happy."

"Oh. Rey's maomaos. That's slang for pussy, from Jakku." He looks a little embarrassed. "Uh… That's what I'd usually call that." Though he's thinking of adding pussy to his list of terms. He just likes the way saying it makes him feel. "Pussy," he says it very quietly that time.

"Uh huh," Jon says, staring at Kylo. "How often does that happen?"

"Significantly more often than you'd likely expect," Kylo replies with a smirk. "I _like_ words. I like being able to… want… and express wanting… stuff…" his voice drops a few dozen decibels, "pussy…" and returns to normal. "And Rey likes me using them. So, I like learning them."

"Did you not… have cats, or… a term for girl bits with Luke?" Poe asks.

"No cats. We did have some small dogs that would go after rodents, and herd the chickens around from garden to garden. As for girl bits, sexual education with Luke was _really_ not what we did with the boys, and honestly, back before the two of us had our talk, I wasn't entirely sure that there even were differences below the waist. Then he gave me 'the talk' referred to it as the delta, showed me some very… medically accurate and confusing as fuck anatomical sketches, and that was that.

"Rey just about had a seizure she was laughing so hard when she realized I didn't know menses were blood."

Again, Jon's just _staring_ at him, mouth on the table.

Kylo shoots him the stink eye. "Some of us didn't grow up with five sisters, you know?"

"Was Luke's school just boys?" Jon asks. By the time he was… he honestly doesn't know, there isn't a time in his memory when he didn't know how female cycles worked.

"No, but… It wasn't like we _talked_ about it, and I knew _something_ was shedding, but he referred to it as a 'lining' and like I said, anatomical sketch, so… We had snakes, and they shed skin, so…"

Jon looks horrified, and Poe's laughing so hard he's about to wet his pants.

"The girls never had an oops?"

Kylo shakes his head. He's fairly sure he'd have remembered if any of them were walking around in bloodstained robes. "Look, I have no idea what they did. I'm usually pretty good at sensing blood, and I didn't notice any sloshing around, and I do notice when Rey's on her cycle, so… Either something with me changed, or they didn't trigger my blood sense, or… I don't know. But… yeah. I didn't know."

"So, wait, you can just feel when Rey's on her cycle?" Poe asks.

"It's really not that difficult to track, Poe," Jon says.

"Well, again, some of us didn't grow up with five sisters, and some of us don't live with women as adults, so…"

"I'm… paying attention, so I noticed the subtle changes, too, but mainly, I can feel blood. In the past, people bleeding around me was generally _not_ a good sign, so I attuned myself to it. It's a defense mechanism, one that's probably way too sensitive, but… Anyone within a few meters who's bleeding, and I'll notice it." He shrugs, takes a drink, and adds, "Plus… uh… her boobs are bigger a few days before and… that's… uh… nice, you know?"

Jon smirks, and Poe rolls his eyes.

Kylo rolls his eyes back, and says, "Like you wouldn't enjoy it if his shaft got bigger a few days a month."

Jon's laughing hysterically at that, and Poe _groans._ "And this is why we don't let you get too drunk. Seriously, you have no social filters, at all, do you?"

Kylo shrugs. "You would like it, though!"

"Kylo, if one of my partners ends up with his shaft getting bigger only a few days a month, I'm failing miserably." He eyes Jon suggestively. "With me, it's more like a daily sort of thing."

Jon looks right back, and says, "Is that a promise?"

"Oh yeah, Pretty Boy. As often as you like."

Jon licks his lips and then grabs his glass, wraps his lips around the whole rim, and shoots back what was in it. Kylo can feel Poe's mouth go dry, and see him squirm. He doesn't… can't… feel the force of that first hand, but he can feel what Jon's doing with it, and how it effects Poe, and he can sort of imagine what it'd do to him to see Rey wrap her lips around a glass like that. The perfect circle of her lips around something as round as a shaft.

Jon stands up, much too graceful for the amount of alcohol he's had, letting his body stretch upward, showing off how long and lean and tall he is. "Been known to enjoy big things from time to time." Then he gives Poe a little smirk, turns and… Kylo doesn't know what to call that sort of walk. If Rey's hips were swinging like that, he'd know what to do about it, though. They watch Jon head to the bar and order something.

"Looks like he likes making things big, too," Kylo says to Poe, not even remotely unaware of how that long stand and then walk effected Poe.

Poe leans back in the seat, bonks his head against the wall, and groans again. "He's going to kill me."

"Yeah, but in the best possible way, right?"

"Force, I really hope so."

It's really occurring to Kylo, that this may be a date, and possibly he doesn't need to be here. "Should I go?"

"Fuck no. I'm trying to not sleep with him," Jon's coming back, and it's clear Kylo's confused as all get out by that. "Explain later," and Jon's back with more glasses. "Really," Poe says, "Are we seventeen?"

Jon sets five shot glasses in front of them, two at his place, two at Poe's, one at Kylo's, a salt shaker, and a small bowl of green citronen.

"I think it's abundantly clear, that for all practical purposes, that one is, so." He hands the glasses around. "This is tequiya aniyo. It's one of the preferred drinks for this kind of food. I usually drink blanco, but this is what you'd use for this game."

"It's a game?" Kylo says.

"Sort of. We're just going to introduce you to it, not really play," Jon says.

"Why not?" Kylo asks.

"Because neither of us want to explain to Rey how we took you out and got you so drunk you threw up all over yourself, let alone had to figure out how to drag your 300 kilo ass home," Poe replies.

"I do not weigh that much."

"If you're dead drunk, and we've got to carry you home, it's going to feel that way," Poe says.

"Fine. How do we play."

"We're doing the… out with the boys version of the game, when all the boys are narrow for girls, and the girls are nowhere around, okay?" Jon says.

There's a pout on Poe's face, but Kylo can feel he's relieved.

"What's the version for the… fun part of the F-Deck?"

"I'll explain as we go. So," he holds up his left hand in a loose fist. "Lick," and he licks the flat between his thumb and forefinger. "Salt." He shakes salt on the wet patch. "Lick again," he licks the salt off of his hand, shoots back the tequila, and then bites the lime. He hisses for a second, and then sighs. "And done. The 'fun' version… Well, you put the salt wherever you like it, you suck the tequila out of your friend's navel, and who knows where the lime is when you nibble it off of them."

"You drink the tequila off of the other person," Kylo says.

"Yes." Poe says, "Though generally by the time you've had enough to think body shots are a good idea, you're also mostly just licking it off of them, because the likelihood that your hand is steady enough to pour well enough to only get it in their navel is pretty much non-existent." He salts his hand, and then licks the salt, shoots back the tequila and bites the lime.

"This is what parties were like when you were seventeen?" Kylo asks grabbing the salt shaker.

Jon shrugs a bit, leaning back against the booth, shutting his eyes, remembering. "Some of them."

Poe nods. "Get a squad of newbie fliers on leave for a few days, and generally the first thing they do is drink every cento in pay they've ever gotten. Then they go fuck whatever's around and willing. And then they collapse somewhere and beg for death when they start to sober up."

Kylo's looking at Poe, hand almost to his lips. "You know, I often feel like I missed out on a lot growing up with Luke, but…"

"Yeah, well, we're not going to kill a bottle between the three of us, so feeling like death warmed over is less likely to happen. Plus, we're eating, too," Jon says.

"Fine." He licks his hand, salts it, licks the salt, shoots back the tequila, just about dies, gasps a few times, chokes, sputters, and then chomps the lime. "I was not made for this sort of party game." (Though he can sort of see, maybe, how if you were to mix those three things together, they might make a pleasant cocktail. Maybe with more of the watermelon juice.)

He's debating asking for a mix of those drinks together, assuming he can't possibly be the first person to ever think of that idea, when Zurie sidles over with a glass of her own.

A glass of her own and _intent._

He glances around, notices that the rest of the bar is basically empty, and gets the sense that she might have flipped the open to closed sign when they weren't paying attention.

"Can anyone join the game?" she asks Jon.

He grins up at her, scoots over a bit, spreads his legs wide, and pats his lap. "Well, you can get a drink with us."

She settles onto his knee, lifts his hand, licks it, salts it, licks again, and shoots back her down shot, before biting the citronen. She shudders a bit, and then grins at them, and kisses Jon. When she pulls back she says, "Now, I thought I knew all of your friends, so… You going to introduce me?"

For a second, Kylo's mostly paying attention to Zurie. To the little flash of pinky-blue tongue, to her mesmerizing violet eyes, to the points of her ears, and the easy way she's sitting on Jon's lap, or the comfortable way his hand rests on her hip.

 _This_ he knows feels a lot like being next to him and Rey, at least, when it comes to sexual attraction. Warm, eager, pleased. Real and ready.

Then he's hit with the fact that she's assuming that the reason why she doesn't know Jon's 'friends' tonight is because he's on a date, with both of them, and the game she's asking to join is whatever sex they're going to have later.

And then, on top of that, Poe's having something on the verge of a sexual meltdown, because he also understands the subtext of what's going on, and then that's crashing away as a real scramble to get his drunk brain up and working, because he's decided that Kylo's not up to the task of…

What… Poe't thinking about how he's a shit liar, and they need a lie, and… What…

 _Shit, NAMES!_

He rubs his face as he feels a cold pitcher of water down his back.

Jon's still smiling pleasantly at her, looking from the one to the other. "You know that diplomacy thing I'm up to?"

"Yeah."

"Well, my liaisons from the Maji." He gestures to Poe and Kylo. "Short, dark, and handsome over there is Commander Dameron. Tall, dark," Kylo winces. Jon can't see the do not look spell and didn't remember that he's not black-haired tonight, except.. Wait… Zurie didn't just blink at all at that, and… She's _looking at him…_ So… Fuck, how drunk is he and is the spell still up? "and panicky over there is called Ben Amidala."

Zurie raises a brow at that part of it. "Uh huh." She gently shoves Jon. "You always were a shit liar."

He looks appalled. "I'm a great liar." Then he really looks at Kylo, and squints. "Wait, are you still doing it?"

"I thought I was."

"Uh huh." Zurie says. "Amidala. Yeah. Right." She looks down at Jon, expectantly.

He offers her a half smile. "As for joining the game, this one doesn't fish in your lake," he lays his hand on Poe's shoulder, "and that one's the most married man on the ship, so…"

"Awww… That's a shame." She looks genuinely surprised at that, and Kylo understands that when Jon's brought men here she's liked, too, they've played together.

"Just a boys' night out," Jon says, staring at Poe, and _everyone_ knows what he's saying there.

Kylo feels Zurie's mind shift. He almost sees the moment when she realizes what's going on with Poe. She smiles at that, and kisses Jon's cheek this time. "It's good to see you out and having fun again."

He gives her hip a squeeze. "Thanks, love. You mind if we linger?"

"Nah." Apparently, she's decided that she and Jon aren't fucking tonight, or… Oh… She was planning on playing with Jon's friends… friend… Kylo. She was hoping to play with Kylo _near_ Jon while Jon played with Poe, not necessarily playing with Jon… Kylo's interested in that, a little, because he does sort of wonder how much she looks like a human woman under her dress. The parts he can see are _nice._ And her lips are blue edged pink, and her tongue was also blue with a pink tip, and he's wondering what her nipples and pussy look like… He stops thinking about that, because she sees Kylo, not Ben, and… Is she interested in him as a rather large, decent looking human guy, or as _The Master?_ He wasn't paying close enough attention to figure that out, and she's not thinking about it now.

She stands up, and heads to the register. "I'm going to cash out. You remember what the keycode is?"

"Yeah. I can lock up after us," Jon says.

"Good. Enjoy your night."

Kylo stares expectantly at him. "Like I said earlier, I've warmed a seat here often enough there's a cast of my bum on it," he gestures to one of the seats at the bar.

"And the part where no one said anything, but a whole lot got said?" Kylo asks.

"She wanted to know if she could join in on our threesome, but you're not game for one, and he doesn't go for her sex, so… Not gonna happen."

"That part I got, but ten minutes ago I was sure you were going to get your ass tuffed from here to next week, and now…" Now, Zurie's wiping up the bar and getting ready to go home.

Jon smirks, and again _stares_ at Poe. "She's not the one who's got that service on offer." Which is not enlightening to Kylo on why she's no longer interested in fucking Jon. But Jon seems to think it is.

Poe blinks. Then he rolls his eyes. Then he fists his hand in Jon's shirt, pulls him close, and kisses the hell out of him, while _growling_ about teasing him and how he's going to fuck that ass into next _month_ and beyond, and how every time for the rest of his life Jon is going to remember him when he sits down.

Then Kylo blinks. Poe didn't actually do it. He thought it so hard that Kylo saw it.

Kylo bites his lip. He blinks again, unsure of what the hell to do with this. Jon's still staring at Poe, all but daring him to go further, and Poe's _quivering_ at the strain of not… well, doing anything that's going through his mind right now. He feels like he's got to do something, because right here, right now, between Poe and Jon feels… dangerous, and not in a good way. Right now feels like… a tipping point where things could tip very _badly._

Kylo's not sure how to stop or shift it, so he gives a quiet, tiny, unspoken prayer that this is right, and then asks, "How does it work?"

That breaks the staring contest between Poe and Jon. Poe jerks slightly, and Jon visibly has to shift his brain from one train of thought to the other.

"How does what work?" Poe asks.

"Threesomes. Jon sent us to Unthar for massages, and he was thinking about it, too, but…" Kylo shrugs "He was thinking about a fivesome, too, but… That was just too confusing, too many body parts. Three I could track, but… Mostly, he seemed to be thinking that it'd just feel good."

He waits patiently for Jon and Poe to stop thinking about each other, and start trying to figure out how to respond to him. He mentally sighs, pleased to see that question worked, because if it hadn't, he had absolutely nothing to deal with this.

"I don't think it's anything you've got to worry about, Kylo," Poe says.

Kylo shrugs. "Just because I'm unlikely to ever do it doesn't mean I'm not curious."

"Unlikely doesn't sound like never," Jon says.

"Remarkably unlikely. I…" Zurie's wiping down the bar, and they can see her legs and the lines of her back in her high and low cut dress. "know it's not going to happen. Probably. I mean… Shit… Uh…" He turns back to Poe. "She really doesn't do anything for you?"

Poe sighs. "Really not. She's got a nice body, but… Really, no." He looks at Jon. "You get a tingle when he sucked down that drink?"

Kylo shakes his head.

"Yeah, I find that just as boggling as you find me not being into her."

"And I can't believe both of you are so narrow," Jon adds. "It's just skin. The person inside the skin is the exciting part."

Both Poe and Kylo shrug.

"My shaft begs to differ," Kylo says. "Unthar was working on me, and it took a while to relax into it."

"What in the galaxy did he get you set up for?" Poe asks.

"Just massages. Unthar and I go back, along with his wife, and he wanted to take Rey out for a good time, and not the sort of good time that involves bodily fluids spurting about. So, I sent him to my favorite spec and his wife because I knew they'd treat them right."

Poe smirks, starting to find his sense of humor again. "You sent Kylo to a male sex worker?"

"And his wife."

Poe's sniggering. "And let me guess, you took one look at him, and then your brain froze solid, while Rey skipped around like a kid in a candy store with a credit stick?"

"It wasn't quite that dramatic, but…"

"Meaning, yes," Jon says. "I honestly didn't… I mean… The idea that a man rubbing your back would be a problem never occurred to me."

"Well, maybe if we hadn't all been naked when it happened…" Kylo says.

Poe's leaning back, more relaxed, enjoying this a lot.

"You're the one who used my shower, and then walked out with your towel wrapped around your hair and not your waist. I figured there was no possibly way that casual nudity irked you."

"I… It… doesn't… Usually. I just didn't want to drip all over your stuff!"

Jon just stares at him. "Uh huh…" He takes a sip of his drink, notices there's no drink in his drink, and then gets up to fetch a bottle of tequiya blanco for him and Poe, and two ginger fizzes.

He hands the one fizz to Kylo, and pours the second one in a glass, squeezes a lime into it, and adds a shot of the tequiya to it, for Poe.

"So, this imaginary threesome that's not going to happen. Other than you and Rey, who's in it?" Jon asks.

Kylo blinks at that. "Uh?"

"It works differently if there's two men or two women or three of a kind. I know you're not going for three of a kind, unless they're women, and you're just watching, and I assume you can figure out what to do with yourself if you're watching, so…"

Kylo swallows and then purses his lips. In Unthar's idea of it, it was him and Jon and Rey. But… right, three doesn't have to mean two guys. They could both be girls. He glances over, and Zurie's nowhere to be seen. He shifts a bit as his shaft takes note of the idea of Rey and Zurie and him. He coughs a little. "I think I can also figure out what you do with two girls."

Poe laughs at that. "No trouble imagining all the permutations of that triad."

"I may be a bit more interested in that. I definitely have more hands-on experience in that direction." He sips his fizz. "What'd Finn say, a holo of a guy with a girl on his shaft and face? I've done both halves of that, so it's something I have an easy time imagining."

"I've done that," Jon says, with a smirk. "It's… okay." He shrugs. "Kind of overrated, honestly." He stops to think about that for a moment. "If the girls are doing it for you, it's great. Full body, all over sex. _Lots_ of fun. If you're watching it, pretending it's happening to you, it's excellent. If it's not just about you, if you're attempting to be good for them… It's too much to focus on." He shrugs a bit at that. "I'm better at giving head to men than women, though. So that might be part of it. It's… way too easy to slip off the target when it's smaller than the last joint of my pinky finger." He takes another sip of his tequiya. "And those little boogers are _picky._ If you're not totally focused, and don't have exactly the right technique they just lay there and pretend to have a good time. Meanwhile, if you've got a shaft in your mouth... Hell, in that case, you can just lay there, and generally the guy'll get off. If you've got any technique at all, things are usually good to go."

Poe seems to think that's hilarious. Kylo… commiserates. Because there are nights when he's just… not as focused as he likely should be, and it's a good thing that Rey can ride off of his good time, because he knows his tongue is just not, quite… enough.

"I like watching tops to tails better than doing it," Kylo says. "Well, assuming it's not just about making me feel good."

"You can either pay attention to the good time your shaft is having, or focus enough on your tongue to do a good job with it, but not both at once," Jon says with a nod.

Poe's just watching them.

"Not anything you've ever experienced?" Kylo says.

"Yeah… Like Jon said, even lame oral'll generally get a guy off if he's horny enough. And… if I can't find the target, I'm vastly too drunk to fuck." He tries to think of something vaguely useful to say. "Okay, not a huge fan of a guy sitting on my face, either. I mean… I'll happily lick a guy up one side and down the other, and in between as well, but I also like to _breathe._ If I'm doing that, I like to be on top of the situation, not under it."

The other two laugh at that.

They're quiet for a moment, sipping their drinks. Then Poe says, "Okay, what's it feel like? Girls, I mean. I've heard a billion guys singing pussy's praises like it's a religious experience, but… It's like a mouth with no teeth, right?"

Kylo and Jon stare at each other for a moment, and then Kylo says… "Well, I mean, for me, it literally has been a religious experience, but I think that's more about the person you're with and the emotional connection. By the time we got there, I wasn't really paying too much attention to our bodies."

Jon shrugs at that, very clearly indicating that's nothing he's got any experience with. "Mouth with no teeth… That's not… wrong… But it's not right, either." He takes another drink. "If you're wearing a slick, actually, that's a pretty good comparison, but… I mean, I'm assuming you're asking about skin to skin."

Poe nods.

"Okay, you're getting sucked down, and at first it's just wet. But as you're getting into it, the spit gets slippier and a little thicker," Poe's nodding, he knows that sensation from both sides. "And your guy sucks his cheeks in, so you get this wet, hot, slick sensation on all sides."

"So, it's like the best part of a blow job?"

"Sort of. But you can go deeper, and faster, and it'll squeeze and twitch around you, and there's absolutely no chance at all of getting bit or making her puke."

"No suction," Poe says.

"Don't need it," Kylo responds. "Don't get me wrong, I like the sucking part, but the closer to spurting she is, the tighter things get, and when she comes… well, it's just like you, the muscles twitch, but all around you, and unlike us, where if we're lucky, we get half a dozen twitches, she'll get like fifteen, twenty of them, and then aftershocks if you keep touching her, and it feels… just… It's really fucking good!"

"How's it compare to anal?" Poe asks.

"Different," Jon says. "The texture is really different. You don't need to prep for it. You can go from Hello to balls-deep in one stroke if you're with the right person. Wet, in a way butts just aren't." He stops. "In a way the lube I like just isn't. I don't know what you use."

"Slide Right."

Jon thinks about it. "Never tried that. Assuming she's having a good time, pussy's less tight. If it feels like an asshole, that's a woman who does not want to be fucking you. You can go faster and harder and longer. And you often have to, because, again, less tight."

"You have a preference?" Kylo asks.

Jon sighs a little, and takes a long sip of his drinks. "I… Yeah, but it's not about physical sensation. On straight, getting me off… That's going to be about what I'm in the mood for. Sometimes I want pussy. Sometimes I want cock. Ass doesn't matter much because I can do that with anyone. Sometimes I just want to close my eyes and get fucked into next month and don't care which side of the equation I'm on." _And all the time I want to be back with Lane, in his body and love, and him in mine and…_ His eyes widen and he stops that line of thought dead when he realizes he might as well have just said it out loud to Kylo.

Kylo reaches across the table and squeezes his hand. He glances at Poe, and why Poe's not planning on fucking Jon tonight is achingly clear. Why he's putting himself through this waiting period, also crystallizes. Jon is _immensely_ not ready to move on, and for the first time, Kylo's really _getting it._ He glances at Poe and nods to him. Poe nods back.

Jon clears his throat. "Now that we're done with our silent conversations…"

Kylo takes a drink, forces a smirk on his face, and says, "To quote Jacen, it's not my fault you both think so loudly."

"That's the line you're going with?" Poe asks.

Kylo nods. "That's what I'm sticking with. Anyway, I don't have a lot to compare it against, but… To me at least, pussy just feels _right._ It's the thing my body _craves._ I like oral. I like rubbing up against her. Hands are good, thighs and boobs, too. And variety is nice, and I've had an awfully good time with non-pussy sex, but maomao is just _right._ And… I guess you never feel that, and you… rarely?... do."

Poe pours a slug of straight tequila and shoots it down. "Face down, ass up, getting railed for days feels _right._ There's a speed and angle and… When a guy hits that on me… That's… I mean, it's all good. I like just about every kind of sex I've had, but there's just… a sweet spot, where it's just _right._ And that's where right is for me."

Jon nods with that one. "Yeah. I… know what you're talking about on that one. I'm… usually on the giving side of things…"

"I'm shocked," Poe says, deadpan.

Kylo's eyes narrow, there's context that he knows he's missing with this, but neither of the others stop to fill him in, and he doesn't want to stop the conversation to backtrack.

Jon just looks at Poe, and continues with, "But… there's something about the surrender of it. Of just lying back, and letting it happen, putting yourself, your pleasure in someone else's hands, and then having them completely take care of you. That's… exquisite." Again there's the image of Lane, but Kylo does his best not to notice it.

"Especially if they really get off on taking care of you," Poe adds.

"Yeah," Jon says, quietly. "And… On a pure physical sensation thing, I know what Kylo's talking about with pussy feeling _right._ I don't know… primal, genetic drive to fuck and make babies or something. The billion years of fucking that built me wants to keep at it, maybe? But that doesn't match the mental feel of letting go and taking it."

Kylo quietly sips his drink before saying, "You know women can fuck you, right? You can take and they can give and… It's not just about shaft."

Jon shrugs. "I mean, I'm aware of the fact that strap-ons are things but…"

Kylo waves that off. "Not how I meant it. You can relax back and let her take care of you. That's a thing, you know? You don't have to be… penetrated… to give it up."

Both Jon and Poe look deeply skeptical of that claim.

Poe says, voice tentative, "Kylo, you might be… missing… some of how this works."

He rolls his eyes. "I doubt it. Unlike Jon, I don't just know strap-ons are things that exist, I own one, too. That's part of things that are still being explored. That said, you can lie back and let a woman take you over without anything inside your body, and it's awfully fucking sweet."

Both Jon and Poe look skeptical at that.

"I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm looking forward to trying all the variations on that, but… You just lay there, and open your heart and head and she's on your shaft and in your mind and Force and just flowing and glowing with it, and…"

And it's clear he's shot well beyond anything either of them have ever even contemplated when it comes to sex. He can see both of them looking at each other, _Boys' night out with the mindreader, huh?_ unspoken but understood between them.

Kylo tries to bring it round to something that might be more concrete for them. "Never laid back and just let someone ride you? They set the pace and depth, and you just relax and enjoy it? Or, you're half asleep and they wake you up nice?"

"Well, for me, that might be any given off day," Jon says.

"What do you do on your off days?" Kylo asks.

Jon shrugs a bit. "It's been so long since I've had one, I don't really remember."

Kylo eyes him. "That's got to change."

"Kylo, I physically can't do my job if I spend any less time on it."

Kylo's eyes narrow. "Hire more help. Get more Threepios if you need them. I don't care how you do it, just… do."

Jon rolls his eyes at that, but Poe's giving Kylo an approving look. Kylo shrugs a bit. "I want your secretary to have a chat with C8, too."

More of an eye roll. "You're more fun when you're my friend, not my boss."

"You mean you're more comfortable when I'm oblivious as to how you numb yourself. Too bad."

Poe sips his drink and decides to change the subject because he's the one who planted this worm in Kylo's head about getting Jon more off time, and says to Kylo, "You own a strap-on? You jump from no sex into fairly intense sex toys in two years?"

Jon, relieved to get off of work, and how and why he works, makes himself grin. "Now there's a mental image, isn't there?" He's imagining Rey wearing it, and he _likes_ the image. Likes the image of Kylo all spread out and waiting for her, too.

"Stop that!" Kylo says. "That's mine."

Jon sniggers. "If you don't want me thinking about it, don't tell us it's something you do. I'm a visual thinker; you've got to know that, by now. If you say it, I'll picture it."

Kylo glares at him. Jon enjoying those images is… probably something he doesn't need to contemplate too deeply.

Jon takes another drink. "So, given what we know about you, if you ever do manage to have this extremely unlikely threesome, and there's another man involved, make sure you're in the middle."

Kylo doesn't wince, but he's not exactly looking enthusiastic about that.

"Trust me, you will _like_ being in the middle."

He rolls his eyes at that. "As I found with Unthar, my body doesn't much care one way or another who's touching it. My brain is very stubborn, though, and it takes a lot of effort to get it to shut up on the subject."

Poe laughs at that. "Good way to put it. Eyes closed, just feeling it, I might like girls, because my shaft is kind of stupid and doesn't care much about anything but if what's going on feels good. My brain, on the other hand, is picky."

Kylo snorts a laugh at that. "And by picky, you mean the entire spectrum of male humanity?"

Poe looks appalled. "I have standards!"

"Just not a lot of them," Jon says quietly.

"Look, I haven't fucked three quarters of the Order. The Resistance, maybe, but…"

"Doesn't that total like, nine guys?" Jon says.

"Seventeen," Poe replies, but he's grinning. He stretches and checks his chrono. "Probably about time to break it up."

Jon raises a brow.

"Twenty-three fifty."

Jon nods. "Yeah, first appointment tomorrow is at oh eight hundred, and I've got at least an hour of notes to go over before we start. What are you up to?"

"Well, someone finally got me an apartment here, so mostly, I'm moving some of my stuff in."

Jon looks surprised by that, and Kylo's pleased. "Where'd C8 put you?" Kylo asks.

"Oh, you'll see soon enough. I'm dragging your ass over there as soon as you can spare the time. I'm up on I-Deck. He even squared me away with a 'Maji recruitment and organization center.' I've got a bloody map of what'll eventually be XX, where I… and Rey, will eventually figure out where to slap a temple."

"You got an apartment on ship?" Jon says, again, looking stunned.

"Yeah, feels a little weird. I haven't had a place that didn't— Oh. Huh. Well, I was about to say, I haven't had a place that didn't fly in more than eight years, but I guess this place flies, too."

Jon stands up and starts picking up the glasses, covering his confusion and whirling emotions at that bit of intel by cleaning up.

Poe and Kylo follow suit, also tidying up, carrying bottles and glasses to the bar.

While doing that, Kylo says, "We'd been talking about Poe working more on getting people out of places they don't want to be, and… Some brainstorming. The Order likely won't be welcome everywhere, but maybe slipping a church into places might… Get people out."

Jon nods slowly. "Master Poe of the Maji."

"Yep. Like you said, diplomacy stuff. Master Poe probably goes places with the Rens, and schmoozes and listens. Master Poe's good with rich fops and asking the right kind of leading questions while flattering away and making them feel special and loved. Hell, if he's feeling really frisky, Master Poe might go so far as to set up 'special' branches of the Maji that go to places with the rich and powerful and spin them happy stories of balance and tolerance that make them feel good about themselves and their place in the world. And then Commander Poe comes back here, and talks to some selected people, gets them up to speed with Rey's help on what the Maji is and does, and then sends them off to places where rich fops make their ill gotten gains, and opens churches. They engage in do-goodery, and if people who want to learn more have to take lessons on the _Supremacy..._ Well, there's a ship ready to take them."

Jon nods slowly, setting the tequiya bottle back into place. Then he turns on the register, keys in Zurie's code, finds his tab, and pays it.

"Still seems smaller than ideal," Jon says, not dealing with the fact that _Poe is moving here._

"Yeah, but honestly, I don't have the bandwidth to get it going bigger right away. We'll get there. For now, there's a lot that goes into looking like you've got a church, and Rey and I are going to be working overtime with all the rest of it to get this thing so it looks close enough to right to get us into places we don't belong."

"You think places that don't like the Order will let Lady Ren's faith in?" Jon asks.

"I think if they get the idea that allowing the Maji to spread the good word is a good way to keep the Order happy with them, without having to fully deal with us, they may decide to be flexible in that direction," Poe says, looking around, finding a rag, and heading over to wipe up their table.

"Or we may not exactly ask permission," Kylo adds, looking around for where to put the glasses, and eventually locating a dishwasher. "My guess is that if a Maji church just happens to open up in your neighborhood, and you're the kind of person who gets irked by that, you're likely also the kind of person smart enough to know that raising a fuss about it is a bad plan." Though there's a little sparkle in the back of Kylo's mind at the idea of someone making a fuss, and him having the chance to go in and _take care of it._

Poe shivers a bit. He's not a stranger to enjoying destruction, but unfiltered Kylo dark is a bit much, even for him. "You're projecting, hard, Kylo. We're trying to get the minimum number of people dead on this."

He shrugs. "Punching bags and training droids get boring over time."

"I'm sure they do," Poe replies, wondering about long-term management of a dark warrior who's trying to be a peacemaker.

Jon's just watching them. He blinks slowly, and then nods, and then says, "You sober enough to port, or do you need to ride the elevator down?"

Kylo blinks at that. He's not sure. Only one way to find out. And a second later, he's on the other side of the room. "I'm good."

Jon's turn to shiver. "Kylo, what would have happened if you hadn't been?"

Kylo blinks. "Oh. Uh… Probably like the do-not-recognize spell. I'd just be standing over there. Maybe." He feels a little shiver down his spine, too. What if it didn't work that way? "Shit."

"Okay, this has been, fun," Jon says, looking around, making sure they've cleaned up properly. "But I'm thinking that I'm going to _walk_ back to my place."

Poe claps a hand on Kylo's shoulder. "Danger's always been my middle name. Let's go."

"I've never been to your apartment."

"And it wouldn't matter if you had, it's empty right now. My ship…"

"Right," Kylo nods. "'Night, Jon."

Jon flicks him an extremely lackadaisical salute, and ambles toward the door. Kylo pokes Poe, "You gonna kiss him goodnight?"

"I heard that," Jon says, not turning around.

Poe rolls his eyes and pokes him back. "Let's go."

Kylo stops for a moment. He closes his eyes, he focuses, he realizes that every time he's ported himself to Poe's ship, he's pulled himself through by focusing on _Poe_ and on the _feel of Poe_ , not on the image of any of Poe's ship.

"Shit."

"Shit?"

"I don't… have a really good mental image of the inside of your ship."

Poe rolls his eyes. "Really?"

Kylo rubs his forehead. "Just, focus. See it in your mind, okay?"

"Wait, you're…"

And then Kylo's pulling the image out of Poe's mind, and a moment later they're in his personal quarters. Kylo looks around a bit. "This is your room, right?"

Poe nods, kicking some clothing into a corner. "I usually tidy up if I expect company."

"Oh." He's staring around as BB rolls in and starts chirping at Poe. Poe nods, talks to him a bit, as Kylo looks around at the small quarters. Big for a ship this size, but he could tuck three of them into his room on the _Supremacy._

"You wanna stay?" Poe says, patting his bed, pulling his attention away from the machine in the corner that appears to be a torture device.

He sees what Kylo's staring at. "It's basically a full gym in one corner. You were wondering, very loudly I might add, about what I do with it, and yes, get sweaty is part of it, but not the way you were thinking."

Kylo blinks at that, too. "Uh…" His brain grinds around, trying to figure out what's going on. Poe's looking pretty relaxed, he's taking off his boots, and from the look of it getting comfortable. _Stay._ Poe asked if he wanted to stay before he got distracted by what he can see, looking at it now, is a contraption designed to allow Poe to shift a lot of weights around in a very small place.

"Why?"

Poe looks up and sees the look on Kylo's face, and then he laughs. "Calm down, big guy. That's not what I'm suggesting. You aren't my type."

"I thought your type was male." He gestures to himself. "Don't I fit?"

"I like 'em dark and pretty."

"I'm dark."

"You've got black hair, and I'm not talking about force signatures."

Kylo contemplates that. "Jon's not dark, on any level."

"I know, but Jon's special. He's… Anyone who likes men likes Jon."

"But not me."

"You know, for someone claiming to only be interested in women, you're vastly too put out by that."

"I… You're an asshole."

"You're going to feel bad about that when I explain what I meant."

Kylo's eyes narrow.

"You don't sleep well alone. Your brain doesn't shut down. It takes effort to get yourself calm enough to sleep, and you've got to focus to hard to get there, you can't relax enough to really sleep."

Kylo nods.

Poe looks at him expectantly.

Kylo narrows his eyes. "I don't think you being near would help me sleep."

"Don't you? According to Finn, you woke up from a dead sleep in the middle of the night with someone trying to kill you. You only have an easy time settling down when there's someone you trust right next to you, who you know can handle themselves against whatever might pop up."

Kylo blinks slowly at that. He never put it together that part of the reason why he can sleep with Rey is because he's literally got someone else to guard his sleep when she's near.

"Oh."

"So?" Poe says, looking at his bed. "I don't snore, I'm not a bed hog, and like I said when we started learning to dance, I'm not about to pinch your fanny, so…"

"You're right."

Poe looks curious, that's not an answer he was expecting.

"You're not an asshole. That's…" He's got no word to characterize what that offer is, but he's pleased Poe made it. "I appreciate it."

Poe's taking off his vest, and getting up to hang it up. "But I'm not hearing a yes, in there."

"Uh…" Kylo eyes the bed and wonders how weird this would be. "No. I… I'm in the middle of my own ship, surrounded by guards who are supposed to be loyal to me, there's only one entrance to the floor I'm on, and the elevator shuts down when I'm not receiving guests. My door and walls are hardened against anything short of a blast cannon. And if I choose to, I can sleep on a completely different planet, where no one knows the coordinates. Maybe it's time to see if I can get myself to relax on my own."

"Be safe in your own home?"

"Yeah. It's been… ten years. That's long enough to be afraid of a ghost."

Poe gives his shoulder a little squeeze. "Amen on that. But if not, you know where I am, okay?"

Kylo nods, and then, on impulse, because it feels right, he hugs Poe. "Thank you."

"You're welcome, big guy. Good night."

He steps back. "'Night, Poe'" and then ports home.


	49. Closer To Fine

4/13/2

Home is cold.

That shouldn't be a surprise. It's not like the bloody planet was going to warm up while he was away, and honestly, if it did, he'd likely be in the process of getting them out as fast as possible, because nothing good, at all, would warm it up now.

But it's cold.

And empty.

And just him in his bedroom in this house they share that's more hers than his and…

He flops on the bed.

Their bed. The one on the _Supremacy_ is still his, really. But this one here… Every night of it's existence it's been slept in by both of them… Okay, maybe not, he was sick, he was in the _Supremacy…_ He really hopes she caught some sleep here where she didn't have to smell him and get assaulted by his misery.

But this bed, piled high with comforters and blankets and more bedding than he'd have ever anticipated putting on a bed, is theirs.

And it's cold, and empty, and… He just doesn't want to sleep here without her. Kylo rolls onto his belly, scoots over to the bedside table, and looks at the chest where the sex toys live. He could open it up, grab some fun stuff, go back to the _Supremacy_ , and fuck himself into a coma, and hopefully wake up in the morning feeling like a human being, and then tell Rey all about it when she comes home, and maybe show her, too.

He doesn't hate that idea. And, as he said to the guys, deep and thorough investigation may be in order. Rey'd probably like hearing about it after. And… well… especially on his own, he could really play with the fantasy of her and Zurie and the three of them and…

He opens the chest and looks at the toys.

And sighs.

And closes the chest.

And ports back to his room on the _Supremacy,_ because it's bloody cold at home, and especially in the kilt his knees are getting cold.

He starts to undress, hanging up the kilt, tossing his sweater, socks, and shorts into the hamper.

He looks down at his shaft, just sort of dangling about as he heads to the refresher to take care of his nightly routine. He's not… averse to getting off tonight… He'd certainly like to spurt, though he's not feeling particularly aroused on any level right now, but… they're their toys, and playing with them on his own feels weird. Sort of like how sleeping in _their_ bed on his own feels weird, too.

He brushes his teeth, and takes care of himself, and…

It's one bloody night, he really shouldn't feel this out of sorts.

* * *

Back in his bed.

He's still somewhat out of sorts. Part of him wants to say, "You've done this a million times," but he hasn't, not really.

It's been… shit, Poe's got something with that. He was always a bad sleeper as a kid, but that meant he had a difficult time staying asleep, and tended to have nightmares. After Luke, _a bad sleeper_ meant that in addition to having a hard time staying asleep, he also couldn't easily fall asleep.

It's really only been the last six months where he routinely manages to fall asleep in less than an hour and then stay that way until morning.

Before Rey… He'd read reports until his eyes didn't want to focus any longer, get undressed, slip into his pajamas, settle back in bed, not fall asleep for an hour, then shift into his meditations, and usually that could get him into something kind of like sleep for a few hours.

His hand falls to his lap, just cupping his shaft and stones. Spurting tends to make him sleepy. That's something else that's shifted with him and Rey. They started out playing after dinner, and then doing whatever, reading reports/studying, and then going to sleep.

Starvation sex. Grab as much as quickly as possible. Wait for after dinner? No. Now, do it now, and maybe read after. Now, and again, now. Because maybe later wouldn't be an option. But… He's not going to open a report, and Rey's not going to read over his shoulder, see what's in it and leave him. He's not going to say something at dinner and make her go. He doesn't have to grab her as soon as the opportunity offers itself, because he's secure in next time.

And secure in next time means other patterns get to change. Spurting makes him feel good, calms down his mind, snuggling with Rey after calms it down further, next thing he knows, he's asleep. And he's asleep because he's not laying there, clinging to her, afraid he'll wake up and find that she decided she could or should do better, and left.

He begins a slow and easy up and down, letting his fingers just stroke over his shaft. Giving himself a little pull at the end, warming up. It feels good.

He tries thinking about Zurie. It's… different. He's not turned off, but it's not the hot flush of a lot of his other sexual fantasies… It's not watching videos with Rey. It's not even the rush of thinking of him and Rey and Zurie. He's curious, mostly. He really is wondering what she looks like naked, but it's an almost intellectual curiosity. What is her coloring really like? Are her pink bits… well… pink? And, well… do they look like… pussy? Does she have body hair?

He supposes he could just ask Jon.

Which brings a new image to mind. Zurie wanting to play with the three of them. Zurie on Jon's lap. The two of them kissing. That's… doing a whole lot more for him than Zurie on her own was. Zurie between Jon and Poe… His hand moves a little faster, but… That's not where Poe would want to be. Jon between Zurie and Poe… That's… working significantly better than he expects it should. He's rapidly stiffening at that image.

Poe suggesting he was too put out by not being interesting to him. That pops into his head, and brings things to a halt.

He takes Zurie out of the image. It's vastly less interesting to him. But it's not repulsive. It just isn't anything he wants to leap into. There's no rush at all once Zurie's out of the picture.

He puts himself into the image. Jon and Poe and Zurie and him. It… won't coalesce in his mind. He can watch the three of them play, and enjoy it, but his imagination won't throw him into the game.

He slips Rey into the mix. That _works._ That works it a hot, rush of stiffening blood and _need._ As soon as he adds her to the game, he can play, too. And his imaginary version of her is having a _very_ good time. He half notices that Jon and Poe vanish as his strokes get faster, and it's him and Rey and Zurie and all three of them are _really_ enjoying each other.

Or, more specifically, they're really enjoying him.

His breath is picking up. They're really enjoying each other, and he's _watching,_ helping a little… Showing Zurie how to properly lick Rey. Sitting back against the headboard, like he's pretty much doing now, Rey on his shaft, Zurie licking her, but her tongue wanders every now and again, soft little laps against his stones.

Rey clenching on him, shaking, moaning, head against his shoulder, hands clenched in Zurie's hair. That's the image that puts him over.

He lets himself relax, lets his body go soft and still, hopes that this'll do it. He'll just fall asleep and that'll be that.

* * *

It's not. He's tired. He's relaxed. He cleaned up, and snuggled into the covers, and took Rey's pillow and shifted it around so he could hold it like he holds her, and he's _awake._

"Fuck it." And in a heartbeat, Kylo's with Rey, wrapping around her.

And in another heartbeat, he's back in his room, because it's occurring to him that if he's going to have a squad of security go breaking into that room the second a sensor notices he's there, he's bloody well going to be at least wearing a pair of pants.

He puts on his pajamas, and then again ports to Rey. He's on top of the blankets, she's under them, and he's content enough just to be holding her that he doesn't care too much about the fabric between them.

He's tense, waiting, but he doesn't feel anyone leaping up and about to rush in. Whatever else is true about right now, he doesn't appear to have triggered any of the sensors watching this room. They apparently are, just, wired for sound.

She doesn't wake up, not on any real level, though he can feel her sleeping mind recognize he's here, and cuddle into him.

He rests his face against her shoulder and neck, and breathes her in.

Maybe he is pussy whipped, but as Jon said, it was what he wanted to be. This is… good. He shouldn't have to be alone, not if he doesn't need to be.

He's idly wondering if the Kinears set this up this way just to test him, or Rey, see what they'd do with a night alone.

Or maybe the test is for him and Rey, let each other see what they'd do with it.

Apparently, this. This is what he does with it. His eyes close, and he lays with his wife, calm and centered.

* * *

But not sleeping.

He's… supposed… to be asleep. Probably. It's late. Almost morning by New Alderaan's clock. Several hours into first shift by his clock.

Sleepy-time.

His body is soft and relaxed. The room is dark, and a little cool. The bed is comfortable. Rey's dreams are sloshing around in her head, and he could easily slip into them.

Should be the perfect recipe for sleep, but it's not happening.

He lets his mind wander a bit further. Away from Rey and here and now.

Ah… The soft glow, the… feel… of something that's supposed to happen. Something not in this room.

Probably a good thing he put his pajamas on. He's already not supposed to be here, and wandering about naked would likely not improve the situation.

He can feel it. He's not _supposed_ to be on this planet, because he wasn't invited. He's not supposed to be in this room, not right now, because there's something outside this room, waiting for him.

He kisses Rey, and gets up, wandering to the wide glass doors that open onto the balcony over the… His eyes take it in, slotting what he knows about this space, his mother's bits of conversation about it, into what he's seeing… Remembrance Garden.

Memories of a world he doesn't have. Couldn't have. He was born after most of this died, but…

He closes his eyes and feels for the electronics. He can feel the buzz of moving energy all around him. He doesn't know why he tried, he's always been shit with using his Force with or for electronics, beyond the most brutal level of being able to blow the circuitry of anything too close. There's no way he could just turn off one camera, or even figure out which energy flow is a camera.

If there's monitoring on the garden, well… They can wonder how he got there.

He leaps off the edge of the balcony, and lands gently in a crouch. Then stands and begins to wander. It's… familiar. He doesn't know if it's somehow wired into his head, a… sense memory passed down through his genes, but this feels… familiar.

He doesn't recognize the plants. Can't, shouldn't. He's never been here, and had never been to old Alderaan. But like the rest of the garden they feel like something he… dreamed of? The memories of the ghosts who never deigned to visit?

The eternal flames. He hasn't seen them before, but he did see the ones that burned for Padme. He knows why they feel familiar. The sarcastic part of his brain wonders who's job it is to keep the 'eternal' flames fueled. The less jaded bit decides that's how everything works. Nothing, literally, is eternal. Nothing of humans at least. But they can endeavor to try, as long as they think something's important, they'll fuel it up and keep it burning.

The rock in the center. Nineteen meters high, eight wide, a chunk of what was left of Alderaan, captured by a ship, and drug here.

It's just cold, jagged stone. There's no connection here. No sense of blood or history.

His hand rests against it. He wonders how many millions of other lost children of Alderaan have done that, hoping for some spark of magic, a feel of belonging, the sense of the home that no longer exists. He wonders how many of them got it.

He circles it, and finds what he's expecting. It's a holo projector cut into the face of the stone, and a keypad. Put a name in, and… He types for a moment, and up they come. Breha and Bail Organa. Her Royal Highness, and her consort. Last, true, Queen of Alderaan.

It starts with a formal portrait. The two of them, a bit stiff, staring at a point past his head. After a few seconds, the image shifts. Relaxed, still… he can feel it, formal. This is them, being the Royal Couple, out and about. He doesn't expect there'll be any real, informal, them at home, being themselves, sorts of pictures.

The only pictures like that likely went when the planet blew.

He makes a note. A camera. He knows they exist. He knows lots of people have them, and he wants one. He wants the sort of life where he has pictures of him and Rey being him and Rey. Where there's proof that there were people who weren't just the Master and Mistress of the Order. He wants soft, easy, relaxed images of them, for him and her and their children.

He wants… something real. Something that will last beyond them. Something he can look at decades from now and remember 'this was us when.' Something generations from now can do that with, too.

He's hit with an image, himself, older, gray of hair, wrinkly-faced, holding a small child, showing them images, and saying things like, "This is Gran and I when we were young. And that's your Uncles Poe and Jon, and…"

He wants that so badly it _burns._

He looks at the memorial. His grandparents are literally no more. Blown to atoms and potentially the atoms shattered, too. His father is gone, also blown to atoms and beyond. His mother, his uncle, rejoined the Force. And eventually, he and Rey will be no more, too. They'll rejoin the Force. So… something… tangible needs to remain.

He stops it on a shot where his grandparents were likely… fifty? Thereabouts. Leia is with them, and she looks to be about ten. Still a girl, holding their hands, laughing at something.

The _image_ of the perfect family.

He doesn't know if the image conjured her, or if she's been here the whole time, waiting for him to get to this, either way, he feels the glow more than sees it.

"They're just pictures."

He shrugs a bit, and thinks, _You can understand this, right?_

"Of course."

He nods. _Not sure how wired we are right now. I don't know if you'll show up on the feed, and I'm already not supposed to be here, but I figure me talking to myself isn't going to improve the 'image' of Prince Ben._

Leia laughs at this. "Oh, I'll show up. That's how this works, right? The Force puts us where we need to be?"

 _That's certainly how you taught it._

"Well, they want proof. Here I am. Here you are. And I know for a fact that there are ten cameras on us."

 _Lovely. I have absolutely no reason to trust The Force won't set this up so I'm standing around talking to myself on the feed._

Leia sighs at that, but doesn't argue with it.

He's still looking at the picture on loop. Her with her parents, laughing. _It looks real._

"It is. That's…" She remembers. "Almath's coming of age celebration. It's not staged, or a public outing."

He rolls his eyes a bit. _Not what I meant by real. You're happy. They are. It's_ real.

She nods. "Papa didn't get home as much as we'd have liked, but… Yes. When he was back, we always had a good time." He can see the brittle edge on her smile, as she steps forward and shuts the images off.

He blinks, not having been aware that ghosts could do things like that. She looks a little surprised by it, too.

He turns the images back on, and sits back to watch. Most of these images he's never seen before. He's speaking with his voice before he can even think to stop it. "I should have had these. I shouldn't be almost thirty-three and setting foot here for the first time."

Leia turns her back on the images. She looks exasperated and a little annoyed. "It's a graveyard, Ben. For people you never met. For a world that wasn't yours."

"It should have been. Even if we weren't ever going to live here. Even if I was never going to be a proper Prince Ben, and if you didn't want to be Queen Leia… This," he nods to the images, "should have been mine."

She shakes her head a little, and sits next to him. "You didn't need my ghosts, Ben."

"Please stop calling me, Ben. I didn't like it when I was twenty. I really don't like it now. It's… disrespectful to call someone by a name they've specifically asked you not to."

She considers that, and he feels her decide to not bring up how respectful it is to shun the name your mother gave you.

"Thank you." It feels weird to say it, but he appreciates her not picking the fight.

"Kylo."

She looks peaceful. She was always good at that. That calm, peaceful, knowing gaze. He can feel she's not; the roiling under the look. The sorrow she always seemed to hold so tightly. He sets the images to scan through. Images of Bail and Breha, together and by themselves… But she won't look at the images. She keeps her gaze on him looking at the images.

He spends a few moments watching, thinking about the fact that she thinks this is a graveyard, the one where her history, her past, the people who made her _her_ are all represented here. And she never brought him here. Never let him touch this, or even attempt to internalize it.

And in a flash, he's _angry._ Angry at missing this. Angry at the walls she's always kept between them. Angry at the distance, physical and mental, they've always had.

"We build graveyards so we can grieve, Mom. We're allowed that! We're… supposed to ache and miss and hurt, because we lose precious things." He thinks of Jon and his Lane and… the value he gets by being near genuine sorrow, and he hopes the value he offers Jon in his grief. "We don't, and probably, shouldn't, just stuff it all down and pretend it's all right."

"It's a trap, Kylo. You set foot here, and… It pulls you in, and you can't get out, and…"

"And you pretend you didn't bleed. You slap that soft, almost smile on your face," the same look she's got aimed at him now, "the one that even as a child I could read was fake, the one that you'd flash at me and then change the subject, and then go away for a week or month 'on business,' and only come back when you were 'happy' again. Maybe I wouldn't have been so fucking lost in the dark if I'd had anyone show me how to deal with it instead of just push it away." The image of Bail and Breha and Leia is up again. "Did they shut you out? Only show you the happy side? Live such a charmed life they only had the happy side?" His voice smooths out a little, as he watches more images. "I know so little about them."

"I told you stories about them."

"A few. And then you'd get sad. So, you'd leave. And I stopped asking because you'd get sad, and leave, and…" He looks at the flames, looks at the well-worn paths. He can feel what people do here. She's right, it's a graveyard. "Families share sorrow. That's… part of the idea, or ideal, right?"

"A child doesn't need his parent's sorrow."

He stands up, so she has to lean back and crane her head up to look into his eyes. "Do I look like a child to you, now?"

"You look like my child. You look like someone who was drowning in his own dark, shouldering more pain than he could carry, someone who could not take a single other thing to the burden he was already carrying. I was the adult, and it was my job to make your life easier, not the other way around."

"You think running away made my life easier?" He can feel she believes that, but it's still shocking to him.

"It didn't make it harder." She takes a breath, or a pause, and lets herself calm again.

He stares at her, and she's looking back up at him. Her expression isn't hot or cold or challenging. It just is, and he doesn't know what to do with that.

He steps back a bit, sits next to her again, really looking, really feeling. He shakes his head. "You're so hard to get a read on. Sometimes, I think you're well in the dark, with Dad and I, then you pull stuff like this, and it's all light side non-attachment. I know there's passion in there, but… When it came to me, you might have just as well been a Jedi. There's no intimacy, no attachment."

"No attachment?" She sounds horrified.

"You'd leave for months. I can't make it one night away from Rey, because I am deeply, intimately, committedly, _attached_ to her. I was reading the history of Alderaan, and got to the part where faster than sound travel got online and suddenly anywhere on the planet was no more than a few hours away from any other part. Chandrilla wasn't that big. You didn't have to be gone that much. You didn't like being… intimate… with me. So, you ran away."

"I was protecting you."

"From you? From us actually having a relationship? From the fact that we weren't ever," he gestures to the picture of Bail and Breha and Leia. "So, we didn't live up to the picture book fantasy. It didn't have to be perfect to be worth having."

That perfect, unperturbed, calm look on Leia's face cracks, real sorrow starting to etch through. "I'd get sad, and you'd cry. And I couldn't get you calmed back down, because I couldn't get _me_ calmed back down. I'd have to leave, because if I didn't, you'd start to scream, and… We figured that out when you were a little baby. And all the deep breathing, and find the quiet spot, and… It doesn't matter if the wound is that big and there's just a hole of _rage_ where your heart used to be, and… You didn't _need_ that. You had enough of your own sorrows, and your own rage, and you didn't need mine on top of it.

"You didn't need to grow up in a world where horrible people murdered entire…" her voice catches, "planets, because they wanted to show off how powerful they were. Your nightmares were vivid enough without that on top of them."

Kylo has a flash of Leia waking up, heart thundering, seeing Alderaan blow up, again, hearing him screaming in the background because her dream had leaked out of her head into his.

She glances to the picture. Bail and Breha, together, his hand on her back, soft and gentle as the pose for some picture or another. The Queen and her Viceroy _perfect._

"And you didn't need to be in the middle of Han and I fussing. We didn't have the picture book. Fine. We also couldn't reliably fake it for you, either. We'd argue, and you'd cry."

"So what? Babies and toddlers are allowed to cry. Sad people are allowed to cry. Angry people are allowed to cry. The fucking world wasn't going to explode because we were in pain!" He's so frustrated at this. At the idea that he spent so much of his childhood alone because his mother couldn't stand to let him _feel_ and be part of what was their life. "Maybe if we'd tried it together, we could have been," and he gestures to the image. "You don't get the picture book if you only try to live the good bits."

Leia shakes her head. "That's the dark side talking."

"Force, Mom, we're all fucking darklings. That's why we're shit at doing light side stuff like breathing deeply and getting calm. Luke got every iota of light in this family, possibly for every generation of it."

She snorts at that. "You'd be dead if you were all dark."

He rolls his eyes. She's trying to redirect them from arguing about all of the Organa-Solos being dark to Organa-Solos being all dark. She'd do that with Han, too, find an argument close to, but not actually, what mattered, and use that to stay away from the thing that really hurts. He can feel himself tripping into it. And he stops. "Fine." Then he takes the moment to settle himself, to lean into his light, and his empathy.

 _Not attached?_ She'd been horrified at that. He goes back to _feel_ that.

"Right," he says. "Deeply attached, and terrified, and negating attachment to avoid fear. I should have recognized that sooner." He rolls his eyes again. "Jedi coping mechanisms, lesson one, day one. Don't get attached so you never have to feel bad about anything. No highs, no lows, everything dwells in a mucky gray haze. I wasn't a fan of that at sixteen, and have seen absolutely no reason to think any better of it in the last sixteen years. Hell, even Luke didn't think that was the greatest idea the Jedi ever came up with."

Leia's on the verge of saying something like, 'Try losing something that matters to you,' but she bites her tongue before it gets out. She _looks_ at him, at the scars, at the body built big and strong by too much anger and too much pain, and lets her own empathy come into play.

Her lip curls, and he's about to leap to fight at that, to make an attack, but again, he lets his empathy do its job. She's not sneering at him. She's hating these feelings. Hating the vulnerability, the fear, the fact that anyone or thing you love can and will, eventually, leave.

"Hope's not a promise. Your father said that?" she asks.

"Apparently. It's at the top of my head?" He wasn't aware of thinking about that.

"It's what I'm getting right now. But maybe not from you." There's no sense of Han here right now, but Kylo supposes he's likely not that far off. "He was right. It's not." She sighs. And he's got the sense of, 'Well, you asked for it,' though she doesn't say it. "You weren't exactly ideally timed."

He snorts at that. "Dad already covered the fact that I wasn't planned."

She rolls her eyes a bit at that, but… Well, that's true. "There was… well… everything going on. And… pregnant and battle commander don't exactly go hand in hand." She blinks. He's, obviously, an adult. And also an adult in a sexual relationship, but one that, as of yet, has produced no children. But Luke also handled… everything… so… She doesn't _know_ what he _knows_ about this. "Just because you're pregnant doesn't mean you have to have a baby."

Kylo looks a little surprised. He imagines that's the sort of thing that he'd know if he'd thought about it, but he never has. Then what she's saying to him _clicks_ and he understands. "Oh."

"But… hope. And… the will of the Force. Mostly hope though, and what's more hopeful than a new life? Than building a home, and a family, and… doing the work to make the future better than the past? It's all… good ideas, but… just because you want it doesn't mean you know how to get it, or…" This time she looks to the image of her parents. "It always looked so… easy… for them. Papa primarily lived on Coruscant, because of his job with the senate, but he was back every season, usually for a few weeks, and… They loved each other so much. They didn't get into stupid fights about public functions. And… It just… worked for them."

"And when it wasn't effortlessly easy for you, you got angry. Because it was supposed to be easy. Because you could see people around you doing it practically without thought. That's every light side Force lesson I ever attended. But you're not allowed to get angry, are you, because the New Republic is being built, and you're Leia Organa, the not quite Jedi, and you're supposed to be calm and centered, and this fucking _image_ of Alderaan..." And then, looking at Bail and Breha and Leia, he gets another level of it. "And I was supposed to be easy, too, right? Babies cry and they get upset and have tantrums and whatnot, and you knew that, but… You couldn't calm me down, and that's what a mom is supposed to do, right? Especially a light-sider. Find your calm, and then spread it around. You couldn't soothe me, and you couldn't get me to sleep, and you couldn't make me happy, and… It felt like failing all over, didn't it?"

She inclines her head a bit. "According to your nannies you tended to have an easier time when I wasn't around. Slept better, ate better, less volatile." She glances at her mother. "She could run a planet, seek alliances, do the political dance, keep everyone on an even keel, and nurse a cranky baby, bandage a booboo without it turning into a screaming tantrum, and I couldn't come home without you turning into a high-pitched wookie on a bad day, and… The nurses kept saying babies don't hate, and they don't do it on purpose, and you weren't trying to make me feel bad, and the more agitated I was, the more agitated you'd be, and I needed to calm down, and sometimes new mums get the blues, and that they make medication for that, and maybe I should talk to a med droid, and… Out there, I was a war hero. Out there, I made deals that brought peace. Out there, I could handle anything and everything that came my way. And at home… I couldn't be in the same room with my man for more than an hour without a fight breaking out, and I couldn't get a cranky toddler to go to bed and not wake up with night terrors two hours later. At home, everything _failed._ "

Kylo lets loose a long sigh. Given the chance, he would have done everything in his power to avoid all those light side lessons he was miserable at. He, if he could have, would have run screaming from constantly, every fucking day, having to fail over and over and over, with an audience. "It was easier to stay where you were… good. Do things people praised you for, and," he bites his lip. She threw him the bone of not fussing about Kylo, so he'll grant this, "It's not like what you were doing wasn't important. Like you said, there was a war on, and trying to build a Republic to prevent the next one, and…"

"And you were eight and… nothing… either of us did worked, anymore. And the nannies couldn't keep you calm, and… The Jedi started training young. Luke had told us that. He was sure you needed training, that he could… help. And, I agreed. The dark was there, and… easy to blame."

"And if Luke failed, it wasn't on you. The greatest Jedi alive… He could do anything, fix anything… or one, but if he couldn't, then you'd tried your best and it was out of your hands."

There's some real fire in her expression as she says, "Your dad said something like that to me. I believe I slapped the shit out of him."

Kylo's got a very jaded look on his face as he says, "Truth hurts?"

"Like a bitch. But I also wasn't wrong on that, too. You did need training, and it's not like there were twenty-five Force academies to pick from. Luke was it. At the very least, you needed enough control to not blow the power every time you got angry about something. The fact that a lot of the problems were in my head doesn't mean there weren't actual problems on your end, too. And… I know… It wasn't all, or necessarily even mostly you, but…"

"You do?"

"Now." She's looking gently at him. "He was… there always. That's probably why… I know you heard conversations about you, about your dark, and we always talked about it like it was something—"

"Parasitic. Like you could cut it out and cure me and somehow I'd magically turn into _Ben_."

She just looks at him. "It's different now. I can feel your own dark. You're right, it's there. There's a lot of it, and it's quite powerful, but… Back then, it wasn't all _your_ dark. We just… I just… It was always there, so… I had no way to know, not really, that it wasn't _you,_ but… It felt alien, too. It was… always with you, but it wasn't… you."

Kylo stares at the gravel on the path in front of them. It wasn't him. But it was. It wasn't wrong to talk about it like some invading alien, because some of it was. And some of it wasn't. And neither of them know what a past where only his own dark had been in play would have looked like.

When he looks up, she says, "Sun'll be up soon." Then she points to a corner of the garden. "No camera coverage there. You can head over, and the get back to Rey, or the _Supremacy_ from there, and they won't see how you did it."

He nods, knowing deeper conversation is over. His hand brushes where hers would be if she had hands. And then he goes to the blind corner to get a few more moments of snuggles with his wife.

* * *

Kylo's _almost_ asleep when he feels a wave of appalled electronic emotions wash over him. He doesn't open his eyes, but he does smirk.

 _Yes, I know you're in here. Your feet make a lot of noise._ It's a gamble, because he's got no idea if he can communicate silently with an electronic mind. Let alone _that_ electronic mind.

And it fails, because he just feels Threepio thinking something along the lines of _What are you doing in here? How are we going to explain this? This room is wired for sound so I can't say anything. Maybe if I don't, he'll just leave and then we won't have to explain why he's here… Mother of the Force! Did he go anywhere else, anywhere with camera? If he stayed quiet in here they may not have noticed him, yet. If they did notice him, how are we going to explain this?..._

"It's customary for men to sleep with their wives, Threepio. I'm sure absolutely no one will be fussed by it," he says.

"You're awake," Threepio's voice is nervous and clipped. _And there goes any possibility of them not noticing him here._

"We both are. I take it it's time to get up and dressed," Rey says, not moving from Kylo's snuggle.

"Yes, Rey, we have a breakfast meeting, and then a tour of the main town, and…" He's glaring at Kylo.

Kylo touches his own comm. "C8, is there anything set for this morning I absolutely have to be there for?"

"Sir, your first appointment isn't for another six hours. It's 03:00."

Kylo nods. "Right." He lays against Rey. "That's why I'm not completely unconscious. I haven't actually had a full night without sleep, yet."

Rey feels curious about that. _I thought you were here._

 _I was. Couldn't sleep. Had a wander in the memorial garden, and a chat with Mom. Tell you about it when we're free to talk._

She nods.

"As charming as this little tableau of domestic bliss is, Kylo, you were not _invited_ to any of the morning's doings." They can feel Threepio is glaring. "And, unless I'm about to be utterly shocked, you also are wearing the only clothing you have with you, which does not, among other things, include a _shirt,_ let alone shoes, or anything approaching proper court gear, and you need a shave. You look like a bum."

Kylo tries to remember what he's wearing. Pj pants and scruff. Could have been any morning his father was actually home for. "I look like my Dad."

"That's nothing that will improve the situation here this morning. Go home."

"And stop fucking up your carefully orchestrated affair of state?"

"Exactly. You hired me to do a job, now let me do it. You go home, get some sleep, and do your own damn job."

He lays his face against Rey's shoulder, and mentally smirks to her, _I made Threepio curse._

He feels her roll her eyes at him. _I'm so proud._

That gets a little laugh for him, and another quick nuzzle. "You want me to go home?"

"Not really. My brain thinks it's 03:00, too. I want to go back to sleep." He laughs at that. "But it'll probably go better if it's just us. Queen Heloise seems to like me. I'll invite her for a visit back to our place, and you can play King Ben, there."

"Thank you, Rey, that is a sensible reply. Up you get. Back to bed with you, Kylo, your own bed, not here."

"Did you ever have to do this for my parents?"

"They had the good sense to lock the door."

Kylo snorts at that, too, and then kisses Rey. "Okay, I'm off."

She kisses, and hugs back, and then gets up from a bed with only her in it. "Time to rise and shine?"

"Exactly, Rey."


	50. Wheels Within Wheels

Untenitine 3, 30

"Ma'am…"

"What?" Helene Talmash mutters, three quarters asleep. She checks the chrono. It's 06:30, half an hour before her usual wake up time.

Her personal assistant droid is hovering next to her bed. "There's a security man here, and… he wants to see you."

She pulls herself into a seated position. Nothing good ever started with those words, let alone at a time like now. "Is the Order about to invade?"

"Nothing that important. You can get a cup of tea and dress, if you like."

"Thank you, C9." She takes a breath, and lets it out slowly. Whatever is going on, at least they aren't all about to die.

* * *

Three minutes later, with her hair long and loose, and a quickly chosen nightgown covering her, Helene heads out to see her security man.

Boy. This one is too young to qualify as a man. He's eighteen, nineteen at most, certainly not a man. He's in the uniform of the New Alderaan Security Forces, but he's also here, so he's one of the ones she keeps on payroll to bring her interesting bits and bobs. New Alderaan's open government policy means that pretty much everywhere in the palace and government compound is at least wired for sound, a lot is wired for video, and a wise political player takes advantage of these things.

He's hunched over a datapad, still watching the feed.

"What has you seeking me out so early?"

He jerks up, seeing her, and snaps to attention. "Ma'am. I thought this would matter to you."

"Then show me," Helene sits next to him, and watches him reverse the feed to about forty-five minutes ago.

"It looks normal, just the garden at night, and then…"

She sees it. A man, a big one, just… plops into the screen. He has to have jumped from above, but that's an angle they don't have coverage of. She doesn't know who he is, but she does know that if he jumped into frame, he fell at least five meters, and doesn't appear to be even slightly rattled by the fall.

He, also, appears to be in his pajamas.

She feels the nervousness creep up her spine.

"Once we saw that, we trained a camera to stay on him."

"I daresay that's a wise idea." The feed is currently showing him from the back and side. He's big. Long, black, or at least dark, hair, pale skin, a lot of it on display. "Not to be rude, but…"

"I know. The gardens are open to the public, and he appears to be the public, odd entrance and attire or not, but… Keep watching."

They do. The man walks to the remembrance stone. He's eyeing it. Touches it. Normal enough, literally millions of people have done that. Some of the edges on the lower two meters are starting to wear smooth it's been done so often.

He queues up a name, and watches.

Helene winces. Tall, black hair, the camera angle is too far and wide to really tell, but if he's there, staring at Bail and Breha… "Ben Solo."

"Maybe, Ma'am."

"Maybe." That's what all of her inner circle has been hoping for. Maybe. Maybe Kylo Ren is a pretender. Maybe… Maybe's getting less and less likely by the minute. They continue to watch. He's just standing there, looking at his grandparents, maybe. She pauses the feed. "How did he get here?"

The boy looks troubled. "We… don't know."

She just stares at him.

"No craft has entered our space, and if he came with the rest of the delegation but stayed on their ship, he didn't get off of it. We've got a feed on it, and no one's been in or out."

"Fuck." She mouths it. There have been rumors of small, personal crafts that bend the vibrations of the scanners and can slip through undetected. They're tiny little things, one or two people, and maybe a half ton of cargo, max. There's a huge chasm between rumor and fact, but if _Solo_ is here… Of course, a Solo would have one of them. And she knows the the first thing Threepio did, before they even set foot on this planet, was map out all of the security feeds. _Fucking Threepio!_ What she says out loud is, "I think we're going to have to do a reupping of the security feed. Obviously, the Order is in possession of someone who can tell where all of our internal sensors are, and then provide a good enough map to get through them undetected." _Fuck._ Those blind spots are there for a reason, but if someone outside of their inner circles can find them… Or worse, bug them. That headache that started the second she saw Threepio is just getting worse and worse. "Does he just stand there and watch?"

The boy shakes his head, and hits play.

The groan that pours out of her mouth when she sees the holo appear next to Ben is long, low, and pained. Threepio had said it. They didn't have anything to prove or disprove that the man in their garden was Ben Solo. The Order _did._

It's Leia. Older that Helene remembers her, but she'd have to be, it's been more than a decade since they saw each other last. And, it's got to be some sort of holo projection. She's blueish and translucent.

And… Okay, that's not unfakable. This is one hell of a balls out sort of move if it's faked, but… She listens to the conversation. "Shit." No way anyone in their right mind would leak that conversation. No… She watches the feed. The holo actually turns toward one of the cameras and smiles.

"Leia. Fuck." She mouths that, too, not letting her voice actually touch those syllables. "Delete it."

The boy looks horrified. "Ma'am?"

"You heard me, delete the feed."

"Ma'am… I…" he's blushing and nervous. "Can't."

"If you have the access to make this copy for me, you've got the access to delete the feed."

He stares at her, blankly.

"You know what I'm asking."

He stands up, quickly. "I… Ma'am… I can't. That feed is public property. Attempting to alter it is a felony. I need to…" And he _runs_ out. She rolls her eyes and sighs. Then she gets her datapad and immediately writes him up for a commendation. He'll get a nice pay bonus, for 'obeying the law in defiance of a direct order from a superior.' When he tells his Uncle what happened, she'll wave it off as a test.

It's not the first time one of them has done that. It won't be the last one. In the next year or so, he'll get a transfer to somewhere his stubborn adherence to the law won't be a problem. Probably personal security to the Queen, assuming, that a year from now, there is a _Queen._

"Fuck!" The sun has risen, and the son of Leia Organa has set foot on New Alderaan, and the future is… damnably uncertain.

* * *

4/13/2

Rey stares at her hair in the mirror. "This one seems a lot easier than yesterday's."

Threepio nods. "It's actually a non-standard look for a female member of the Alderaanian royalty. But, it seemed, _fitting._ This is a style last worn probably two thousand years ago."

"Okay."

"Alderaan is, of course, peaceful. That does not mean that all of it's neighbors were similarly positioned, or that they didn't have to deal with people trying to damage that peace."

"So, from after Alderaan became _Alderaan_ , at least, internally, but before it became **_Alderaan._** "

"Exactly, Lady Ren. This is the traditional look of the Alderaanian Battle Commander, off to parley battle into accord. The primary braid is one of action and violence. You'll note it starts at the crown of the head and then tapers off. The second and third braids, on the side of your head, are for seeking accord and peace. You'll note they're complete, and come together behind the battle braid, closing it off."

"And you thought this would be… a good statement for today."

Threepio nods. "It is likely today we will speak of things at least nudging the bounds of our non-aggression treaty, and possibly brush some of the treaty itself. A warrior who wishes not to be a warrior, seeking peace and accord seemed to be an appropriate message."

"Ah." She lets the droid fiddle with her hair while she sips a cup of tea. "And the outfit."

"The outfit is a casual, breezy look for strolling through a garden without a care in the world. After all, we may be seeking accord, but we understand that this is not, in the grand scheme of things, anything to lose sleep over."

She hits him with a bit of side eye. "Except, of course, on a _literal_ level."

It's possible that Threepio may have mentally chuckled at that, but his metal face stayed perfectly unreadable.

* * *

The most damnable part of the Ben Solo thing exploding into Helene Talmaash's life is that she just doesn't know all the angles on this.

Or, more specifically, she doesn't know what her niece, the Queen, thinks _she's_ doing with it.

There's a plan there, an idea, and… She cannot break in enough to find out what it is. Which means one of two things, it's a bleedingly stupid harebrained idea that will backfire hard enough to hurt the whole Talmaash line for decades, or, worse, it's _not._

Because if it's not, then the easily placated girl who was placed on the throne to make life significantly more easy for Helene may have, in fact located both a spine and _plans_ for the future and that'll just muck up the works.

She took out Leia Organa, and it's true that Helene didn't kill her sister-in-law, but she certainly died at a convenient time, and Helen certainly took advantage of it, in order to get this position here, and she's not about to lose it because some idiot child starts to get _ideas._

* * *

 _Unsupervised free time._ Rey and Heloise are 'having a stroll' and 'getting to know each other.' They're on a patio, overlooking yet another garden, and Rey's coming to the conclusion that, any bit of land that can possibly be coaxed into supporting some sort of plant life on New Alderaan has been coaxed into supporting some sort of plant life. Today's garden is full of flowers, and blooming trees.

At the far end of the patio, 'mingling' and 'having a pre-breakfast nibble' Ellie, Threepio, their 'retinue' (two of which had to be spoken _severely_ to, by Rey, in order to get them to _not_ follow her and the Queen around the garden), and the Viceroy, Tayron Talmaash, the Queen Father, Samanth Organa, and a few others are 'getting to know each other.'

The only ones not there are Colonel Jeffries, who is apparently in a private meeting with Lord Bail Antillies, who is the lead diplomat for New Alderaan. They're, apparently, actually doing business.

Meanwhile, Rey and Heloise _stroll._

It's making Heloise's entire contingent of advisers extremely nervous.

Heloise can see/feel/understand what Rey's picking up with the way the rest of her contingent is just _watching_ them. "At this point in my career, I've come to the conclusion that if something makes all of my advisers nervous, but none of them are willing to be seen to say, on record, that I shouldn't do it, that I very much should."

Rey nods at that. "I… haven't been doing this long enough to have developed habits like that, yet. But it seems like a good plan."

"You've only been at this for…"

Rey thinks about that, and decides that, "Less than six months," is both true and accurate enough for this conversation.

"But you and Lord Ren have been together longer than that?"

"Yes, several years now."

Heloise nods. "You didn't go into this expecting to be Lady Ren?"

"It was a far, far removed thought on my part."

"But not on the part of Lord Ren?" There's some genuine curiosity in her voice, and Rey has the sense that Heloise would like to know more about Kylo.

Rey laughs a bit at that. She can see Kylo holding out his hand. See the First Order burning and the Resistance dying. Neither of them had even the start of an inkling of an idea of what could possibly come next. The idea of strolling about a garden talking alliances, that absolutely wasn't, though. "This sort of thing certainly wasn't."

Heloise chuckles at that. "Did he expect you to be a battle commander?"

Rey shrugs. "I think it's fair to say that this, and things like it, are so far afield from anything either of us ever imagined, that whatever glimpses of the future we may have had, they've long since faded." Though her image of them, in the sunshine, building something, with the children… It still feels real. Maybe Achc-To. Maybe that's where the sunshine is. They'll certainly need to be building once they get there.

More reason to move sooner than later…

They walk a few more steps, and Heloise is about to talk a bit about the flowers next to them, when Rey asks, "Do you like being Queen?"

That stops Heloise. She looks up at Rey intently. "I don't think anyone has ever asked me that. It's just sort of… assumed, you know? Everyone _wants_ to be Queen. We sell stories for small girls in which they grow up and get to be a Princess or Queen. Will you ask me next if I want to be Queen?"

Rey smiles a little at that. "I'm almost tempted, just because I know that we're wired for sound, and if I did, everyone listening in would have a heart attack, and your side would begin to wonder if The Order is about to sweep on in and relieve you of duty."

"Are you?" That intent look is still on her face. But there's something more there… Rey's got the sense that if she were to spend more time with Heloise, she'd get a better read on her, but… She's spent so damn long keeping her thoughts and feelings and plans hidden… Rey blinks. This is a woman who never lets what she's thinking get to her face, and she's so good at it, keeps her motivations so far down, even Rey has to strain to read her.

People don't develop that skill in a vacuum. _Something_ is going on here. "Really, Heloise no." She puts a little extra reassurance into her voice. She doesn't know what Heloise is keeping below the surface, but she can at least soothe some of the worries. "People come to us, not the other way around. Organa came to us. We were sitting around minding our own business."

"Then why tell the galaxy he was born Ben Solo? You may have been 'minding your own business,' but once you say something like that, everyone else has to respond."

Rey expects to feel _why make a play for my throne_ or some variation on that theme, but if it's anywhere in Heloise's mind, it's buried deep. "Because the number of people who knew that was greater than two, which means eventually, it'd get out. And… You know what happened when a surprise parent got dragged out for his mother."

Heloise blinks.

Rey realizes that she's among the people who have the school book version of events. "People who would trust the motivations of Leia Organa, were suddenly uninterested in trusting the motivations of Leia Vader," Rey says, expanding on the idea.

"Oh. Of course. In the senate."

Rey offers her a slight smile. "Of course. In the senate."

Heloise looks toward the side of the patio where the rest of the party is 'mingling.' "Did you feel that pause? Where half of my side stopped in their tracks to watch us?" Heloise asks, voice amused.

Rey raises an eyebrow.

"That was half of my advisers feeling their hearts skip a beat."

Rey smiles. Or maybe she doesn't just know the school book version.

Heloise takes Rey's hand in hers. "To answer your question, yes, I do like being Queen, most of the time, in most ways. In some areas I have less freedom than I'd like, but in others… The ability to do so much good has to outweigh the restrictions."

Rey has the sense that Heloise is asking for confirmation. Rey squeezes her hand. "I hope so. But… It's not a secret, though it's not widely available yet, but The Order will have elections for its own senate in five year, and eventually, Master."

"You and your Lord are not staying forever."

"It's easier to bear constrained freedom if you know that there's an end date in sight."

"Ah… Interesting."

"Is it?"

"There is talk about whether the great Lord Ren will allow himself to be replaced."

Rey inclines her head a bit. Heloise has a clear image of the Emperor in mind, and the talk seems to be about if Kylo will attempt to follow in the Emperor's footsteps. "That is the plan. Not this round, but the next one. He wants to stay long enough to make sure the first spate of elections goes smoothly."

"May I offer advice?"

"Certainly."

"As soon as that's widely known, and given you just said it to me while we're wired for sound, the correct answer is, by the end of the month, people will begin to scheme about who comes next."

"Likely true. But they were doing that anyway, and at least right now, more of them will probably move people into place to get elected, instead of looking for ways to stab him in the back."

Heloise nods. "I'd forgotten that. Yes. The rest of the galaxy does not strive to limit the tools of political upheaval as heavily as we do, here."

Rey glances at her. "Does it… work… really?"

"No leader has been, or even been whispered to have been, assassinated by political rivals on Alderaan in the last three thousand years."

There's something in that, a message, but not necessarily for Rey. But Heloise is looking for something, again, not necessarily from Rey. "They just… don't do it?" That seems to be somewhere on the right path.

Heloise pauses. She thinks for a moment. Then she says, "Consider it a mutual destruction pact. We chose not to use those sorts of weapons in our politics. And, should anyone do so in a way that even a hint of it got out, every other faction would ally against them. A breech of our norms that drastic will result in an immediate truce between all the other players, just to boot the pretender out.

"You're familiar with the idea of the consent of the governed?"

Rey offers a little smile. "We do not conquer, our citizens come to us, and leave if they decide they don't like what we're doing."

"I'll take that as a yes, then. So, what happens when the governed don't consent? When they refuse to pay taxes, when they won't follow the laws, when they just… ignore… the Powers That Be?" Heloise nudges them further out, toward several of the smaller planters full of flowers.

"They get killed?"

Heloise smiles a little at that. It's a much more jaded look than Rey would have expected from her. "Only if enough of them agree with the Powers That Be to pull a trigger." Heloise nods to the delegation watching them, and Rey can feel who the Powers That Be are. Interestingly enough, Heloise doesn't consider herself one of them. "In the past that's been true. But you rapidly run into a situation where the soldiers under the Powers That Be are starting to have to shoot their parents and neighbors and friends, and that… Is the bridge too far. People will attack 'the enemy.' They get very skittish about attacking themselves. Very few people are such true believers as to be willing to do that."

"So… That's the deal? If there's the idea that someone got into power illegitimately… Everyone just… ignores them?"

"It's remarkably difficult to be Queen and do queenly things when you have no courtiers, when your police force won't take your orders, where your people do not acknowledge your laws… And that's what would happen if anyone could make a believable claim that you got your throne by poison."

Rey rubs her lips together. What is she supposed to do with this? She's Lady Ren, consort of to the man who controls a huge military, and is looking to ally with New Alderaan. "And by conquest?"

Heloise shifts a bit, bending, stroking one of the lilies they're walking past, and by doing so, is able to flash Rey a smile so swift and small that anyone not focusing intently on her would have missed it. "New Alderaan is peaceful, Lady Ren. We have no weapons."

"Of course." Rey says, with a nod. "Did you know, that my mother-in-law was the best shot of her family?"

Heloise smirks. "Was she now?"

Rey nods. "With a blaster. Her brother was a fine, fine shot, assuming he was aiming a ship's gun at something."

"As we all know." This story seems to please Heloise. "And as the Empire learned, much to their dismay."

"As we all know. I've been… reliably told that with an actual blaster he wasn't quite so hot."

Heloise laughs at that. "But, of course, he was not raised on Alderaan."

"Of course. And neither was her husband. He was apparently very, very fast on the draw, but maybe not the greatest aim past five meters."

That seems to amuse Heloise a lot. She doesn't laugh, but there is a smile lifting the corners of her lips. "But if you are that fast, you can let them get close, so you can take advantage of the speed."

"You have an impressive understanding of blaster technique."

"Amazing what one can learn by reading."

Rey smirks at that. "Of course. And her son… He tells me that were he to actually practice with one, he'd be excellent with a blaster-"

"But Lord Ren sees no need to practice because he has his saber and can use his Force to stop blaster bolts."

"Exactly. It'd be a waste of his time. That said, as of right now, if a blaster were to be had and used as a weapon, I believe he'd hand it to me."

Heloise laughs at that. "So, you are saying that of the extended Organa clan, it was only the one raised on a pacifist planet who could really use a blaster?"

"So, I'm told."

Heloise offers up a calm and content smile. "Ah, yes. The galaxy is filled with marvelous contradictions, isn't it?"

"And that's all you've got to say about that?" Rey asks with a smile.

"That's all I've got to say about that." Heloise replies with a grin.

"Is it forward to say that I think I might genuinely like you?"

"Not at all." That grin grows wider. "Do you know how rarely I run into someone willing to actually _talk_ to me?"

"I'll take it as rare."

"Painfully." She glances at Rey, and then away, which Rey takes to mean she's pointing out the microphones listening to them. "May I ask a personal question?"

"You can always ask. I may not answer."

"I'm told Lord Ren visited last night."

Rey smiles. "That's true but not a question."

"Why?"

Rey looks mildly surprised. Heloise is, as best she can tell, about her own age, maybe a little younger, but… She should… know things like this, Rey assumes. But the listeners are listening, and… There's a message the Queen wants to send, and not necessarily to Rey. "Because we like… sleeping together." After all, sleeping is pretty much all they did. "Is that not… common for married people here?"

"Romance," Heloise says, like she's testing out an idea. "And… I understand it's common for many people, but not all. My parents were a political match, and they… got along, but not that well."

"Oh. Uh… We get on well."

"But he's not here, now."

"No. Our advisers thought it would be better if I were here on my own for this. That… It'd look less like him swooping down to scoop up New Alderaan. Which we have no intention or desire to do."

Heloise waves that away. "And you are married? We, of course, accord you the title of Lady Ren, Princess of Alderaan, but there's been some uncertainty as to that. Rumors that a wedding will be happening, but has not yet happened."

"We are extremely married, and at some future point, probably toward the end of our year, there will be a wedding to celebrate that."

She looks a little mopey at that. And for a moment Rey's concerned, and then… "Oh."

"Oh?" Heloise is uncertain.

"Match the two houses? That's what your parents did, right?"

Heloise nods.

"That's not going to be an option."

Heloise looks mopey again. Rey can feel she's just… trampled something carefully planned, but… This woman is not… anything… with Kylo. She feels no sense of desire, or interest, or infatuation, or… anything.

"I'm sure you can find your own prince."

That gets a little eye roll. "I'm sure I can, but suitable ones from the right bloodline who are so in love with someone else they'll travel the galaxy just to grab a few hours slumber with them are likely fewer and further between."

Rey's fairly sure she's getting the piece of the puzzle she wasn't before. "You want a prince who's attached to someone else." That doesn't make any sense, and then one last piece falls into place. She wants a _prince_ who's attached, not a _mate._ "So… Oh… Right. Uh… No. That's just… not going to happen."

Heloise smiles at her, and shrugs, and says, "Well, it was worth a shot. It wouldn't be the first time a _Queen_ and _Mistress_ came to an understanding. Polygamy isn't unheard of here. Our dominant religion, the Church of the Force, doesn't hold with it, but we allow all faiths here, so it's rare, but not outlawed. Whatever, whoever it was he wanted to do in his own territory would be up to him."

Rey doesn't know what to say to that, so she just follows along as Heloise leads the way.

"And, of course, if he was interested in becoming King Kylo… Just because you say you aren't interested, doesn't mean you aren't, and that would be the way that most readily guards my position, and the interests of my family. Alderaan hasn't had co-monarchs in centuries, but it is legal, thus not impossible."

Rey's also got nothing to say to that. They take a few more steps. It's still very obvious that Heloise wants her to like her. That's still there. And…

"I'm sorry, I'm distressing you. I promise you; I have no interest in your husband as a mate, and am no threat along those lines." She turns a bit. "Here, light topics, we're supposed to be just chatting." She strokes one of the lilies. "These are my favorites. J'ccar lilies. They're also one of the great stories of Alderaanian science."

Heloise kneels before the small flowers. They're about shin high, light pinky-purple flowers all but gleaming in the bright morning sun.

Rey gets the idea that she's supposed to kneel, too. So, she does.

"On Alderaan, these were weeds. They grew in ditches on the sides of roads, and stagnant ponds across the grasslands. They purify water, which is nice, and feed the," she points to the tiny fish flittering around in the water the lilies are growing in, "bettas. It took us close to nine—" There's a slight movement of the Queen's hand followed by a shift in her voice. "The microphones can be blocked with a sound field, which is what I've just done for us. Down here among the flowers, there'll generally be patchy coverage of conversations and occasionally the mics lose us. We've probably got about a minute to talk before I've got to shut this off. I have no interest in anything beyond an alliance with your husband. I just don't. I have a great deal of interest in being able to have un-monitored conversations with you and your husband about the future of Alderaan, and courting couples are given quite a bit of leeway and privacy. This bloody planet is a mausoleum, too concerned with what was than with moving onto what is. These stupid flowers. Beautiful, yes, but we spent nine million credits rebuilding them from scratch. That money could have done… So much. And we keep doing that. Keep trying to resurrect the dead. I am a figurehead here, and I want to be a _Queen_ , so I'm going to keep talking about fucking flowers for a little while, and then gently turn the conversation back to a possible husband sharing deal. Don't just shut me out this time. Tell me you'll consider it, and then invite me, and say, Samanth, back to the _Supremacy_ in the not wildly distant future so we can have a real conversation without ears on us the whole time," she flicks the field off, "our genetic research and development laboratories are second to none, and that's allowed us to bring Alderaan back from the dead. It's slow," she stands up and Rey follows, "but in the next hundred years we should have close to twenty-five percent of our previous biodiversity up and growing again."

Rey nods. "That's impressive."

"It really is. Most of what we ate last night involved grains that were built from scratch here. There are, of course, hundreds of local varieties of cereal crops that naturally grow on this planet, and we used the genomes from many of them to recreate our own grains."

"Do the new grains… like it here?" Rey asks, looking for more context.

"We've had to carefully construct biomes for some of them, and a few can only be grown in intensive, indoor, factories. Some of them do fine here, but most of the local crops evolved here and have certain advantages over transplants."

"Ah… I asked last night about allowing new people here, is that… part of the same idea. Keeping things… making them… Alderaan?"

"Somewhat. There are so few of us, and… Preserving the culture is important. Part of why our system works is because we keep the culture intact. Without that, there is no Alderaan. We can't," she gestures to the world around them, "keep this up if we allow the culture to degrade." Which Rey can feel Heloise wants. Not for it to completely fall apart, she understands that, to a degree, what she is saying is true, but she also wants to see the hold of the past loosen. To allow some new air into their thoughts and habits. "That's why, right now, to come here, you have to either have a genetic link to Alderaan, or be able to prove at least one of your grandparents was of Alderaan. That's… Look, I understand this makes you uncomfortable, but there are _so few of us._ Any child of Alderaan is a huge boon to us, if for no other reason than for the genetic diversity."

"Which brings you back to Kylo."

"Which brings me back to Kylo, and… Out of a population of ten million, there are fewer than thirty Organas left, any additional ones are of value to us."

"Even adopted ones?" Rey asks.

"Especially adopted ones. Culture soaks in through the blood, but mostly through raising. His mother practically was _Alderaan,_ especially in the popular imagination, and… If we could bring him back…"

Rey licks her lips, and nods, just a hair. "And you said… polygamy isn't… unheard of here?"

"It's rare, but not illegal, a man with two wives… People might whisper a bit, but… Your Kylo wouldn't be the first powerful man to attract several women, nor would he be the first one to make a strategic marriage abroad, while maintaining a love match at home."

"Looking to improve the genetic pool of New Alderaan sounds like more than a political marriage," Rey says, voice dry.

Heloise gestures to the garden around her. "We do not need… romantic entanglements… to allow us to add Kylo's genome to the pool. If you'll allow me to be shockingly frank, we don't even need semen. A blood sample would allow us to… improve our diversity."

"So, would allowing more people to settle here."

"Yes, that's… important to the Order, isn't it? Marriages involve compromise and negotiation, and often goodwill gifts from one of the beloved to the other. I'm sure, if we were to talk further, things could be… discussed."

Rey nods at that. "Then we will host the next spate of conversations. Say, give you a month to look over the treaty, and then add your own… options to it. Then you and Samanth, and whichever Lord Antillies actually writes the contracts, will come to visit us."

Heloise smiles at her. "I'd like that very much."

Rey smiles back. "I'll look forward to it. I'm sure Kylo will, too." The listening devices must be on high right now, because she literally feels Ellie Kinear just about die at that line. As soon as they're on ship, Rey's going to have a lot of _explaining_ to do.

* * *

Breakfast is _tense._

Most of tense is aimed at Heloise by her side of the group, though it's clear that both Threepio and Ellie are wondering what it is Rey could possibly think she's doing.

And while it's true she can mentally soothe Ellie with a quick, _It'll make sense when I explain later,_ if she can silently converse with Threepio, she hasn't yet figured out how to do it.

It feels odd to understand that she can pick up his thoughts, but she can't get hers to him.

He's stewing because he doesn't want Kylo Ren on the throne, or near the throne of New Alderaan, especially not _now._ And while he does appear to be looking that eventual Organa grandchild in the face, and her being named the heir apparent upon her birth by nature of being the child of the monarchs of Alderaan, that's not the game he was hoping to play.

He keeps looking at Rey, and in his ideal of how this works, that future grand baby is as much Rey's as Kylo's.

Well, he can wait. Nothing is going to happen in the next few hours that will cause irreparable harm.

On Heloise's side of things…

The Viceroy is _not pleased._ Satisfied that she now knows what's going on, but angry, because Samanth Organa is her choice for producing an eventual heir that is a mix of all three of the surviving royal bloodlines, and while that's an argument she can make, and be heard to make, saying that Samanth is preferable to Kylo because Kylo is a king in his own right, and Leia Organa's son, and thus significantly less likely to be easy to manipulate, isn't.

Samanth looks angry, but _isn't._ Courting couples are allowed a certain amount of privacy. Rey feels the pieces fall into place. At least once, Samanth and Heloise got enough time to talk, without anyone listening, to start getting this into play.

He's sulking about having to go back to Kylo's den, and makes at least one snide remark to Heloise about rubbing sand into the wound.

The Viceroy is satisfied about that, though. She's never been quite sure about Samanth. Sometimes, she wonders what game he's playing. Sometimes, she's sure he not smart enough to be in on the game. That's part of what she likes about him. Most of the time he just does what he's told to do. As best she can tell, he just shot himself in the ass by not returning from the _Supremacy_ and clearly telling everyone involved that whatever Kylo Ren might be, Ben Solo wasn't it, which confirms to her that he's just a little too honest and a little too slow on the uptake.

Rey keeps watching Samanth and Heloise. She doesn't get the sense of any romantic engagement between the two of them, but they're taking the best advantage of the rules they're moving through.

Tayron Talmaash, Heloise's father, is… intrigued might be the right word. Rey gets the sense that he's not exactly too deeply wedded to the politics of New Alderaan. A prince by birth, but not by temperament. With the way Heloise controls things, she wonders if _she_ was the Talmaash who wanted the throne, but needed to make a marriage link to an Antillies, who only had girls, so she threw her brother into the mix. He's actually an architect, and civic engineer, and much of what's around them is either his design, or designed to his specs.

He's doing a lot of the heavy lifting on keeping the conversations going, though Ellie's certainly keeping up at least her half, too.

Rey's a little embarrassed to admit it, but it takes her a while to get what he's saying to her, and how it appears to be building on what Heloise said. By keeping things _the same_ they were wasting time, resources, and any chance of moving forward.

He's talking about the desert regions, "There were of course, serious challenges with recreating a lot of the architecture of Alderaan. Though we were able to find similar biomes to many of our previous districts, they weren't quite the same. Little things, like… adobe. Do you know what that is, Lady Ren?"

"Actually, I do. I was born on a desert planet, and several of the local settlements would use it."

"Excellent." Tayron smiles at her. "So, few people do. The deserts of Alderaan had a sand and clay mix that was ideally suited for adobe. You'd mix it with water and hay, and the bright sunshine of the summer season would bake it to rock hardness and waterfastness." It's clear Rey doesn't quite know what that means. "After it baked, it could survive the occasional rain without melting. Here… well, the sunshine isn't as bright, and the humidity level of the desert is a little too high for the adobe to set properly, and the local grasses were a bit too stubby and not fibrous enough to make good adobe. Well, I'm sure you can guess, that provides challenges to making stable buildings, but we got to it, and began to really work on the issue, to the point of having to completely reconfigure the construction of our adobe, but after five years we had a mix that was stable in the deserts here. And in five years, we were able to go back to the kind of buildings that had always made our deserts homes so beautiful."

"Impressive," Rey says. "What… do the locals do in the deserts, here?"

"There are no locals, Lady Ren. Or, at least, not by the time they got here," Ellie says. "When the Emperor obtained Glendevia, he removed the local populations."

"Oh."

"There were surviving buildings in the deserts, and we did… look, hoping to find people who had hidden. We weren't about to take a planet that anyone still had a claim to, but," Helene says, and there's real regret in her voice, "The Empire was thorough in liquidating the population of this planet before we got here." Rey thinks it's a good thing that Helene Talmaash still has enough empathy to feel bad for another slaughtered population who had their home stolen from them.

"They were a pre-space flight society," Tayron says, "which, unfortunately, gave the Empire quite an advantage at removing them. None were able to pop up from the far reaches of the galaxy to reclaim their home."

"There's a memorial to them," Heloise says. "My parents' generation left their largest cities intact. We actually have archaeological expeditions there, and are doing what we can to document who they were and how they lived, but… We can't read their writing, and haven't figured out how to use most of their remaining technology."

"They used a very interesting method of mining to build homes in the desert. They'd dig into the cliff faces, and build their homes there, while also carving many fine crevices through the rock to collect dew in the mornings. Thus they made homes and kept themselves in enough water to survive. They were very clever and knew how to live off of the land here," Tayron looks wistful. "There is no version of a universe where I would have ever run into them had the Empire not intervened so terribly in our lives, but I wish there could have been."

"Like with our own traditions," Helene says, "we seek to preserve theirs. If you are involved in archaeological circles, there are huge discussions on the ethics of our current preservation process. The pros and cons of the information gathering we do, versus the damage we are doing. Unfortunately, some pieces of the past have to be destroyed as we attempt to get a better understanding of what we're looking at. Ideally, we could seal off their parts of the world, hold them outside the bounds of time, and keep them as they were. That seems like the least we could do for the people who died here. But… we learn nothing from them if we do that. And… honor would seem to demand that we at least attempt to learn what we can of the people who were here before us. It's a quandary."

Ellie's thinking brightly at Rey _there. Listen, hear this!_

Rey doesn't nod, but she thinks she understands, The Viceroy wants Alderaan put in a bubble, frozen in time, before the genocide. To honor those who didn't make it. She wants her home, back the way she remembers it. And Leia Organa… she was pulling away from that, changing things. A queen more focused on the world outside than inside. That wouldn't do.

 _Alderaan is peaceful_. That line echos in her head. It means something here. Something about the Viceroy, and what she's trying to do, what she lost.

Alderaan _was_ peaceful.

Peaceful, even in the world of the Old Republic, meant neutral. You can't be _peaceful_ if you take sides.

Alderaan got to be _Alderaan_ because it sat by the wayside and didn't poke its politics into dangerous places with dangerous people who would kill them rather than let them try to spread their world view.

Alderaan was _peaceful;_ until it _wasn't._

Bail Organa, Prince Consort to the Queen, Viceroy of Alderaan, First Senator of Alderaan for the Imperial Senate, and the Republic before that, was the highest ranked spy in the entire Rebellion. He was likely a General in the Rebellion, too. Not military strategy, of course not, but political strategy, finding where the weak spots were, how to use the image of the war to make the rebel cause popular… Of course, he did that.

Leia Organa, Crown Princess of Alderaan, Second Senator of Alderaan, because back when she was captured by the Empire, she was a member of the Imperial Senate, with her father. Also a spy, and a battle commander, for the Rebellion.

Which means there's no possible chance, at all, that Breha Organa, Queen of Alderaan, wasn't also, actively, supporting the Rebellion, likely funneling it money and resources if not fighting for it.

Which means that Alderaan wasn't _peaceful._

It was a legitimate military target.

And it's likely that most of the higher ups of Alderaan never knew a thing about it. Public buildings are open to the public here. All conversations are monitored… Rey's suddenly sure that has to be a plot by Helene Talmaash, a way of making sure that alliances aren't built in the privacy of the Queen's home, and those alliances don't bite them, hard, again.

They're rebuilding Threepio's golden-colored, and fictional, Alderaan here. And doing everything in their power to freeze it solid.

But not everyone wants that. Heloise wants to begin to change things, too. Enough to risk getting off world to really talk to her and Kylo in private, and Rey can feel that Heloise knows her Aunt won't like that.

Another piece falls into place. Heloise has been Queen for three years. Helene is her Aunt. Her father's sister. Her mother, who is not here, not alive, was the previous Queen…

How much was she trying to change things? Rey watches Helene, wondering what, if anything, she had to do with her sister-in-law's death.

People die, that's just… normal. But… Ania Antillies, who became a Talmaash, couldn't have been much past her mid-fifties when she died, and possibly younger.

 _If even a hint got out…_ Why say that to her? Was there a hint? Did Heloise find something, maybe less than a hint, but a rumor of one? And if that hint came out, would it damage her own position? Would her queendom fall if that rumor got out, even if she weren't the one to wield the poison?

 _Wheels turning within wheels, Rey,_ Ellie thinks, loud and clear. _We'll know for sure, soon enough._

* * *

When breakfast is over, Samanth offers to take Rey, Ellie, and Threepio into town. He suggested a walk at first, but Ellie smiled warmly at him, and said, "It's good to be young, lad, but my old bones aren't up for a twelve klick walk. Do you have some sort of small, personal conveyance?"

Rey knows that that's true on one level. Ellie doesn't do endurance walking any longer. And it also covers that Threepio's really not up to it, too.

Which is how Rey's ended up with Samanth, each of them on a 'scooter.' Ellie took one look at it and said, 'No,' and Threepio would have visibly blanched if he could, but he can't. He did say, "I didn't attempt to ride one of them on Endor, and I'm not about to, now."

Rey loves it. It's a slick little thing that reminds her of her speeder. But this is lighter and faster, designed to carry maybe two people, and more likely one. Lean forward and it zips along, lean back and it stops, lean left or right and it turns.

Samanth runs her through the controls, and then hops onto his. "Well, Lady Ren, shall we go to town, meet my father, perhaps?"

"I'd like that," and then they're zipping along, down the road to Resilience.

* * *

It is, without a doubt, the prettiest town Rey's ever seen. Granted, it's competing against fewer than half a dozen places, so there is that.

The buildings are made of some sort of light gray stone, most of them egg-shaped, dotted abundantly with oval windows, flanked with wide balconies surrounding the upper floors. The highest of them seem to be six or seven floors tall, though there is one near the center of town that's probably ten floors tall.

The roads are wide, and there are a lot of scooters like the ones Rey and Samanth are riding. There are some bigger conveyances for families, and bigger yet ones carrying cargo, but most of them appear to be designed for one person.

And, like everywhere else, gardens. There are berms of flowers between the lanes of the streets. Flowers drape off the balconies. Every intersection has a square in the center filled with plants and fountains. Trees line the streets.

Samanth secures his scooter in a park with what appears to be a place for the scooters. Rey follows his lead. "My father's shop is a few blocks that way," he gestures to the south.

Rey nods at him. "This really is a lovely town."

"It is, isn't it?"

Rey glances around. There isn't a huge crowd of people walking through the street, but they aren't the only ones by a long shot. "We're not monitored for sound here, are we?"

He smiles at her. "Would what you have to say to me change if we were?"

"Probably."

"Good. You're paying attention. Yes, we should be unmonitored here. Heloise and I were… intrigued by your comment about Kylo and the coffee last night."

"I got the sense that's a very… familiar experience."

"It is. We're… We don't _remember_ Alderaan. No one under the age of forty can. Most under the age of fifty, don't. This is our home, and yes, there are traditions we're happy to upkeep, but… They're strangling us trying to…" He shakes his head. "You can't resurrect the dead. You just can't. And you shouldn't try."

He looks around at the city. "There are a bit more than a million people here. There should be tens of millions here. People like Helene… They're so hell bent on bringing the dead back to life, we're killing ourselves. It's not a problem, yet, but… Heloise isn't kidding, genetic diversity is going to be a problem in our society in two more generations if we don't loosen things up about who can immigrate here."

"I thought there were… ten million of you here?"

"There are, but most of us are already somewhere between first and third cousins of each other. When the genocide came there were six million of us. We've done our part and then some to make more Alderaanians, but people who were off planet when the hit came tended to be off planet in family groups. In two more generations _all_ of us who don't go off world to find mates will be second cousins or closer. But Helene and her cohort are doing everything possible to keep us on world and making families with each other. That's not good. That's… slow extinction."

Rey winces. "You and her want to change the world."

"Yes. She hates being a figurehead. The ruling monarch of Alderaan is a diplomatic position, and the tie breaker if the legislature is ever deadlocked. It hasn't been deadlocked since Breha's mother was in power.

"My job is mostly to make Helene's grasp on power more secure. My brother and I are, well, except for you and your husband, the future of the Organa line. Daveed is off world. He's actually with the New Republic, still. Kylo's with you. I'm here because Helene needs an Organa to keep the veneer of all of us being one, united front in place."

"What does your ideal Alderaan look like?"

"Not this." He shakes his head. "Okay, _this,_ " he gestures to the city bustling around them, "is fine. But _this_ is a town built in a place that has the climate and natural materials to build _this_ town. No more spending half a decade and untold millions of credits to recreate what's dead. Beyond that, we don't really know, not yet. Just getting enough time to talk is a challenge. Finding out who else agrees with us is a challenge."

"We can help with that."

He smiles at her. "Good." He squeezes her hand. "I don't know how closely tied in you are to the Organa line, Ben obviously burned the name and broke with his past, but… We don't just sit back and let the universe roll us over." He offers a slight laugh, "I guess on that level, Ben's keeping up with the rest of us. Daveed, he's got one half of the attack under his wing. I've got the other, working with Heloise. My father… He's the exception to the rule." Samanth offers up a sad smile. "Years in an Imperial prison will do that to a man, though. The rest of us…

"We were born to change the galaxy, Rey, and if we've got to do it one planet at a time, we'll do it one planet at a time. But it's about time House Organa rose again, and got their hand back into play." He glances across the street. "Ah, here we are!"

He leads Rey across the street to Organa's Baked Goods.

"Dad!" Samanth calls out as he opens the door, and they're hit with the scent of yeasty, bready, spicy-sweet, pastries. There are a few customers moving through the shelves, picking out nicely packaged breads or cakes, and two others waiting in line at a counter. The lady behind it nods to Samanth.

Rey's jaw drops. She's been to a lot of places that have smelled good over the years, but this… "I never want to leave!"

Samanth laughs at that. "We get that response a lot." An older man who looks a lot like an older Samanth comes out from the back of the shop.

"And what's got you here today? Who's your friend?" Apparently, this is a small enough city that no one is even remotely confused about who Samanth or his father are. Though a few are giving Rey curious looks.

"I'm here because of my friend. Dad, meet Rey…"

Almath's eyes flicker slightly, like he's got the idea that he should know what this means, but doesn't off the top of his head.

"Leia's daughter-in-law. Ben's wife!" Samanth offers to his dad.

"Oh!" His eyes light up. "Leia's boy got married! Holy Force how the time flies. He barely had to shave the last time I saw a picture of him. Leia kept saying she'd bring him around, but…" He glares in the direction of the palace. "Well, I never had anything good to say about those nattering twits, and if she wanted to keep her boy away from them, more power to her! What did you say your name was, dear?"

"I'm Rey."

He grabs her in a warm hug. "It's good to meet you, Rey. You going to bring your man here? It's a good place if you stay out of the palace. He could make a home here."

"Dad," Samanth's voice is patient, like this is something they've spoken of before. "Ben's a little busy these days. He changed his name to Kylo Ren."

"Oh, right…" He shakes his head. "My brain's like a sieve. I never forget a recipe, but everything else tends to drift."

Rey inhales deeply. "It smells amazing in here. One of my students loves to bake, and I think if I could show her this shop, she'd decide this is heaven."

Almath smiles at that. "It's my little piece of heaven, too. Five years without enough to eat. It gets to you, you know? You dream about food. You crave it and fight for it and kill for it, and you never get enough. As soon as I got out… Everything I spent those years dreaming of…" He gestures around. "It's all here, just as good as my dreams."

Samanth looks a little embarrassed and a lot sad. "Could we put together a box for Rey to bring back to her students? Give them a taste of Alderaan?"

"Of course! Of course, come here…" He heads behind the counter and pulls out a cardboard box, and begins to get it shaped properly. "Fill it up. Leia always says her boy likes sweets. She brings them home for him… What does he like…" He's puttering though his shop, and stops in front of some small tarts. They're a dark pastry crust with some sort of white cream and small purple berries on top. "There we go. His favorite from Uncle Almath."

As best Rey knows, Kylo's never talked about his Uncle Almath, but it's also possible, and likely, that those tarts pre-date his time with Luke.

"I'll make sure he gets them."

"Good girl. Your student who likes to bake, what's her favorite?"

"Right now, cookies. She loves to make cookies."

"Any particular kind?" Almath asks, eyeing his wares.

"The kind on a plate in front of her," Rey says with a smile.

"Good girl. Here..." He starts putting cookies into the box, and Samanth hovers behind, loading a few loaves of bread into a different box.

When the box is loaded, Samanth says to his father, "Thanks, Dad. We've got to get Rey back to her ship. She's due to go home soon."

"Right, son. Right. Who's your friend?"

Samanth smiles. He hugs his dad. "I'll be home soon, okay?"

"Okay."

When they're out, he says, "He's still sharp as a tack baking, and he can run the register no problems, but… The Imperials broke his mind, and sometimes he has good days, and sometimes he has bad ones, and… He's always been a little loose about where he is in time and who he's with."

"I'm sorry."

Samanth nods. "Thanks. I'm used to it. He's worse than he was when I was a kid, but he's always been a little, like he said, drifty." He pats the boxes. "He's still the best damn baker in all of Resilience, though."

Rey smiles at that. "And my kids'll love him for that."

He smiles back. "You know, if there is to be an alliance between the Order and New Alderaan, perhaps those kids of yours could come for a visit? Especially if you've got a young baker. I imagine I could find something to entertain them for a few days."

"I'd like that."

He secures the boxes to the back of the scooters. "Okay, let's get you back before Helene gets too nervous about what I'm plotting outside of her earshot."

"Just to double check, is she the one who instituted ears all over the palace?"

"No, but she championed it extensively."

"Okay."

They settle onto the scooters. You can't really talk while riding on one, so Rey asks one more question, "How did Heloise know that Kylo came to visit last night?"

"My guess is she knows the same way I did, and likely the same way Helene did, we all employ computer programs to keep track of the feeds, and then people to watch or listen to anything the programs think is interesting. A half-naked man dropping into the Remembrance Gardens from what appears to have been the balcony of your room, and then settle in for a chat with a holo of Leia Organa certainly fits that bill." He looks a little put out. "You could have just said she was alive, you know? All of the careful word play was… distressing in a way I hadn't expected to be distressed."

Since Rey hadn't known that anyone else had seen Leia, that throws her for a quick loop, and she hopes she covers fast enough that Samanth doesn't notice her confusion. "Samanth, Leia reveals herself to whom, and when, she chooses, and that's that. We… at any give time we do not know if we'll ever see her again."

"Oh… Even… Her son?"

Rey half smiles. "It's not a secret that things between them are still tense. Warming up, but… tense. How that shakes out is still anyone's guess."

"Ah." That seems to make sense to Samanth. He checks his chrono. "I know they won't leave without you, but I'm sure they're starting to fret now, especially since you didn't bring your guards."

She half smiles at him. "My _entourage._ "

"Of course."

* * *

"What could you have possibly been thinking!" Helene is annoyed enough with Heloise that she's not even worried about the ears on them. Granted, at least a third of the kind of people who monitor these feeds are likely thinking exactly what she's saying.

"You wanted me to make a match with an Organa. He's a better match than Samanth. I put out feelers to see if it's possible."

"He's a… Child he is _married._ "

"All the better. A single man would be sorely disappointed in me as a wife."

Helene's head is throbbing. "Oh, grow up and get over that. You don't like men, fine. That doesn't mean you need to debase yourself by looking for one who already has a queen."

"I think that's an ideal solution."

"Heloise, you won't be his _queen._ "

"I don't need to be _his_ queen. I already am one in my own right. All I need is a bit of DNA at the right time, and that's that. If he never sets foot on this planet, all the better."

"The _right_ bit of DNA. Kylo Ren is, at best, a Solo. He sure as hell isn't an Organa."

"At best, he's a Skywalker, Auntie, and that's valuable." She doesn't have to mention the potential for a Force sensitive child, both of them see the angles on that. "At least, he's an Organa, which is what you tell me you want."

"Not by blood, and blood is what matters."

"Oh, get over that and grow up. Blood doesn't matter for figs. He's a king in his own right. Any child of his has a very good chance of being Force Sensitive. He has ties to our world. He has the kind of military might that allows us to be _Alderaan._ The Republic New or Old and the protection it offered is basically gone, and without something like that, we're suddenly left without the sort of powerful protector that allows us not to build up a military of our own. If we want to be _Alderaan,_ there has to be a threat that _someone_ will step in and utterly crush anything that tries something against us. The New Republic isn't up for it, so why not Kylo Ren?"

Helene glares at her, eyes hot and _angry._ "It's embarrassing. He is married, and you are throwing yourself at him like a scrap of meat before a dog."

Heloise rolls her eyes at her Aunt and snorts. "I didn't sign a marriage contract. I just got his wife to agree to let me talk to him about it. He'll probably make you deeply happy and say no, but, I am the Queen of Alderaan and it's well being is supposed to be my primary concern, and a little embarrassment is worth the kind of alliance that will give us the ability to rest easy, knowing we can keep on being _peaceful._ "

"Please. You haven't read the non-aggression treaty they sent. They trust us no more than they have to, and they don't have to. Part of the treaty is bi-yearly inspections to make sure we're not fomenting a revolt against them."

"So, you're telling me he, or whomever writes his treaties, is smart as well as powerful. Is this supposed to make me think less of him?"

"Heloise…"

"I am an adult. I get to seek out my own mate. You get to suggest who you think would be most politically feasible. Beyond that, you have no say in the matter. The legislature, may, if they are so motivated, decide that they get final say on any contract our nuptials may involve. You do not, Viceroy. It's your job to convene the legislature and put things on the docket. One thing you cannot put on that docket is control of whom I marry. So, butt out. Your advice is noted."

Helene stares at her niece, eyes narrowed, but then leaves, wondering what the next move is.


	51. All The Angles

4/13/2

Threepio _waits._

Rey wasn't expecting that, but he _waits._

He doesn't want to, that's clear. It's also clear that the ship they are in spent the night in a hanger in Alderaanian territory, and it has not been scanned for bugs or listening devices.

It's only once they are back on the _Supremacy,_ which was _exactly_ at the edge of New Alderaan's sensor range, that he no longer wishes to wait.

Which is _beyond_ annoying to Kylo and Rey who are currently holding each other and saying hello like they last saw each other four years ago, _not_ four hours ago.

And Threepio has had _enough_ of these lovesick twits who are doing gods alone knows what with his carefully concocted plans.

"This is touching. Stop it. Now tell me, and him, I guess, about the new wife you're fetching him."

Kylo pulls back from Rey, a stunned expression on his face, and blinks. But he can feel nothing bad is about to happen, so he says, "You're gone for one night and you're swapping me for someone new?"

She laughs at that. "I didn't say I was getting a new wife."

"If I get one, you do, too. That's how it works, right?"

Rey laughs even louder at that, and then stops because Threepio is, metal face be damned, _glaring at her_ in the middle of the landing bay, and not pleased at all about what's going on.

"Okay, here's the short version."

"About to be shorter, yet," Ellie says, looking around meaningfully. There are a _lot_ of people walking around here, and they do not know all of them.

So, they wait, more. In the elevator, on the way down, down, down, down, to Kylo's rooms, which are _secure_ , but also almost thirty minutes away, which is a long time to stand in silence with several tense people who really want to talk, but not _here._

As they're descending, Rey says to Kylo, "You look tired."

He shrugs a bit, holding her close to him. "I am."

"Yes, well, that's a natural consequence of _not_ staying in your own damn bed last night," Threepio bites out.

Ellie shushes him. "Hush, Threepio. Things like this are… normal." And it's clear from the way she's looking that Kylo may have actually acted exactly according to her script, even if she hadn't deigned to let him read it.

"Did you… set that up?" Rey asks.

Ellie smiles a little. "No, it just worked out nicely. There's apparently quite a buzz about how Kylo Ren somehow got himself on-world to Alderaan, just for the pleasure of a few hours of the company of his wife."

Kylo mutters, "Handsome princing the shit out of it."

Threepio's voice is Tatooine dry as he says, "At least there was some upside to it."

Another long, quiet moment as they continue to descend.

"Isn't there supposed to be a landing bay two floors above my rooms?" Kylo asks.

"There is," Threepio replies, voice curt.

"And we didn't do this, _there_ because…"

"Because Rey getting home and your _warm greeting_ is part of the Handsome Prince routine," Ellie says. "And, last I heard the diplomatic hangar is not yet ready."

Threepio sounds annoyed as he says, "It's ready enough. In the sense that you can, in fact, land ships there."

"That's true of any mostly flat surface," Rey adds.

Threepio nods. "It's not true in the sense that we are attempting to create a landing bay that is inviting and looks like the sort of place valued guests are welcomed, not just a huge expanse of black metal. Unfortunately," and now he's mentally glaring at something else all together, "Colonel Suth is already ten days behind schedule, which is beyond appalling seeing that he is only on day forty-three of the schedule, and… Last we spoke, Jon had _had a talking to_ with him. We have an appointment the day after tomorrow where, supposedly, he will inform me of the plan to get back on schedule."

Kylo feels like he's heard mentions of things involving the diplomacy wing going more slowly than desired a few times now. "Is this something… Do I need to be having _talking to_ with them?"

"That will entirely depend on if that plan actually gets them back on schedule. I do know part of the problem is that for thirty-five of those forty-three days Captain RT-4590 was in charge of rerouting the ships that used to be stored in that bay, and he appeared to have been in deeply over his head when it came to finding new places for them, and getting the orders in place to let them know not to land there. I understand he is no longer with the project, which should help with getting things back up to speed."

"Can't build anew before you clean out," Ellie says.

"Exactly," Threepio replies. "As soon as it's feasible we'll move the Order of the Maji ships to the diplomatic wing, but as of yet, it is not."

They continue to stand there, waiting. Finally, Kylo looks over at the boxes that Rey set on the floor behind them.

"They sent presents?"

She smiles at him. "Yes, actually. I think one of them is all the flowers from the dinner. One is the Alderaan coffee course. And three of them are gifts from your Uncle Almath, who seems to remember you fondly."

"Even though we've never met."

"He's offered an explicit invitation to change that, and claims that one of the goodies in there is your favorite."

Kylo shrugs, maybe he's just tired, but he doesn't remember stories of an Uncle Almath. "I know he can't be my mother's brother… Who…?"

"Your grandfather's youngest brother's son," Threepio supplies.

"Oh." Kylo blinks, feeling like he should come up with something to say about that, but right here, standing quietly, just feeling the elevator move, and Rey in his arms… He's too damn content to come up with anything.

Rey's quite a bit more awake though, "What happened to him? Samanth said he was in an Imperial prison."

Threepio sighs. "He was in one for eight years." Threepio's glaring now at Ellie. "When Leia was arrested, warrants for the entire rest of the Alderaanian senate delegation went live. Bail was already en route to Alderaan. Leia, of course, was on the Death Star. Almath had just begun a political training internship. Junior Senate. Leia had finished the program two years earlier, and became a full senator for Alderaan, and Almath was planning on following in her footsteps. Unfortunately, our people didn't get news of the warrant before it went live, and the Imperials captured him before we could hide him." He's staring at Ellie. "He was sent to Celjonia."

Ellie winces. "Junior senate program. He was…"

"Fifteen."

"Too young to execute, so put to hard labor?"

"Yes." Threepio turns away from Ellie to Rey. "The rest of the Alderaanian senate delegation was executed for spying. Almath was 'too young.' Hard labor was slow execution. Maybe one out of fifty survived a sentence longer than two years. When we liberated the camps, the people in there were walking skeletons."

No one has anything to say about that for a moment, but then Kylo's brain flails around for a moment, and he almost doesn't say it, because he's afraid he's got the wrong answer, but he feels Rey encourage him, he's done the math right.

"Five years. From when Mom was captured to the end of the war was five years. Why was he in a prison camp for eight?"

Ellie's turn to _look_ at Threepio. She's the one who says, "Not everyone in those camps was a political prisoner. In fact, most of them weren't. The Emperor rarely offered the mercy of prison to political enemies. And some of the ones who were in there for political crimes were in there for the sorts of political crimes that involved killing thousands of bystanders."

"Terrorists?" Rey asks.

Threepio nods. "Not everyone interested in ending the Empire agreed on _who_ the Empire was. Leia's faction of the Rebellion… The Alliance to Restore the Republic… didn't want to be seen to deal with several of the others."

"Why didn't he execute them?" Rey asks.

"Because trying them, with a whole lot of people watching, and parading around images of bombed theaters and schools, or maimed children, made for good press. Made people think ill of the Rebellion," Ellie says. "Even Imperials had mothers, and they tended to get irate when primary schools were bombed."

"So, he kept the worst of the worst alive," Kylo says.

"Along with those too famous or young to easily execute. Almath was both. And the rapists, and thieves, and smugglers. Murderers and torturers. All of them were dumped onto Celjonia," Ellie says. "And then, as they began to come in, Imperial officers found guilty of war crimes, and… Well, the local populations weren't _kind_ to them. Less than one out of fifty of them left if they had a more than two year sentence, especially in the early years while the Imperial prisoners were still being processed."

Threepio continues, "The New Republic, obviously, did not want to release the murders, rapists, and terrorists. The thieves and smugglers… They'd more than served their time. But, to make matters worse, the database that kept track of all of those things had been primarily hosted on Scarif and destroyed right before the battle of Yavin; secondarily hosted on the Emperor's personal data hub, which went wherever he was, and thus destroyed at the Battle of Endor; and a tertiary system was on Celjonia, but it was destroyed by the Imperials on the ground when they got orders to evacuate. It took _years_ to figure out who everyone was.

"And that was made more complicated by a steady influx of _new_ prisoners.

"We put a stop to the hard labor and the starvation rations, installed functional plumbing and water treatment to cut down on dysentery, and processed people as quickly as we could, but there were seventy-eight point seven three million people on that planet, when it was liberated, all of them claiming to be innocent political bystanders, and it took time to process them all.

"Almath was lucky enough that Leia remembered him, and that he'd been captured by the Empire, so we knew where he was likely to be, but… Unlike many other prisoners with family who could do a quick DNA match in order to prove their identity, at the end of the war Leia and Almath were the only kin of Bail Organa left."

"The only two who could have matched, couldn't, because she was adopted," Kylo says.

"And it took a long time to find him through less scientific means," Threepio replies.

"Didn't they just… ask?" Rey asks.

"When they began to liberate the camps, they queued everyone up, asked everyone who they were, came up with files on them, and started trying to match people to histories. If they had said, 'Is Almath Organa here?' fifty thousand people would have claimed to be him. As it was, it took years before Almath got processed."

Rey looks tired by that, and Kylo's thinking of his mother, and last night/this morning's conversation. There was a war on and… important things had to happen. So, many more of them than he ever had any idea of before he got here, and began trying to run _this._

Rey squeezes his hand. "More details than any one mind can hold onto."

He nods.

* * *

Finally, they're in his office. Rey's put most of the boxes away, to take to Lirium later, though she's set the coffee in front of Kylo, along with one of the tarts. She hopes caffeine and calories will make up for lost sleep.

He does take a moment to just _feel_ and smell the memories that go along with this drink, and there's another moment of empathy.

It's clearly coffee. There's no way to mistake it for anything else.

And it's very much not anything he's ever drunk before.

And other coffees are fine. They taste good. They're similar.

But they aren't this. And if _this_ is what you wanted, they'd be so disappointing. Shadows when one craves the thing casting the shadow.

It's also got a kick. He's drunk about a third of it, and is _awake_ now. "How did you sleep after this?" he asks.

Ellie smiles at him. "Have you ever heard the term, food coma?"

He shakes his head.

"You eat so much you feel like you're going to slip into a stupor. We were all on the verge of it by the end of the meal. Well, except for the General."

"Occasionally, there are advantages of not being human." Irritated impatience is radiating off of Threepio, as the humans around him keep dawdling by doing _human_ things. "Sometimes, not."

"Okay, we've tried your patience enough," Kylo says, "So… A new wife? That doesn't sound like the Non-aggression treaty I was expecting you to come home with."

Rey smiles at that. "I imagine. It's likely part of it, though. Okay, so, like I said last night, everything on the bloody planet is wired for sound. So, Heloise and I have 'a bit of unsupervised time' to wander about one of the gardens and 'get to know each other.'"

"Helene did _not_ like that," Ellie adds.

Threepio nods. "There was a lot of clear subtext that the queen was going off script in a way her elders did not like."

"Well, she intends to do a lot more of it. The garden is wired for sound, and given some of the comments I've gotten it's clear you heard more than enough."

"Of course," Ellie replies. "Once we found out that the feeds were open to the public, I put a few of our 'entourage' onto just keeping an eye on what everyone was up to last night, which was… interesting, but we'll get to that later. You and her are on your stroll, and she makes you a proposition in the long-standing tradition of wives and mistresses managing their men through all time."

Kylo's eyebrows raise.

Rey inclines her head. "Apparently, this is the sort of thing that's settled between the ladies, and the man in question just goes along and thanks his lucky stars for so much sex? Or something? I know I missed a lot of the depth behind how this works."

"We'll go over that later, too," Ellie says.

"So, you're having a bit of a walk, and suddenly she's… attempting to arrange… A triad?" Kylo asks. _So much for that unlikely threesome._

Rey just stares at him.

 _Later._

She nods. "Not precisely. The part everyone can hear is about how her branch has been looking to match all three of the royal houses of New Alderaan. Heloise is already a Talmaash and Antillies, so all they need is an Organa, and boom, trifecta."

"Samanth is right there, no?" Kylo asks.

"Samanth is right there. Apparently, you're a 'better' catch."

Ellie nods at that. "I certainly wasn't surprised to hear the offer, other than I didn't expect to see it in addition to giving Rey full formal recognition as your spouse, but… Apparently, though it's rare, polygamy is legal on New Alderaan. Helene just about passed out when we heard Heloise say that."

Kylo's rubbing his forehead. "I'm tired. Which one is Helene and which one is Heloise?"

"Helene is the Viceroy, and one of the architects of getting you and your mom out of the succession," Rey says. "Heloise is the Queen."

He nods, and takes another sip of the coffee. "My body couldn't sleep now if I wanted it to, but my brain still feels tired. This stuff is…" He takes another contemplative sip, and then nibbles the tart, and… "Oh…" Almath is right; one bite and he knows exactly what this is. Chocolate short pastry crust, a sweet-sour creamy cheese, and plump, ripe gryttha berries, drizzled in a sugar syrup. Memories of being small, and waiting for Mama, because she was still Mama then, and she'd come home with goodies, because back then her coming home, and treats, could make him smile. So, she came home with treats. And he remembers when that didn't work anymore, and how sad she's been. She stopped bringing the treats home, then.

He takes a deep breath, and another bite, and feels Threepio still glaring, because they're stopping _again_ for what he's got mentally characterized as _stupid human stuff._

"Threepio, this is a direct order, from one of the few people on this ship who can give you orders. Quiet your fucking mind or leave. I am not about to be scolded for having a snack, especially not by you, and especially not a snack that's actually helping me to think somewhat fondly of my mother, which is something I assume you'd approve of."

Threepio, for a second, resents the hell out of that, but he's also _curious_ so he makes himself _not_ be angry at the delays. "Noted."

"Thank you. I tried thinking at you earlier today, and apparently you can't or don't or whatever, receive information, but especially when you're intently focusing on something, instead of whirling through a billion bits of data a second, you're very easy to read." He sighs, and takes another bite, and gives himself another thirty seconds to _feel_ those memories of being small, and happy because his Mama had come home and brought him snuggles and treats. "Okay, so… The ladies are… doing husband sharing things, which is apparently being done for the sake of everyone listening."

Rey nods. "Exactly. _Everything_ in the palace is wired for sound. And it seems extremely likely that even off world, anything He—The Queen does, is also supposed to be wired for sound. I got the sense, that a big chunk of that comes from the fact that, everyone may adore the storybook version of Bail and Breha, but a good-sized chunk of the people who survived the genocide, blame them for turning Alderaan into a target. If they'd lived up to the whole 'Alderaan is peaceful' ideal and actually been peaceful, instead or more or less bankrolling and spying for the Rebellion, they and their home would likely still be alive."

Kylo takes another sip of the coffee, and nudges the tart to Rey, so she has a bite, too. "It's good."

She nods.

"Okay, so… I should probably have figured this out by now, but…"

"You're tired. It's okay. We're strolling about, I've flat out told her that she can pry you out of my cold, dead hands if she thinks she can, on the whole husband sharing thing, and she seems to understand that, then she starts telling me about the flowers, because obviously, I found the sharing thing distressing. We kneel down to look at one of them more closely, she hits the sound dampening field, and we get thirty seconds to actually talk. So, here's what's really going on. 'Courting couples' are allowed a certain amount of privacy that the Queen of Alderaan can't readily get. She needs that privacy so she can talk to us about actually ruling the damn planet and seeing what she can do to drag it, kicking and screaming, out of the past and into the future. For some reason," and here she flashes Kylo a certain look, "she thinks you might be sympathetic to something like that. Then she flicks off the sound blocker, continues telling me about the flowers, and once again, gently, broaches the subject of at least getting your DNA into the local population mix, and I agree that at the very least, she and Samanth, who was, as of yesterday, the other part of her 'courting couple' should return here when they've got their version of the treaty done, so we can talk more."

And that's when Threepio relaxes.

Rey takes another bite of the tart. It's stupidly yummy. "Samanth took me down to his father's bakery. Can't really talk much on a scooter, but we could chat a little, outside of the palace. He gives me a bit more context for some of what I'd been hearing all night, praised as a strength, but seen from a different point of view.

"New Alderaan is desperately attempting to become Old Alderaan. To a… well, I'm going to say, stupid degree. The planet is covered with things that are already suited for human populations, but instead of using them and adapting, they're spending piles and piles and piles of credits into recreating what they used to have."

"It's not entirely a waste," Threepio says. "New Alderaan has come up with some major advances in botanical genomic studies, and the propagation of rare species, and…"

Ellie breaks in with, "They do have to come up with the credits to _pay_ for all of this, and so far they've been able to take what they've learned in attempting to recreate extinct species and apply that to farming and crop propagation in general. They make _a lot_ tailoring seeds for local biomes, and are one of the cutting edge botanical science centers for terraforming. We weren't there long enough to visit, but there's exactly one University on Alderaan right now, and all it does is botanical sciences. Anything you need to grow; they know how to grow it."

Kylo vaguely feels like that's important for something, enough so that he pulls one of his data pads to him and types it in, but he's not immediately connecting the dots.

"Why is the Queen unhappy with this?" Kylo asks.

Rey doesn't exactly shrug, but she does indicate that she doesn't precisely know all the ins and outs. "Okay, first of all, and you'll feel it when you meet her, this is someone who's been trained to keep their thoughts _deep_ underground. It took me quite a while to even get a feel for the shape of what she's thinking. Second of all, I stumbled into mentioning allowing people into Alderaan who aren't Alderaanian. Just… the Order being the Order, you know?"

Kylo nods.

"That must have hit a nerve for her, or maybe she already hoped we'd go there, and that's part of why Samanth didn't come back from the _Supremacy_ proclaiming you as Kylo Ren, not now, not ever, Ben Solo. Samanth mentioned that in two generations they were going to start running into problems with genetic diversity. In fifty years, everyone on the planet will be a cousin of everyone else.

"And I know she feels like they're running a memorial park or a museum, instead of a society. They're frozen in time, and apparently that's intentional. That was very clear from The Viceroy. She, and at least a few of the others in power are actively trying to make sure that New Alderaan is, or stays, or becomes _Alderaan._

"That's part of getting rid of your mom. She wasn't _Alderaan_ enough. Blood matters to the Viceroy, which is another reason she's not thrilled with you. Even if you are Ben Solo, you're Ben Solo, Anakin Skywalker's grandson, not Bail Organa's." That gets Rey to something else she's been wondering about. "What happened to Heloise's mother? We met the Queen Father, but… Obviously, if Heloise is Queen, her mother is no longer around, and… She wasn't that old, was she?"

Ellie seems very interested in that line of questioning. "What's got you thinking in that direction, Rey?"

"The way Heloise spoke about what would happen if someone attempted to gain the throne improperly."

Ellie smiles. "The old bat is a killer. It takes one to know one, and that's a woman who's got no scruples about doing what needs to be done to serve the 'greater good.' And she's smart. Enough to know to not put herself on the throne. She didn't do it when she took Leia down, and then her sister-in-law… People get sick. They die. That's true.

"It's also true that Ania Talmaash, who was an Antillies at the time, was not part of 'peaceful Alderaan.' She was part of the Rebellion. She refused to take a combat position, which many of the Alderaanians who joined the Rebellion did. But she was a med tech on Yavin," Threepio says. He tilts his head a bit. "Radiation is poison to humans. The explosion of the Death Star showered everything near it in radiation. And unlike the ships, the base on Yavin was not hardened with shields to prevent radiation poisoning.

"Cancer deaths among the people on the ground were fewer than the ones closer to the Death Star, but it wasn't rare.

"And med techs, who got a dose from the explosion, and then more when they dealt with anyone who survived the fight and got out of the ships, ended up somewhere in between."

"Did she die of cancer?" Rey asks.

Ellie nods. "That said, it is my understanding that in many of the cases where the cancer proved fatal, it involved people who didn't get it seen to soon enough. And unlike the average Rebellion pilot who retired to private life, Ania had top of the line medical care who would have swooped down to serve her the moment she so much as sniffled."

"That wasn't always enough. Lando died," Kylo says. "Even with Luke helping…" He shakes his head.

"Lando was located literally inside the second Death Star when it exploded," Threepio says. "The Force and the Force alone got him out of there. The _Falcon_ had burn marks on it from the explosion. The fact that he survived for twenty-eight years after the explosion is a testament to what good medical care attentively provided could do. Your father was hundreds of kilometers away the first time, thousands the second, and he got sick—" Kylo's expression stops Threepio dead. "You did not know."

"He was sick?"

"According to Chewie, his right leg started to ache about six years ago. Bone cancer. He let them take it, and that bought time. He left one went four years ago. He let them take that one to buy more time. When his hip started to ache three years ago, he refused to seek further treatment."

Kylo quietly says, "I didn't know." This time he doesn't know what Threepio's thinking because he's still keeping his mind quiet, and for once, that's a relief. Rey's holding his hand, stroking the back of it with her thumb.

Ellie turns attention away from Kylo. "Ania may have been not what Helene wanted in a monarch. Especially if your read on her is right, Rey. She did seem to be interested in modernizing and loosening things up a bit. But she got sick. The question is, did she get sick and die, like people do? Did she get sick, and did her sister encourage her to just 'tough it out?' Tell her it was 'just a cold?'"

"Poe's mom thought that, and that was it for her," Rey says.

"A lot of people who survived the war have stories like that," Ellie says. "So, that's one way she could have nudged things. As the Viceroy, and as the sister of the Queen, she would have had close personal access to her while she was receiving treatment, and the right chemical in the right dose… Hell, Pat's been through that wringer before, and many of the drugs they use to treat it are poison, just up the dose a bit too high and you'll kill the person and the cancer."

"So, you're saying, short of getting her to say it," she looks to Kylo, "Remind me to tell you about that later. It's important, but Maji stuff." He writes that on his pad, too. "There's no way to really know what happened to Ania."

"Exactly."

"But you think Queen Heloise may have at least the start of an inkling that her Aunt is in some way involved in her mother's death?" Threepio asks.

"Enough that she was willing to draw my attention to what would happen if someone got their throne through poison. I assume there had to be more than just the surface there, but… Like I said, she's _good_ at keeping her thoughts to herself, and…"

Kylo's the one who says it, "You don't learn to do that in a place where you don't _have_ to learn it."

Rey nods. "Keeping her secrets _matters_ to her."

"Enough to attempt to set up a sham conversation with me, about a marriage that will never happen, just to get some privacy for a real conversations about what might?" Kylo says.

"Yeah."

They're all quiet for a few moments. Finally, it's Kylo who says, "Can she? Drag them into the future? Is this something that just she and Samanth want, or… If we back her, can we do some real good here?"

Ellie and Threepio look at each other.

Finally, Ellie says, "Uncertain. I'll need to do some more research and set some more people on it, but my knee jerk, and possibly _wrong_ reaction is that this is a fairly common generational issue. The younger people want new, the older ones want what they used to have, and the older ones are starting to lose their grip on power and do not like it, while the younger ones are just getting a taste of it, and want more."

Threepio is still thinking. Finally, he says, "To a certain degree, the Queen is facing two issues. The first one is this, she does not, actually, have any real political power of her own. Her position is ceremonial and diplomatic. Which means, in order to affect any real change, she either has to radically redefine her position or she needs to use persuasion to shift the attitudes of the people in the legislature.

"Now, it is true that Alderaan prefers the ideals of youth and innocence in it's monarchy, while at the same time, the legislature tends to be filled with old people who are stubbornly clinging to life long past the point where many people, especially the younger ones, would prefer they shuffled off the mortal coil and got around to rejoining their ancestors in the Force."

"Why do I have the feeling that you listened to my mother talk about that, a lot?"

"Because you are not stupid. I'm at least a decade out of date, but if more than a tenth of the legislature is new in that time, I'd be stunned. Your grandmother used to complain that the moment someone got elected to the legislature their lifespan effectively doubled. And, at least ten years ago, both members who were off world when Alderaan was destroyed, were still in the legislature," Threepio says.

"Don't they vote for the legislature?" Rey asks. "Or... Is it a vote once and stay on for the rest of your life sort of thing?"

"It's up for a vote every five years," Threepio says, "but once you've been elected, short of being caught doing something completely illegal, almost no one is ever voted out. In many cases, no one even bothers to run against the incumbent. Generally, there are only competitive elections when a legislator retires or dies."

"So, you're saying that this is a cultural clash putting the young against the old, and there may not be much we can do about it, beyond what we currently do, offering up a place for people unsatisfied with what is where they can chase what can be?" Rey says.

"Yes. Though I'm sure when you have more than thirty seconds of unmonitored time to talk, we can get a better feel for what Queen Heloise is hoping to see come out of this," Threepio replies. He turns his attention to Kylo, "I was hoping to have a few moments of private conversation with you. And we appear to be done with the main debriefing."

Kylo glances to Rey, and she nods to him. "I've got some goodies to take to the kids, and I'm sure they'll want to hear all about New Alderaan. We've got an invite to take them for a trip at some point, and I'm thinking that might be a good idea, if for no other reason than to get them to see more of what the outside galaxy looks like."

Kylo nods along with that, as Rey stands up, kisses him, and then gathers the rest of the boxes and ports out.

Ellie also stands and leaves, but before she's out the door, she does say, "Remember General, nothing that happened last night or this morning damaged us in any way, and will likely, in the long run, work out to our benefit."

"Perhaps, Madam, perhaps." He waits for her to leave. Then he says to Kylo, "I'll admit, going into this I was a bit nervous as to how it'd work out. Fortunately, the answer appears to be, at least for us and our interests, quite well, except for an unexpected and unwelcome snag in the plan, during which someone couldn't ignore the wants of his shaft long enough to let his wife rest by herself for one full night—"

Kylo rolls his eyes magnificently. "The room was wired for sound, no?"

"It was."

"And you were monitoring all the feeds? No, not all of them, otherwise you wouldn't have been surprised this morning."

"I was in the living room watching and listening to the feeds on the other members of the Talmaash house. When the Viceroy's personal security person told her that you were in the garden, I went in to visit Rey."

"Close enough then. Did you hear fucking?"

Threepio looks shocked. And it takes Kylo a moment to realize he was unaware there were particular sounds that went along with that endeavor.

"You don't actually know what it sounds like, do you?"

And embarrassed.

"There's no reason why you should. You're not human. You've obviously got no interest in doing it, and don't appear to be equipped to even attempt it. That said, even you would have likely figured out what was happening if you'd heard it. But you didn't, because I didn't put your carefully balanced plan in jeopardy just to get my stones polished." He pauses and sips his coffee.

"Then you decided to completely upend a very carefully balanced bit of diplomatic work… why? Just to spite me?"

Kylo sighs. "I can take care of my shaft myself. I can't snuggle myself."

"You… possibly destroyed a carefully balanced plan because you wanted a… snuggle."

Kylo can feel Threepio's metal brain melt in stupefaction at that. Kylo rolls his eyes at that, too. "I told… Hux? Probably Hux, it's the sort of thing I'd say to him. The only thing I ever showed any great promise at was disappointing people. So, yes, I wanted a few hours to hold my wife and maybe sleep. Are you madly disappointed?"

Threepio doesn't have a response to that, let alone the capacity to begin to form a response to that. No one's ever so nakedly laid out a desire for simple affection to him.

So, Kylo just barrels on, "Ellie tells me that doing things where it's easy to see that I'm madly in love with my wife is humanizing, and makes people more interested in being with and near us, so… Romance is an ingredient in the fantasy version of this… thing… we're building. If you'd like, you can file me popping in to get my nightly snuggles under 'Handsome Princing The Shit Out of It.'"

Threepio continues to stand there, staring at Kylo, eyes wide and empty.

That makes Kylo feel like he's got to do more explaining. "I'm not a good sleeper to begin with, and I'm much better at it if Rey is near, so… Yes, I sought her out for some cuddles, and then got called to the garden to chat with Mom. It was a hell of a night. Poe and Jon decided I needed to go out for boys time, too."

Threepio just stands there for a moment, and Kylo feels a surge of jealousy that _he_ got a chat with Leia and Threepio hasn't. Kylo's not sure what to do with that, but he does decide to mention it to his mother if or when he sees her again.

"Were you drunk?"

"Not by the time I ported to Rey."

"And are you intending to engage in unscheduled acts of Handsome Princing in the future?"

"Are you planning on dragging Rey away overnight with no warning ahead of time?"

"I'll see what I can do about that."

"And I'll work on reining in my Handsome Princing."

Threepio sighs, tired and edgy. "The biggest problem with your 'Handsome Princing' is that it was noticed. On the positive side, apparently your mother was visible in the video feed, so any questions as to who you may actually be are effectively gone."

"That's good. What's the downside?"

"You were _seen_ , but you were not _seen to get onto the planet._ Thank the Force, there are whispers that a ship exists that is small, fast, and well-enough shielded that it can slip the scanners. They are under the impression that you are in possession of one, and that, I, of course, can read the electronic signatures of the palace well enough to know where the cameras were, thus you could slip in."

"People will bend over backwards to not have to contemplate the idea that I can teleport, won't they?"

"It's an idea so far removed from most people's concept of how reality works that it cannot even begin to form in the mind."

"Ah. Can you read the electronics that well?"

"Of course. They shift the angles, but I visited frequently when the palace was built, so I know the security layout, and the code that runs it. Finding out what each room was wired for, how, and where required very little effort. Likewise, ascertaining where the cameras were and what they could see would have taken me no more than a minute and a good port into the security feed."

"But you can't do that everywhere?"

"Not everywhere. I know what to look for in the palace of New Alderaan. And, as you've heard over and over, I am fluent in more than six million forms of communication, so I can interface with many, but not all, and possibly not _most_ forms of security systems."

Kylo thinks for a moment. "Does a ship like that exist?"

"And that would be the downside. Colonel Jeffries, who actually _writes_ the treaties is already being hinted at in a very not-subtle sort of way, that the price of us getting both recruiting stations and an embassy, will be at least the beginning of the notes for how to build such a ship."

Kylo slumps. "You're saying they're going to want the specs to at least start to figure out how to build a ship that does not, in fact, exist."

"Because, somehow, you got on the planet. Yes."

Every time he feels like he's starting to get a handle on all the angles of these things, something else pops up and rips the rug out from under his feet. "What else might we buy them off with?"

"Now that is going to be a real question, isn't it? They are, of course, not particularly interested in the kind of beyond cutting-edge technology we do have, because it's all centered around ways to kill the most people the most efficiently."

Kylo grits his teeth. "Explicit support for whatever it is the Queen wants to do?"

"Is both the wrong time frame, and it's the legislature that affirms treaties. And since what the Queen wants will neuter the power of the legislature, or at least trim it, they will _not_ be pleased by that angle."

He slumps back and stares at the ceiling. "And if we just go straight, balls-out, Dad telling the Empire, 'We're all fine here,' we have no idea what you're talking about? That I'm just _that good_ of a pilot?"

"I imagine it will work exactly as well as that did for your father. Even the best pilot in the galaxy cannot fly through a planet encircling web of sensors without triggering the sensors. Nothing larger than that tart you're putting on your plate," Kylo is grabbing a second one, "can get through without setting it off. And before you ask, there were cameras on our ship all night and from all angles. There is no possible way you got off of it. Likewise the largest of the 'entourage' who came along for the ride has only 90% of your body mass, and was standing watch, on camera, outside of our door, when you were also on camera, in the garden."

"Fuck," he mutters it.

"There is a reason, why, when I tell you to do something, you _should do it_! _And not fuck it up just for a few hours of snuggles._ Rey isn't going anywhere. She will come home to you. I'd think you're aware of that, so next time, shift your schedule around, take your meetings in the evening when Rey will be away, and free up your schedule for when she gets back and get your snuggles _then!"_

"Noted," Kylo says, voice dry.

Threepio is quiet again, and Kylo's got the sense of him working himself up to saying something. Something he was going to ask about even before this scolding got on his to-do list. "Lady Kinear tells me that your… under the scanners name… is Amidala."

That surprises Kylo. "You knew that, didn't you? Master Padme?"

If he could, Threepio would be taken aback. "I had known that, but didn't connect it."

Kylo's looking at him, eagerly. "Did you… know her? Wait… If you knew, Padme wouldn't have flown under your scanners? Something changed, didn't it?"

"Something did. You were very fond of your grandfather when you were little."

"Is there a question in there?"

"Yes. One I don't particularly want to ask, but am curious about." He looks at the cup of coffee and the tart in front of Kylo. "Returning to New Alderaan has me thinking much of the past, I fear."

"Ah… You want to know more about the monster, but feel like it's a sin to ask?"

"Interesting way of putting it, but… yes."

Kylo sighs, and takes another bite of his tart, before saying, "I was very fond of a voice in my head that claimed to be my grandfather. That voice praised me and told me I was good at things, and that I was meant for great things, and that I was powerful and could do anything I wanted to. It told me the things I was bad at were beneath me, and that the people who tried to make me be good at them were afraid of me, and my power, and didn't want what was good for me. But the voice did. He wanted me to be powerful and strong, like he was. And unlike everyone else around me, he believed I could do it." He rolls his eyes a little. "Who wouldn't like a voice like that?

"I would later find out that that voice wasn't Vader, or Anakin, or however you think of him. So, in truth, no, I wasn't. I was very fond of a carefully constructed image of Vader, designed to manipulate me into…" He doesn't finish that sentence. "Why?"

"How… did you find out about Padme, then? If it wasn't him?"

"It was him, eventually, much, much too late. We've spoken, for real, a few times."

"You don't look pleased by that."

Kylo shrugs. "Why do you want to know more about the monster?"

"When your mother was born, I'd been in the service of your grandparents. Your biological grandparents. Bail took custody of both Leia and I. He had my memory wiped. I know that Vader, who was Anakin then, built me. I have… R2 had… memories of some of our interactions. Not many of them. And I am in the bizarre situation of now having memories that I am not, in fact, present for.

"But… I know he built me."

"Uncle… You're thinking that, hard."

"I'm pondering it."

"You've never tried to cut me in half, so that's already a step above Luke. And you didn't shoot me in the abdomen, so you've got that over Chewie. I'm afraid you can't compete with Lando, though." He tries it as a joke, but it falls flat.

Threepio's mentally glaring at Kylo, and it's clear that if Master Luke wanted to cut Kylo in half, he must have bloody well deserved it. And he knows why Chewie shot him, and he certainly deserved that.

Kylo rolls his eyes. "You wanted… what… happy memories? Redeeming qualities? Some sort of encouraging ghost who understood a lost little darkling and cared."

"I was hoping, yes."

Kylo shakes his head. "I'm sorry. I can't give you that." He settles back in his chair. Then glances around his office. "I know you sit sometimes, is it… more comfortable?"

"Honestly, no. It's easier to stand. But when people are accustomed to sitting and having people stand and recite to them, they automatically see the standing person as of a lesser level. So, I sit for meetings with anyone I wish to impress with my status as equal or better."

Kylo nods. "However you like with me." Threepio continues to stand there. "At first, Padme, and Amidala, were names picked because they were the only names I had a claim to that didn't make me angry. That they wouldn't immediately identify me to anyone paying attention helped, too. Now, they're more about hope, and about… doing as well as you can with what you've got, even if what you've got isn't enough."

He can feel Threepio would blink if he could. "She… In my memories… Artoo's memories... She's a formidable woman."

Kylo smiles at that. "I imagine she was. And… if you'd like to share those memories, I'd be interested in them. What I have… She didn't love him. She was vastly overpowered by a Force user who cared more for himself and his plans than her. There's… resonance… there these days." He's rolling his wedding band between his fingers. "Rey's band is shiny black metal. Some of that is just… me. I do genuinely like black. Some of it is a promise…

"I spoke to him, the real him, only a few times, and one of the things he said was that he never loved her. He wasn't intentionally warping her. That was just… his power and desires and the strength of his Force, but… He never loved her, because if he had loved her, he would have molded himself into a version of himself worthy of being her love. And maybe, on her own, she might not have loved that version of him, either, but he didn't do it. He knew the universe she wanted, and he didn't go and get it, or make it, or use his power to get them closer to it.

"There was a time, a very long time, when I wanted to be Vader. When I wanted the family name of Skywalker, so I could claim his name, his title, him…

"These days, when I'm on my own, with Rey, when it's us, out of the attention of the galaxy, we go by Amidala. And that's likely all you need to know about good memories of Vader."

Threepio nods. "It is."

"We don't know much about her, though. We went to Naboo, and spent a day reading one of the history books about her, and visited her tomb. If you'd be willing to share those memories. I'd like to know more, and I'm sure Rey would, too."

Threepio nods. "Not today. You're tired, and honestly, I'm not sure how much more dwelling in memory I can take for one day. But soon. I know that Ellie intends to take Rey to Naboo in the next few months, so before then. Artoo has memories I don't, so I'll bring him along, too."

Kylo nods. "Thank you. I appreciate it."

Threepio offers him a brief nod.

* * *

It's not late when Kylo gets home. It's actually fairly early for him. He sets dinner on the table, and finds Rey, in the comfy chair, eyes at half mast, looking, vaguely, in the direction of a data pad that she clearly isn't reading.

He steps over, sits on the floor, and leans his head against her thigh.

Their home is still fairly cold. And it's still mostly hers. But right now, it's not _empty._ It's alive, and he belongs here, because here is where she is.

So, he sits next to her, and lets her feel that, as she gives up on pretending to read, relaxes back with her eyes closed, and strokes his hair. "You're tired."

She nods slowly. "I really shouldn't be. I got a full night's sleep."

"Yeah, but you've been up a lot longer than usual, right?"

She wriggles a bit. "Probably." Another quiet beat. "Food smells good."

"Just easy stuff tonight, noddles, veg, and broth." He stands up and gives her a hand up, and they both wander companionably toward the table. She uses her Force to open the cooker, and float one of the loaves of bread to the table. "I kept one for us. Ostrae is more or less demanding I take her to Almath and set up an apprenticeship as soon as humanly possible."

Kylo's eyebrows raise a bit, as he gets them a spoon and fork each, as well as the butter and jam. "That… could be a solution, I guess."

"Oh, she still wants to be here, too, and do more punching lessons with you, and learn to use a lightsaber, and work on cookies, and now she's got some idea about lots of math, and…"

"Your little darkling is a buzz with options?"

"Yeah. I was looking for Alderaanian cookbooks when you got here, and there are several on baking. I'm hoping one will have what she wants."

He smiles at that. Then rips off a chunk of bread, and tries it. Unlike the tart, it triggers no memories. Like the tart, it's stupidly good, though. He chews thoughtfully, sitting hip to hip with Rey while she swallows a bite of her soup. It's just… dinner at home.

"I talked to Mom last night, or this morning, or whatever."

She nods at that. Not much to say, but happy to listen.

"It was… different. I… was less angry, or more able to pull my empathy into play."

"More able to see the person under the image?"

"Yeah, I guess." More quiet eating.

"Do you think that's a good thing?" Rey asks.

He shrugs. "It's probably not a bad one." He takes another bite of the bread, tasting, and trying to feel the weight of a planet gone, and a culture trying to come back. He decides to stop that, fast. It's overwhelming. Instead he says, "I want to get a camera."

Rey, even flowing along with his thought process, still thinks that's something of a leap.

"I was looking at the pictures of Bail and Breha, and… I want pictures of us. I want… something of us that'll last. I want solid memories and the ability to show our kids and whomever comes next who we were and when."

Rey more feels what he's saying than listens, feels his light calling for stable permanence. She rests her head on his shoulder. "You want me to read up on technical specs and whatnot?"

He smiles a little. He's not a mechanical wizard by a long shot, and even in this strong suit, ships, he's still a pilot vastly more than a mechanic. Like his dad, he can poke around and whack things that obviously need whacking, but unlike his dad, he can afford to have someone who actually knows how to fix things, fix them. "Yes, please."

"Will you smile for pictures?"

"If you take them, I probably will. No promises for anyone else."

Rey smirks a little at that. There's another quiet moment, more chewing, both of them content in each other.

"Unlikely threesome?" Rey asks.

Kylo sighs, and starts to explain about Jon and Poe and that moment of not knowing how to break the tension, but knowing that it likely needed to break, so asking about how threesomes work, "And then, all of a sudden, Threepio's telling me you're bringing me a new wife, and… well… Force works in mysterious ways, yes?"

Rey laughs at that. "She tells me, and for as well as I can feel, this is true, that she's honestly not interested in you on that level."

"Oh shucks," he says completely deadpan.

"Yes, I know, all your dearest hopes and dreams just crashed. You're stuck with me."

"Where I very much enjoy being."

"That said, they…"

"They?"

"Samanth and Heloise, and likely anyone else who is concerned about this, do seem to want to add your DNA to the mix, so…"

"Our children can visit and chose to live there if they so desire, and that's as much of my DNA as New Alderaan gets to lay claim to."

Rey smiles at that.

After one more moment, Kylo remembers, "What was the Force stuff you wanted to tell me about?"

Rey's eyes brighten, and a wide smile spreads across her face as she begins to tell him about non-voice compulsion.


	52. The Whole Survives

4/15/2

"Fucker." Jon says it quietly under his breath. He's on the YY deck, looking at what is starting to appear to be something like a layout for a functional diplomatic space. He's supposed to be meeting with the man in charge of explaining to him why nine weeks into construction, they're already four weeks behind.

That seems to be the entire thrust of this job, either whomever set up the schedule for it in the first place _vastly_ over-promised, and under estimated how long each item would take, or the people actually _doing the work_ are a collection of blithering idiots.

He's unfortunately got the sense that he's dealing with a decent-sized piece of _both._

He checks his chrono. He came _early_ for this. And now, his meeting is, officially, _late._

He doesn't enjoy working with General Sanons of Physical Plant and Maintenance: Construction Division to begin with. Lots of excuses, not a lot to show for them, and it's clear that Sanons doesn't much like him, either. He's got the sense that Sanons remembers how Jon got his first promotion, and personally holds it against him. Hell, he might have been a friend of Captain Smanth's… They have similar management styles and are about the same age. Definitely both ex-Imperials…

Or maybe it's just that Jon is young, energetic, works all the hours of the watch, _and_ is Master Ren's pet. However it is, he does _not_ like Jon, and it shows.

This is the second time this week the bastard just didn't show for an appointment. He hits the call button on his comm. "R4-6837," he calls to his secretary, "Can you find out why Lord Asshat isn't here with me now?"

"Would that be General Sanons, Lt. Colonel Halsey, or Commander RY-9987?"

Jon rolls his eyes. He's been using that nickname too often. "The General, please. We're supposed to be meeting right now, and I'm here on my own, making the construction workers nervous."

"I'll get on it, sir."

"Thank you."

* * *

Ten minutes later, he's got R4-6837 on his comm. "General Sanons will not be making the meeting. His third-in-command is heading toward you as quickly as he can."

Jon blinks. "What happened?"

"Sanons died on the 5th, and his-second-in command, Colonel C'Rink passed on the 7th, and poor Lt. Commander JR-6687 is suddenly in charge of the entire department and desperately trying to put everything back into place."

"Fuck. Uh… I… Within two days of each other? Was there an accident or something?"

"I didn't ask. JR-6687 seemed… tense."

"I'll say." Jon knows all he ever wanted to know about the upper ranks suddenly being gone, and having to get everything else set all of a sudden.

He waits, and waits, and then queues up his unending stream of reports to at least do something useful with the time between now and whenever JR-6678 shows up.

* * *

Forty-five minutes, and from the looks of him, an absolute dead run, later, Lt. Commander JR-6678 shows up.

In that time, Jon's read the summary of his personnel file. Like many of the Numbers, previous to the destruction of Starkiller and the _Supremacy_ he had been in military service, but military service as an engineer. When the _Supremacy_ was cut in half, he turned his training in building stable platforms for temporary flight decking into a collection of floating construction zones from which to work on the outside of the _Supremacy_ and from there he was shifted, or dragooned, into Physical Plant, along with a generous promotion.

Since then, he's mostly been working on _Supremacy_ repair and maintenance. While it only took a few months to restore hull integrity to the _Supremacy,_ and to get most of it up to 'battle ready,' meaning capable of hitting hyperspeed without rupturing, the actual construction to repair the damage took almost two solid years, and, of course, during that time, all of the ship's routine maintenance had to keep happening as well.

According to the file, he was put onto the Diplomacy Wing Project three and a half months ago, at the end of the planning phase, and three months ago, at the very beginning of the building phase, began writing notes along the lines of (and here Jon mentally translates the dry engineer-speak dense with obscuring verbiage like 'sub-optimal performance matrices' into Galactic Standard) 'No one on this project knows their ass from their elbow, and please, please, pretty please find us a fucking civil engineer, please!'

(Jon does make a note on his pad to go find out who the hell built the personnel decks and see if they can be shifted onto this project, assuming they're still alive. Apparently, if he's understanding what's between the lines in this report, building a functional, attractive place for people to live is not precisely the same thing as building a stable platform to stick a lot of weapons on. Or as JR-6678 puts it, 'Stylistic concerns are currently being overlooked in favor of functionality, but currently, the alignment of functionality and style appears to be of a higher level of optimal satisfaction for the designers of the project.' Jon's fairly sure he's one of the 'Designers' and damn right this bloody thing is supposed to be fucking _stylish._ )

Now, JR-6678 is standing in front of him, sweating slightly, out of breath, and looking _deeply_ nervous.

Jon holds up his hands in a peace gesture. "At ease. I know you've been on the job approximately ten minutes and need a bit of time to get your bearings."

A wave of relieve washes over JR-6678. "Thank you, sir. I'm sorry, sir. I didn't think to look at my predecessor's calendars to see who they had meetings with. I was too busy trying to figure out exactly what they were doing."

"I understand." Jon shrugs a bit. "I was a Captain the day the _Supremacy_ was attacked. I went from nine levels of senior commanders to being the top of the heap in less than a minute. It takes time to get things up and running, but, unfortunately, time is the one thing I can't give you more of."

"Yes, sir."

Jon gestures to the space around them. "I see you voiced comments about what's being done here."

JR-6678 almost looks nervous, but, well, anyone who might complain about him being out of line is gone, so… "Yes. This is…" his voice falters.

"Sub-optimal?"

"Indeed."

"And what can improve that?"

He's still looking nervous, but a different sort of nervous. Now he's wondering, what, if anything of how this is currently being done is Jon's plan. "I've got to get a good handle on what, exactly, we're doing before I can get any concrete plans into place, sir."

"Look, you aren't about to strangle my baby with your ideas, but even if you were, if it speeds things up, I'll listen. There are things you noticed before. How quickly can you get those fixes into place?"

JR-6678 relaxes, a little. He's been around long enough to know that just because you've been told to speak freely, doesn't mean the person who told you to do it really means it. "Already doing it, sir. Did you read all of my notes?"

Jon shakes his head. "I've only known you were on the job for forty minutes. I read enough to know you saw there were problems."

"Okay. First and foremost, our supply chain needs an overhaul. These floors are more than a hundred square kilometers, and Sanons decided the most effective way to lay out materials was to plop them all in the middle of the floor, assuming that having everything in one place would save us time in finding things, and in the middle would be the closest place to put them to everything else."

Jon can feel whatever ghost Lane may have moaning in pain at that plan. After all, he got his stripes as a _logistics_ officer. "And you disagree."

"I disagree, and I've already gotten a move on that. We're re-arranging where things are stored, so they're closer to where they're being worked with. And so the things that are being worked with, and only the things that are being worked with, are near the site. It takes more set up than the dump everything in the middle technique. We probably lose a half day per set up, but it maybe saves ten minutes per supply run."

"I'll take the ten minutes, because multiplied by everyone, we're talking hours a day, days a month, correct?"

"Correct." JR-6678 leads Jon to one of the construction sections, where to Jon's eye, it certainly _looks_ like things are swimming along. And then, as a man who's not just designed, but also built structural supports, he begins to explain what he's seeing, and what could be done better.

Jon would say, by the end of it, that A: this has been educational. B: their construction expense estimates are (unfortunately) off by ten percent, and not in the direction he wants them to be, and C: it's _possible,_ in the sense of not being impossible, that they may be able to get this floor done in time for the Ren Wedding, Open the Order to the Galaxy, Grand Extravaganza of Lights and Beauty that Ellie is hoping to pull off as the crowning glory of 'Handsome Princing the Shit Out of It.' It's significantly more likely, that if they put up an attractive, and _temporary_ wall, cutting this section in half, that they can absolutely get the half they work on done up to perfection _and_ get the landing bay all spruced up, _and_ still have enough budget left to actually host the wedding.

He okays the wall.

* * *

He's staring at his glass of wine. Only two seems to be going… most nights… easier. And tonight he's feeling pretty satisfied where he is, halfway through the second one, skimming through his collection of reports, _not_ clicking on whatever fresh new hell R4-6837, Kylo, and C8 have concocted for him.

It probably involves _time off_ which, since he doesn't have a pretty companion to go gallivanting about the galaxy with, and he does have more work than any three people should honestly even contemplate doing, does not sound _fun_ to him.

There's a note from Threepio in there, and those he tends to like, because they very often run like this: "Whatever it is you told me to do is now done. Here are three other things adjacent to what you asked me to do. They're also done. Here are some ideas for what I think I should do next, and I've already put them into play, but I'm going to pretend this is a request because you outrank me." Followed by, "And if you have any comments or ideas for other things you think I should do, I've already thought of them, and likely am just waiting for you to get off your ass and request it so I can send you yet another of these notes telling you the thing you wanted done is done."

Kylo might be onto something with attempting to get more Threepios. He wonders idly at asking Threepio how he would feel about duplicating his processors and cloning himself so that he could get twice as much done.

He clicks on the note. It's about the landing bay in the diplomacy zone. Okay… Reading along, and… Huh… New guy on that, too. New guy looks promising though, and Threepio is feeling good about their continued working relationship.

Jon blinks at his wine.

New guy. What happened to the old one?

Then he looks in Colonel Suth's file. He died on the 6th. Turns out he was allergic to shrimp, apparently didn't know that, and ordered the shrimp bisque for supper, died before he could call for help.

"That's fucking scary." He shudders a little. One of the weddings he'd been at was in a garden. Everyone was having a very good time until one of the guests, who was from a different planet, got bit by something that, on world, is just a pest, but to the guest it was a lethal toxin. Poor man puffed up and choked on his own tongue before anything could be done to save him.

Sometimes the universe really is just out to get you.

He takes another sip, and reads another report, and…

Something's just niggling at the back of his head, annoyingly. So, he turns his attention to it.

Three dead physical plant officers in three days. That's… weird… right?

Sanons was pretty old, probably at least seventy, so… He pops off one day, well, people get old and they die, so… His second in command was… Jon only met him a few times, maybe… Forty-five? Fifty? Probably closer to fifty, he was an ex-Imperial, too. Which is… younger than he'd expect. And, okay, shrimp allergies are a thing, so…

Still, six million plus people on this ship, just pure numbers alone means they just die sometimes.

But it doesn't feel… right.

* * *

He's not sleeping. He should be. Tomorrow's going to start too freaking early, but… He grabs his comm. "Threepio, are you up?"

A moment of silence followed by, "What else would I be, Jon?"

"Good point. Uh… It's generally not polite to call upon people at 01:17, unless they work second or third shift."

"Ah." A moment of quiet. "And…"

"That note you sent me. Colonel Suth died?"

"That does appear to be what the reports say. And while I do not wish death on anyone, I cannot say that I'm particularly sorrowful to not have to deal with him any longer. He was not keen to take orders from me."

"Yeah, I know the feeling. Sanons and C'Rink died, too."

Quiet on Threepio's side.

"Uh… Threepio, I'm probably going to regret asking this, but… What are the odds that, when the Diplomacy Wing Program gets into the weeds, that the three commanding officers most thoroughly dragging it into those weeds all die within days of each other?"

Threepio is silent, and Jon's fairly sure it's not because he needs that much time to figure the odds. Finally, he says, "Jon, I think it is safe to say that you will not, on any level, find the answer comforting."

"Yeah, that's what I thought. Thanks, Threepio."

"You're welcome Jon. May I ask what you're going to do about this?"

He sighs. "Probably have a chat with Kylo. Do you want to come?"

"No. Not for this one. I have meetings with two delegations who are wishing to use us as a platform for hosting some delicate negotiations, and I'm set to show off the I-deck, and talk about what it is we can offer them in terms of hosting and also contract law mediation and enforcement."

"Sounds like a good day. See you."

"Good-bye, Jon."

He calls C8, sets up an appointment for the next morning, and then shoots a note to his secretary to shift his morning around and clear out the space. He's got… It's not proof, nothing like that. It's not even necessarily a hunch, so much, but…

If someone is… removing… inefficient officers… He's fairly sure who it's likely to be.

What he's not sure of is what the hell to do about it.

* * *

It turns out the morning couldn't be shifted around. Afternoon on the other hand, worked just fine. As soon as Jon enters Kylo's office, Kylo says to him, "I could feel the cloud from five floors up. Look, I know you don't want more off time, but you've also got to get something like some downtime or you're going to burn out, so… Yeah, you're coming with us for at least some of the fun diplomacy stuff."

And apparently _that's_ the fresh new hell hiding in the missive he hasn't read yet. As fresh new hells go, it's not terrible, but… It also doesn't sound like, 'I found a way to make your job easier.'

Jon sits on the edge of Kylo's desk. "I hadn't actually read that note, and we'll talk about it later. I've got something else you're not going to like."

"Nothing new about that. Hit me with it."

So, Jon does.

Kylo thinks about it. "It could be a coincidence."

"Threepio didn't think so."

Kylo winces. He knows that Threepio can run the numbers. "Fuck," he mutters it, leaning back in his chair, staring out at the stars whirling past. For a moment, his mind is fairly blank, but the sense that there was something… And up it comes, more than a year ago now… Maybe… No, it was the day Paige was born, so less, but not by much, Kinear _told him_ they were removing the people who weren't interested in helping him get where he needed to go.

He glances to Jon. Jon looks back at him, and they both think about a few wily old coots, who came up through the Empire, and have a vested interest in the Diplomacy department getting up and working.

"Do you think…" Jon says… "I mean… It's not like the Empire was shy about executing people for incompetence."

"Yeah. Fuck…" He'd been… trying to move away from that. Sort of. Without ever, specifically, ordering it. Which he really should have, but… He rubs his head. "I know."

"What do you know?" Jon says.

"A while back, Kinear told me that he was… removing people."

Jon looks tense. "Kylo, how many people has he… removed?"

Kylo feels tense now, too. He was, kind of… well… He did his best _not_ to think about it, but now that he's got to, he was sort of thinking like… maybe… twenty? He really didn't think about it, because he knew he wouldn't like anything his brain came up with. And now he's got to think about it, again.

Kylo sighs. "C8, how many officers have died in the last—Never mind, that's the wrong question. They just die sometimes, right?"

"People die, and in our world, probably more than the average guy living peacefully planetside. Training accidents alone…" Jon starts.

Kylo nods. "C8, how many otherwise healthy, non-accident or combat related deaths have we seen among the officer class in the last month?"

"487."

Jon and Kylo stare at each other.

"That's not fucking helpful is it?" Kylo asks.

"Yeah, I've got no idea what the number should be."

"May I offer a suggestion?" C8 asks.

"Please," Kylo responds.

"How many of them had bad fitness evals, or personnel complaints against them? And the answer to that is, 147."

"Just this last month?" Jon asks.

"Just this last month," C8 replies.

Kylo gets something of a thought. "How many of them happened when I was off the ship?"

"58." C8 crunches some numbers. "About 50 or 60, usually ranked above Lt. Commander, die every time you leave the ship for more than a day. 271 died while you were sick."

That's… more than twenty. Which means he's got to deal with this. "Get Schiff and Kinear in here, we've got some talking to do."

* * *

"What are you going to do?" Jon asks.

Kylo shrugs. He really doesn't know. He's not even entirely sure he thinks what Kinear and Schiff are doing is wrong. Entirely. Maybe. If he knew… who… "I… Suggestions?"

"In the civilian world, we just fire people for not being good at their jobs. Maybe… We could just let them go? I mean… That's part of the idea of the Order, right, part of why we aren't the First Order?"

Kylo sighs. "Fuck."

* * *

Kinear and Schiff make it an hour later, which means they pretty much dropped everything, and as close to sprinted as their ancient bodies could sprint.

And it's clear on the looks on their faces that they know _something_ is up.

"We've been having a bit of a conversation about what the Order does with incompetent officers," Kylo says, and he feels the wave of _oh shit_ come off of both of them. "And I was wondering if we could, possibly, have a chat about _firing_ people."

That was _nothing_ either of them were expecting. They're both staring at Kylo in abject horror. He's fairly sure he could have suggested firing them, personally, out of one of the starboard cannons, and it'd get less of a sense of revulsion off of both of them.

Pat and Josh stare at Kylo and Jon, and then look at each other, and back to Kylo and Jon.

Both of them, are simultaneously, thinking something very close to: _Good Gods, what could have possibly happened, here?_

They look at each other again, and then again back to Jon and Kylo.

Pat rolls his lips.

Josh runs his hand through his hair.

They glance at each other again.

Finally, Pat says, rubbing a hand over his face. "C8, run a diagnostic scan on this room and the ones surrounding it. I want to make sure we're speaking alone."

C8 doesn't say anything for a moment, but they watch him staring at the walls, and then stride into the rooms that adjoin Kylo's office, and then a moment later, he's back. "There are no recording devices located in any of the Master's rooms. That said, I cannot ascertain if there are any devices on the floor above us, catching the vibrations through the floor."

Kylo sighs, glances to Jon, and then says, "It's good to be the king?"

Jon nods, remembering his comment about when it's okay to use 'magic' on people without their express permission.

He takes Pat and Josh by the hand, ports them to his kitchen, is back for Jon before the two of them have had a chance to even begin to digest what's happened to him, and then the four of them are in Kylo and Rey's house.

"I can assure, you, _here_ we're free to speak."

Josh is turning, slowly, around looking at everything.

Pat's blinking. He mutters, "That's a hell of a trick."

Jon goes to the cooler, grabs the jug of… "What's this?"

"Pear cider. There's a bottle of brandy on the shelf if you want something stronger."

Josh slowly lowers himself onto one of the benches at the kitchen table. "I think I'm going to need something stronger."

Pat nods in agreement.

Jon pours the brandy. Kylo gets himself a cider, looks at it, and then pours it back into the jug and puts it on the cooker to warm up. He gestures to his kitchen table, and sits. "Pat…"

Pat sits down, too. "We're… at your home?"

Kylo nods. "Welcome. Now, I could feel both of you just about have an aneurysm when I suggested we start firing people rather than executing them, so just say it."

Pat's the one who pulls up his nerve, and reserves, first, "Josh, how long have we known each other?"

Josh shrugs. "I… Let's see, I got flag rank right after the first Death Star, and that's the first time we actually met. I knew of you, though."

Pat nods. "And I you. If you could dig up the paperwork, you'd see I'm one of the names recommending you for Admiral."

Josh nods a bit. "Thank you."

"You're welcome. But we didn't really ever work together in the Empire."

"It was too big for that."

"But, since…" Pat thinks a little. "Twenty-five years in the First Order?"

"On and off, I'd say."

"And we are of commiserate rank?"

"I got to Grand Admiral before you got to Grand Marshal, but you've got… what… twelve years service on me?"

"Something like that."

"So, yes, I'd say we're of commiserate rank."

"Excellent. Josh, I am hereby ordering you, that, if you ever, in your professional opinion, think that I am a danger to either the Order or yourself, to execute me, clean and fast."

"Of course, Pat. And Pat, I am—"

"Stuff it. You've got a lesson you're attempting to teach both of us, just spell it out and cut out the theatrics," Kylo says.

Pat turns his attention to Kylo and Jon. "We do not execute men on a whim. If you've gotten our attention on a level where we're going to end you, it's because you are a danger to the Order."

"We do not fire people, because if you can be fired, you're not dangerous enough to warrant our attention."

"Maybe you two work that way, but… Everyone in the Order used to execute underlings. No one ever got fired," Jon says.

"And maybe, for the lower levels, that's a policy we can revisit. _Maybe._ It _isn't_ for us and our level," Schiff says.

Kylo eyes both of them. "You're shielding Pat, and Josh, you're working very hard to _not_ think about something. I know you aren't lying, but there's something here you don't want me thinking about." Kylo smiles at them, sharp. "That did it. Danger to yourself _or_ the Order. Schiff doesn't think I'd like that. And you think I'm too close to the New Republic to understand." Kylo's eyes are bright, and his expression hard. "Start talking, because here, on my home territory, I'm a _lot_ more dangerous than either of you've ever dreamed of. And, not to put too fine a point on it, but I've got a long reputation of killing old men who do things I don't approve of." It's possible the fact that he gets up and pours himself a mug of hot pear cider might, possibly, pull some of the rug out of that statement. Though he sees Pat understand it as even killers have homes and lives and do things like drink their pear cider warm on a cold day. And more than that, Pat respects it.

Of course, Pat understands and respects it, because he is _it._

Pat nods, shoots back his brandy, wiggles his cup indicating he'd like some of the warm cider, which Kylo pours him, and then says, as he adds some brandy to the cider, "You want to build a system that will outlive you. You want an ideal of laws and orders and you want it to not be dependent on you or any given person to run it."

Kylo nods. He'd like that. He puts the warm cider on the table so the rest of them can get some, and sits down.

Pat shakes his head. "It doesn't work that way. _Nothing_ works that way. To even have a shot of being a system of laws, you have to be a system of _men. The right men._ Because without us, it all falls apart. Law, orders, power, it's only as good as the person wielding it. That's the long and the short of it.

"So, yes. We are professionals. We are dedicated to helping to create this ideal that you're working on. We are the _men_ you _need_ to make your system work. It cannot and will not without us. We trust each other, as men and as professionals. We trust our seconds and thirds and fourths in command, as men and as professionals. We have _earned_ that trust through decades of service, billions of lives, untold liters of blood, and uncountable hours of pain.

"We have put our minds, bodies, families, power, and lives, literally, on the line to do this.

"So, if Josh decides I am a problem, to the Order or to him, personally, because he, personally, is one of the keystones keeping this organization standing, then I trust him to end me, and do it well, because it's time to go."

"And I extend that same trust to Pat. He's earned it. And if one of us has decided that someone needs to go, he _needs_ to go."

"That's it. Your opinion on the matter, and it's sealed?" Jon says.

Pat and Josh sigh. They again share a look, and this one seems to be saying, _Design Officer._

"Yes," Pat finally says. "I have these stripes for a reason, lad, and so does Josh. We are _command officers._ I have been a command officer since before either of you were born. I have been a command officer since before Kylo's _mother_ was born, and yours likely hadn't threaded a needle for the first time, yet when I got my first stripes as a Coruscant copper. Galactic City, The Army of the Republic, The Empire, The First Order, and supposedly, The Order, have all employed me to do one thing, and that's decide who needs to die to enact the will of, protect, or enrich them, and then turn around and kill them as quickly and cleanly as possible with the least possible damage to ourselves _._ Not to be a smartass, but what do you think I _do_ with the storm troopers?"

Josh slugs back his drink. Then he shakes his head. "Lads…" He rubs his eyes. "I know your father was dead and yours wasn't on the job, and for that matter even if he had been, his rank was honorary, so apparently neither of you ever got properly sat down and explained this, but… Killing people is what a soldier _does._ At the lower levels, you trust that your officers know what they're doing, and they point you at good targets, and you take them out. At our level, it's been… decades since either of us has personally handled a weapon, but we are killers."

"In the service of the Order," Pat adds.

 _At least for now,_ Jon thinks to Kylo.

Josh continues, "And it's our _job_ to know who to kill, when, and how. And we are _very_ good at our jobs."

Kylo and Jon both blink, because it's clear that _this_ is not how they think about this.

Josh keeps going. "You would not second guess me for an instant if I were on the bridge and commanded my men to blow up a battleship, or a fleet of battleships, or an entire division. I could order the death of literal millions and you'd trust that I know my job. So, why then, would you question that I'm any less competent when it comes to weeding out our own men?"

Pat's just as cold as he says, "Rey's got you reading up on religions and stuff, doesn't she? Did you somehow get the idea that it's murder if it's our own men, but justified if it's the other guys?"

"No… It's… She doesn't have me reading anything. It's… just me, thinking." Jon says.

"And apparently talking to him," Pat says with a sigh. "Well, out with it, what's got you thinking."

"Feels stupid now."

"Better to feel stupid now, and just be embarrassed, than to be stupid later, and get people killed," Pat adds says.

Josh nods to Jon, and takes another sip of his drink. "We'll talk it through anyway, because part of being a good commander is listening when people you also think could be good commanders have issues and need to work them out. Bad commanders bark out orders without any reason and shut down questions even if there's time to talk them through. Good ones know they aren't bloody well immortal, so they _teach._ " Schiff says. Then he goes back a bit. "We are both aware of the fact that neither of you came up the traditional way. Yes, you're an officer, though design isn't exactly the background that lends itself to this level of rank, and on top of that you came up adjacent to, but not through the Hux system, so you haven't seen it first hand, or tried to make Hux grads do anything other than follow simple and explicit orders. There's a reason we've killed and are killing them right and left as needed. And you…" he turns his attention to Kylo with a sigh. "Command privileges but not rank. Snoke was many things, stupid not among them. You, as he had you, were too dangerous to command anything larger than a squad. Which is part of why, in the beginning, so many of us were rooting for Hux to kill you off, and then we'd take care of him. You were too unstable to lead and too powerful to directly attack. And that's… a disaster that has to be, as best as possible, averted. So, we supported Hux, who was too cruel to lead, but at least predictable. None of us were sure if we could kill you, but we knew once you were out of the way, we could get him."

"So, to an extent this," Pat gestures meaning all of it, "is part of training both of you up. There's an opportunity here, and you have… good instincts, so… Talk. What's got you thinking?"

Jon almost blushes, but he doesn't. He pulls up his best shit kicking gaze and aims it at Pat, who looks mostly amused and a little condescending, but not so much in a mean way, more in a he's had that look aimed at him by men who not only knew how to use it, but had tens of thousands of trained killers at their command. "Would I be correct in assuming that by the time you sidled up to me to have a little chat about a party to make things look right, you knew everything there was to know about me including how often I trim my toenails?"

Pat smirks a little. "You've got a standing appointment with one of the Specs who does it as part of your monthly grooming session, and those are separate from your periodic sexual adventures, because apparently you've got one set of preferences for personal grooming, and another set for getting your tool serviced."

Kylo blinks and looks stunned at that.

Jon sighs and rubs his forehead, and then pours and takes that drink he'd been avoiding. "I thought they're supposed to be discreet."

"They are. I'm better. Yes, between Ellie and I, we knew everything there was to know about you within three days of learning that you were the Master's friend. And judging by how you responded to your mum joining us on the ship, it's clear we knew _more_ about you and what you represented than you did."

Jon looks annoyed by that. "Captain Smanth. I've been thinking about him, and Lane, and what Lane did to him."

Pat nods, sips his drink, and then says, mostly for Schiff, because he doesn't know if Jon's ever told Kylo this story, "Smanth was your commanding officer. And if the records are close to correct, and the bits and bobs Ellie and I could glean close to correct, you and Keenadun got talking about the fact that you were doing the job of at least a Captain, but you had the rank of Ensign. You had a chat with Smanth about a promotion. Smanth shot you down. Keenadun put you up for promotion over Smanth's head. Smanth complained to the General in charge of Physical Plant, claiming that Keenadun was showing favoritism, and made a report on that, and that you were a substandard officer in need of reconditioning. Keenadun got sent a note from General Drevins with the attached reports and one order, 'Take care of it.' Keenadun marched up during Captain Smanth's shift, said to him, 'I understand you have an issue with the promotion I intend to give Ensign Frakes,' waited for Smanth to say you weren't competent for the job, and the only reason Keenadun wanted to promote you was your tight ass, and then, with a smile on his face, he shot Smanth in the head. Then, blaster still in his hand, corpse on the floor, he turned to the rest of the room and said, 'Any other complaints about me promoting Frakes? Comments about his competence or why he's getting promoted? No? Good? Comments about my competence and ability to decide who should be giving orders? Nope? Wonderful. How about the fact that I'm fucking him? Still no comments? Lovely. Back at it. Day after tomorrow, you're reporting to Frakes.' And then he holstered his blaster, stepped over Smanth's body, and walked out. Two days later, you had Smanth's job, because that's how long it took to get the paperwork processed, and a year and a half after that he married you."

Kylo's eyes are so wide they're about to fall out of his head, and he's just _staring_ at Jon. Then he reaches over, grabs Jon's cup, and drains half of it.

Josh eyes Jon. "So, are you now thinking that… Keenadun's actions were inappropriate? No one else did."

"I… Not… I didn't at the time. Smanth was a shit, and he was terrible at his job. I was a fucking ensign and I was better at it than he was. But I don't know if he needed to die for it."

Pat says, "Smanth was a shit, and he was also abysmally stupid, both of which can be overlooked if a man is good at his job. But, on top of that, he committed the one grave sin of any officer, he was bad at his job. He was slowly killing men because his filtration units didn't allow enough oxygen into the gaseous mix. Not so low they were suffocating, but they'd get light-headed easily when exerting themselves, and the dizziness meant their aim and reflexes were off. He kept those reports quiet. General Drevins found them when he went looking into Smanth, and then Keenadun took care of it," Pat says.

"Snoke wasn't so flush with talent he could afford to lose people who were even vaguely competent. For that matter, we aren't, either. If Smanth had admitted the damn things didn't work, attempted to fix them—" Josh starts.

"That was my first non-clothing job, designing new filtration systems." Jon pauses. "Re-packaging them. I don't… Gaseous mixes, reverse osmosis units, chemical transfer… Not my thing. I just needed to find a way to make the thing fit into a package better."

"Smanth was likely hoping you could fix it."

Jon shakes his head. "Never even tried. Just rearranged the packaging to improve weight, range of motion, and energy usage."

"We think he was hoping you had some magic to get the filtration units to filter properly. One of the reports suggested that part of the problem was how they were carried in the armor. A theory that the jostling caused problems. Hopefully, you fix that problem. Then he'd slip it in and quietly pretend the whole thing didn't happen. But if you're not one of his bright boys, working in design, then you're not on that problem, so no promotion goes your way, and everything falls apart for Smanth, because he was too stupid to say his plan for a new filtration unit didn't work."

Josh continues, "So, if he'd admitted they didn't work, and if he'd been willing to take what was coming, likely a demotion and correctional reconditioning, your man could have had words with him, and probably beaten some respect into him, but that would have been it. But Smanth didn't do that, which meant Lane had a different job to do. The part where Lane shot him in front of everyone was certainly about you, or about keeping his own reputation intact, likely about making sure no one ever suggested he'd gone too soft over you to be proper officer material ever again, but he'd have had more to deal with than paperwork if it has _just_ been about you." Schiff nods to Kylo. "He'd get lectured about breaking expensive computer equipment when he'd go into Darth Tantrum mode, and he was Snoke's pet. What could you possibly think would happen if Keenadun had killed a competent commander over a personal issue?"

"So… That's it. The General… just got to decide, filled out the report, and that was it?" Kylo says.

Josh nods. "Exactly. That's why he was _an officer._ That's what it means. You literally have the power of life and death, and the people under you survive based on your ability to make good decisions with that power. Not to put too fine a point on it, but that's also exactly what you did when you decapitated that officer in front of everyone else."

"That's why getting those stripes is a big deal," Pat adds. "Why we wear them with pride."

"That's why people call us, _Sir._ It's not just a spiffy title to stroke our egos. It's because we've, supposedly, proven ourselves capable of making very hard decisions and doing a good job of it."

Kylo and Jon look at each other. That's certainly not any angle either of them had ever thought of before.

So, they think, and then Jon's the one who says, "Smanth was an officer, too. Hell, Hux was a fucking officer. Junior or Senior, whichever one you want to take on." He nods to Kylo. "We all watched him execute training officers—"

Josh and Pat smile.

"We did now, didn't we?" Pat adds.

"Did you set that up?" Kylo asks, though now he's sitting in front of them, he doesn't need to.

"Of _course_ we did. We're _good_ at our jobs. Unfortunately, we inherited the Hux mess. Yes, he was an officer, an abysmal one. Senior, I mean."

"Except for the fact that he wasn't. Put to the right use, he'd have been… like his son, extremely useful. He had an abysmal commander who didn't know how to use him," Josh add.

Pat inclines his head. "Officer school, day one, lesson one."

Josh nods. "As an officer, your job is to balance two priorities. One is the commands of whomever is above you. Supposedly, that person is also good at their job, and has their head on right. Two, the needs of your men below you. It's your job to execute the orders of your commander as effectively as possible _while_ not killing the men under you."

"This is, obviously, not always possible. You will get your men killed. That's a fact. There will be times when the survival of the whole requires the sacrifice of your men and possibly you, too. So, you do it. Because it's your job to make sure the whole survives."

"Which is why neither of us has ever looked twice at executing Hux grads, or even ex-Imperials who will make trouble, because the _whole_ won't fucking _survive_ if we leave them roaming about making trouble," Pat says. He glances to Josh. "Three years, gentlemen. That's, as best we can tell, how long of a grace period we've got."

Josh says, "The only good thing Hux did for us is take out the Hosnian system, and with it the entire command and organization of the New Republic's military. That's bought us time. The entire rest of the galaxy is in disarray, and we are the strongest military presence left."

"For now," Pat says. "As best we can tell, and, of course, this isn't certain, but… Intel shows us that the attack on the Hosnian system, and any of the other myriad atrocities committed under the name of the First Order have not been forgotten. The number of people who are building as hard and fast as possible for the express purpose of burying us is _not_ insignificant."

Josh snorts. "Your mother's Resistance officially disbanded, but the Eternal Resistance, the Brotherhood of the Resistance, and Martyrs of Hosnia, are all working on building up."

Jon blinks at that. "Are they… more than fifty people each?" He hasn't specifically spoken to Poe about it, but…

Josh replies, "The intel we're getting is putting each one at close to a thousand people, and lucky for us, they haven't gotten organized enough to start the terror attacks, yet. It's absolutely certain that we're going to be attacked at the recruiting stations, likely before the year is done, and we're going to have to figure out what to do with that, because the easiest way for them to stir up trouble is to make it look like, say… Long's system, has attacked us, hoping to bait us into a battle we can't afford to fight."

Kylo feels cold at that, remembering Qualee.

"But, they're the least of the potential problems. The New Republic is scattered and broken, but it's not gone, and it's _mad_ , and they're likely going to get enough people together to be trouble," Pat says. "And when they do, they'll have the one thing our terror cells won't, _operating capital._ "

Schiff rubs his eyes. "When you liquidated the Raclan bank, we won a collection of supporters from that, because a large number of people also had their debts cancelled. We also gained enemies. Seven of the mega corps depended on the Raclan for financing, and those credits dried up and vanished as soon as they got done with their exuberant patriotism. Likewise, all of the mega banks worked with each other, and sold bits and pieces of their portfolios to each other. Generally speaking they did not make out well when the value of the Raclan stock dropped to zero and when Raclan debt just vanished.

"So, there are people working on building up against us, and so far they've done a splendid job of _not_ allying with each other, but eventually they _will._ Sooner or later, money, strategic intelligence, and bloody vengeance for a cause will mobilize against us.

"And we need to be ready for it. On the one level, we have your City Killers, our military, our ability to bring more fight to the fight than anyone else."

Pat says, "But, the son of Leia Organa and Han Solo, of all people, should know that having the biggest military isn't a fail safe."

"Why I shifted to City Killers."

"Exactly. And why people shifted toward you and away from Hux." Josh says. "But even better tactics is only one line of defense. The one we need, the one that might work, is to become so valuable that attacking us makes enemies all over the place," Josh says.

Pat adds. "Which means we've got, as best we can tell, three years, to get this market/diplomacy/security thing into play. To be horrendously blunt, we want reams of 'innocent bystanders' on every one of our ships, shopping and selling in our markets, using our space to set up deals. We need every one of our capitol ships to have sovereign space for dozens of systems on them in the form of embassies. We want oodles of families with little kids in our recruiting centers. We _need_ to be valuable, and as more than just a black façade filled with soldiers, because eventually, one of those bastards will destroy a ship, or a recruiting station, and probably more, and we want them to make _a lot_ of enemies when they do it. Which is why Ellie's doing everything in her power to shine the two of you up and send you all over the galaxy to look pretty and sell the value of The Order to everyone still around."

"But that value will be significantly less if we don't have a functional diplomacy wing. And thus we get to General Sanons. You didn't enjoy working with him, did you, Jon?" Josh asks.

"Man was a twit," Jon says, remembering the few meetings that Sanons had bothered to attend. "And from what I could tell bad at his job. JR-6678 has been on the job for less than a day, and he already has three or four concrete ideas to speed things up."

"Good. Sanons didn't like working with you, did he? He was the sort of man who held respect only for other gray hairs who came out of the Imperial Training Corp the same way he did. You could feel how annoyed he was at how young you were and how you'd bucked the chain of command. He resented the fact that you're the Master's pet, and assumed that you got the rest of your stripes the same way you got your Captaincy," Pat replies.

"I really am good at my job! I didn't actually fuck my way into it."

Pat sighs, "Jon, most of the men who survive on this ship are good at their jobs. Just being good at your job doesn't get you a two rank lift in one go. Just being good at your job usually means you survive. The kind of jump you got involves being extraordinary at your job, insanely lucky, and the pet of someone higher up. You can't get that kind of promotion without that, unless someone cuts the bloody ship in half."

"So, yes, you are good at your job. From what we saw after the attack, you're excellent at your job, but what do you think Smanth's friends think about that?" Josh says. "What did they have to say at his funeral? What would have been on your next dinner plate if Hux hadn't also had the good idea to completely mechanize the kitchens?"

Jon rolls his eyes. "I figured that might have been part of it. Speaking of which… shrimp allergy? How'd you hack the kitchens?"

Josh smiles, just a tad. "I didn't. You can't hack the kitchens. Even I don't have the access to hack the kitchens. Hux bloody well knew what he was doing with that. You can however, hack the ordering system on a man's personal datapad. He was sure he'd ordered rytha chowder. It looks similar, tastes similar, and just… isn't similar."

Now it's Kylo rubbing his eyes, remembering that lecture about always securing his datapad. He's finally grasping the concept of why that tech wonk was so serious about it.

Pat barrels on with the larger lesson, "So, he's not doing the job. It is imperative that the job gets done, on time if not sooner, and right. As best we can tell, doing this, building the niche we belong in and then filling it is the way we're going to prevent, or at least minimize, the next major war, and he's got his thumb up his ass, nursing resentment because a man who's been dead for more than two years got sweet on you and then promoted you."

"And you can't fire him…" Kylo leads. He's pretty sure he knows why, but…

"Remember how I said _maybe_ on firing people of lower levels?" Josh says.

Kylo and Jon nod.

"Do you know what happened to Starkiller?" Pat asks.

"I was on it during the attack," Kylo replies. "Hux built a stupidly large weapon, and anything that can harness that sort of power will be massively unstable. Some idiot… Shit… Poe probably… shot a hole in the right thing at the right time and the whole system blew."

Jon's nodding. "That's how he tells the story."

Josh and Pat share a look. They know Dameron's involved in this, on the Maji side, and from what they can tell is apparently _not_ sleeping with Jon, though neither of them has been able to suss out why, but it's one thing to know that, and another to _know_ it.

"How'd they get through the shield?" Pat asks.

"Finn says Phasma gave up the code." Kylo replies, and sees both of the older men go still. "And you didn't know that." Another quiet heartbeat. "Or that I know Finn."

"FN-2187?" Pat asks, looking angry.

"Finn," Kylo nods. "Yes. You're angry."

"No shit. FN-2187… _Finn_ is why we don't _fire_ people! He was a fucking janitor. A smart one, studied hard, learned the ships, and figured out how to get _in. Starkiller_ blew because a low-ranked, below the notice of the higher-ups _, Stormtrooper_ in the _sanitation division_ went rogue and took everything in his memory with him."

"You want to guess what'll happen if the man who used to be the General in charge of physical plant gets fired?" Josh asks. "Or if we gently suggest he should retire? The best case scenario is that we suggest it's time to go, and the people he betrays us to take a while to find him, and shoot him up with ponylthibinal, because that one doesn't hurt, and a man with enough willpower and enough smarts can weave some lies in there. Worst case, we're sold out in a matter of hours, and two days later, an assault team, with all of our codes, shoot some more unstable things, and blow us out of the skies. Do you have any idea how fragile the reactor cores that keep the _Supremacy_ going are? Use the right door code, and you can walk in and bugger us all to literal hell in a matter of minutes, as long as you don't care that you won't walk out of those doors, either."

That's another shivery sensation, and Kylo can feel _that's_ the one that keeps Josh up at night. How vulnerable any of the reactors truly are and how they haven't, unlike the kitchens, figured out how to completely mechanize those systems.

"Every time I leave… You take more of them out." Kylo says.

"Of course. If it goes wrong… We don't want it blowing back on you. That's part of not mentioning it," Pat says.

"Part. The main part is you thinking I wouldn't like it."

"Well, you don't," Pat says. "That's clear on your face. It was clear the last time we talked about this that you didn't quite get the scale of what I was talking about, and that was fine by me, because liking it or not, it needs to be _done._ "

A very cold feeling dawns on Kylo. His mouth starts to drop. "Wait… I've been letting them go. I had my guys write up the 'How to Retire' pamphlets. How many of them… Did they actually get to retire?"

Josh and Pat look uncomfortable. Pat drains his drink, and it's the first time Kylo's ever seen him afraid, of him.

He swallows, and then says, "I want you to understand, I know my days are limited. And not limited in the usual sense of being aware of mortality. My days are likely counted in months at this point, probably not years, certainly not decades. But this… The Order… This is my future. This is my hope for a better life, world, galaxy. I probably won't make it to see what happens in three years, so… I'm doing everything I can to make sure we're ready for it. That said, since we've gotten the training program to something like functional, two of my sons, nineteen of my grandchildren, seven of the great-grandchildren, and the one great-great grandchild who is old enough have enlisted in the Order. My wife is currently located in an Order vessel. _Everything in the universe_ that matters to me is invested in the Order, either directly, or indirectly.

"My _literal_ blood is in your hands, and I did not place it there hastily.

"And yes, of the people who have left, I have ordered the execution of something like 22% of them, mostly officers. That works out to about two hundred and forty-three thousand people, give or take."

There's a second where everyone is just silent. Kylo's not sure if he wants to pass out, throw up, or Force choke Pat to death right here and now. Possibly all three, though he's not sure how to do all three at once.

He must look pretty scary, because Jon just took his hand, and Pat has inched back and closed his eyes, waiting for the strike he cannot defend against.

But that moment passes. Kylo lets the rage bleed out. He can call it back, fast, if he needs it, but he can also feel that both of the men in front of him are _certain_ this is the right path, and that, no matter how this works out, they did their absolute best.

"Explain," Kylo says.

Pat lets the breath he was holding out, and opens his eyes again.

And Josh, even half certain Kylo's going to attack in the next few minutes, is bizarrely proud of him for _not_ attacking until letting them talk. He nods to Pat, and then says, "You're leaving the important details out, Pat. More than a million left. It's too many to keep track of. We have… a few…" He glances to Pat. "I have three, he's got…"

"Eleven. Army."

Josh nods, as if that explains everything, and to him, it does. Though it doesn't to Kylo, not immediately. "Off the books units. Loyal to _me._ They'll go visit ex-Order people, and see how interested they are in selling our secrets. See what they do when someone offers them a bounty of cash for intel. The ones who say no, who tell our guys to bugger off, we leave alone. The ones who report back to people in the Order, tell them that they've been approached for intel, they get lucrative offers if anyone else comes their way, along with an interesting collection of intel to give up. The ones who say yes… They get invited to a private meeting, if they give up good intel, that's their first and last meeting, and their next of kin get a good pension."

"You've turned them into spies," Kylo says, jumping on this so he doesn't have to think too hard about two hundred and twenty-three thousand men dead.

Jon blinks slowly, not sure what to do. "Is… twenty-two percent most of the non-Hux grads?"

Pat sighs. "It's a significant percentage. Most of the Hux grads… We've killed some of them, because some of them attack when you try to get them to sell out the Order, but… We haven't been as successful with buying them off. Enlistees and ex-Imperials are… more interested in credits, or less loyal to the cause, disapprove of where you're taking the Order. However, you like to think of it."

They're all quiet for a moment, and then Josh says, "For the ones who are still with us... Let me back up... The biggest problem is when the man at the top isn't invested in making sure the whole survives. If he's got no greater good than his own personal glory, you run into _issues._ So, for the Emperor, when he _became_ the Emperor, Brendol would have been in charge of the prison system or something like that. Something where making sure people followed orders and just followed orders would have mattered. The problem is, Palpatine was slowly, or not so slowly, going insane, and like any other insane man, he started seeing enemies _everywhere._ And, of course, when you see enemies everywhere, you start making them everywhere, too. So, when Hux popped up with his ideas for how to turn men into robots, the Emperor jumped at the chance."

Pat takes over, "Then Snoke came around… and he likely never was sane, or it was so long ago none of us were born yet, so he let Brendol do whatever he liked, because the idea of soldier who would just _follow orders_ made him… whatever it made him."

Josh continues with, "Which means that yes, by the time you got into play, we had a training system designed to turn out robots, not officers, and you cannot actually run a functional military, let alone a government, that way. I need to be able to tell one of my commanders, 'Secure the Halbrath system,' and know that when I check on him again, the Halbrath system will be secured or on the way to being secured, without me having to plan every step of the exercise. And I need to trust that he's competent to do it without getting all of my men killed. Which means, I, and Pat, and everyone else we've called back into play, or who Snoke didn't manage to kill, have been weeding out people who cannot do that. That's the absolute barest minimum of what we owe to our men, and to you, or the Order, however you wish to think about it.

"In a functional military, the men trust their officers not to get them killed unless it's absolutely necessary. They don't bloody well sign up if they don't trust that. And if we conscript them…" Josh shakes his head. "Conscript troops are useless... unless you literally just need a wall of bodies aiming fire at something, and we can buy robots for that. That's why Hux had to grab them so young. Instead of making something people would join, he tried to beat the desire to run away out of people we stole."

Pat continues. "That's also why we needed a weapon on the order of Starkiller. Because our individual troops and officers were beyond sub-par at tactical thinking, we needed something so big and terrible people wouldn't actually _fight_ us."

"Likewise, even Hux grads don't want to see everyone around them get slaughtered. Which is the only thing that happens when your troops are only a hair above cannon fodder. So, even if they weren't _people,_ it's _bad for morale_ which is bad for getting what you need done, done."

Pat takes another long swallow of his drink, and a breath, and then looks right at Kylo. "So, yes, we have killed, and unless you put us out to pasture or bury us in your backyard, and as a side note, bury in the backyard is the correct answer because even if we didn't switch sides upon being released from service, someone else _will_ grab us, and you don't want your secrets in someone else's hands."

Schiff interjects, "And you're going to want to put our wives, children, and at least a few of the grandkids in the ground next to us. Likely our second-and thirds-in command, too. Definitely, our personal commands. Otherwise... Well... It's not going to work out well for you if you don't, but it won't work out well if you do, so...

Pat takes over, "So, unless you end us, we will continue to kill anyone who looks like they are a credible threat to the continued building and success of the Order and its military functions. That's a good half of our job these days, the other half is getting other people who will also build and work towards the success of the Order into play. The only question is, do you trust us to have these stripes or not?"

Josh sips his drink, and Pat just stares at Kylo, who, given the throw down there, now pretty much _has_ to decide what the hell to do with these two geezers more or less daring him to kill them.

He glances at Jon, who's got bugger all for a response to this, too.

* * *

 _You in your ship?_

Poe jerks at the voice in his head. His heart is pounding, though he feels silly about that. Then he rolls his eyes, it's _appropriate to be startled_ when a voice comes out of nowhere and talks in your head. He's glaring as he says, "Yes." Then he rolls his eyes because he's pretty much just talking to BB.

 _Is your ship on Lirium?_

This time he tries thinking _Yes._

 _Good, feel like coming over? I need some perspective._

 _Kylo?_

 _You're the only other command officer I know and trust. Please._

 _Yeah, be there in a moment._

"Rey's coming?" Pat says.

"She could, but that's not who I was talking to. Is it really that obvious?" he asks Jon.

"Your eyes go completely blank when you do it. It's going to be glaringly obvious to anyone who's really watching."

"Great."

* * *

A moment later, the door opens, and Poe lets himself in, and all the warm air out.

And then there's a moment where he, and Kylo's high command stare at each other, and the temperature in the room drops another ten degrees as Admiral Dameron of the Resistance looks at Admiral Schiff and General Kinear of the First Order.

Then Pat says, "Admiral." Josh raises a brow. Pat nods to Poe as he sits at the table between Kylo and Jon, looking very wary. Though he doesn't move his hand to his blaster. (But Kylo can feel he _wants_ to.) "Josh, this is Admiral Poe Dameron. Last known rank, second-in-command of the Resistance. Current affiliation… Maji? I told you he'd showed up for the K'Aran meeting as part of Rey's backup. And that, apparently, those three are doing something involving him and getting people out of places they don't want to be."

Josh nods slowly, still staring at Poe. "I never imagined… this."

Poe pulls up his inner entitled asshole, and flashes him a blinding, all teeth smile, and grabs a cup. "Never imagined sitting down for drinks with a war hero?"

Josh rolls his eyes, viciously, and pours Poe a drink. "The reports say you know your way around a bottle."

"You've got reports on me, I'm touched," he takes the drink. Kylo notices that he swallows, but the level of the liquid in the cup doesn't go down. He doesn't know if he didn't drink the liquid because he wants to be completely sober for this, or if he just won't drink anything Grand Admiral Schiff is pouring. "What's got you inviting me to the viper's den?" he says to Kylo.

Kylo explains the line of thinking Josh and Pat have offered him. He finishes up with, "I know they believe it. I know that everything that can be checked of what they're saying is factually true, and the rest is true enough. I know I wasn't trained as an officer, and that I probably don't have the temperament for this. So… Thoughts, Admiral?"

Poe sighs long and loud, and then takes an actual drink of the brandy in the cup. "Yeah, they're right. That's what you want to know, right? That's how the game really is played, not just some ultra-violent Empire version of it?"

Kylo nods.

"Yeah. That's… They won't give you your stripes, not in the New Republic, and you didn't get them in the Resistance, either, if you won't sacrifice your own men to protect the whole. That's…" He's glancing at Jon. "Didn't you get that, too?"

" _Design officer._ I mean, yes, it was part of the training, but like hand to hand and sniper rifle, I just had to pass the test, I never really used it again. Even the attack on the _Supremacy_ didn't kill enough people to put me in a combat command."

"You trained as a sniper?" Poe asks.

Jon smiles a little. "I'm actually a very good shot, and have the patience to sit and wait for the opportunity to take it."

"Huh…" He glances at the older men. "We'll talk about that later." He nods to the older officers. "Wouldn't trust either of them out of my sight for a second, but they're telling you true on this. And… You know I've worked security, and… The way we did it, before you got up to a certain level, you had to pass a clearance exam. Get that clearance and you'd pretty much signed on for life. Especially when the war was hot, you couldn't retire. Too much of a risk."

"Did you… Were you killing people who left?" Kylo asks.

Poe rolls his eyes. "If you joined the Resistance in the first place, you were already committed. We didn't get people looking to retire."

Pat sniggers at that. Poe glares at him.

"They didn't live long enough to retire," Josh says. "Just because you didn't arrange for wet works doesn't mean it didn't happen. Especially in the early days. Your mom would have known about it." He looks to Kylo. And then back to Poe… "Wait… Security. You were Organa's security?"

Poe nods.

"Who were you defending her from when she left the New Republic?"

He glares at that.

Kylo and Jon are curious.

"Yeah, from them, too. For a while, there were factions in the New Republic who wanted us dead. The Resistance wasn't exactly legal. And the First Order had shoot to kill orders. And… It was a mess. Okay. And… everyone executes spies," Poe says.

"And they execute the people they think might become spies if the right incitements were offered. We're doing no different," Pat replies. "We just have a much _larger_ pool of people to deal with."

Poe grits his teeth at that. "He's not wrong. Cassie's uncle." He knows that only Kylo knows who he's talking about. "Cassian Andor. You ever get into his file… before he died on Scarif Bay, he was a Rebel spy who killed a lot of other Rebel spies/contacts. Killed a lot of their guys, too, but… Cleaning up your own trash is one of the least pleasant parts of command."

"Elegant way of putting it, Admiral," Pat says.

"Commander," Poe shoots at Pat. "You want to use a title, it's Commander. Or just Poe. Master Poe of the Maji if you like. Admiral was just for the sound of it. Can't really be a bloody Admiral if you've got nine ships and barely enough pilots to get 'em all in the air at the same time."

Josh smiles at that.

"Don't give me that patronizing smile. Being aware of who you are and what you can do doesn't deserve a cookie."

"It's a rare trait, Dameron," Pat says.

Poe glances to Kylo. "These old coots your high command?"

"Apparently. And they've been off 'cleaning up the trash' as you put it, without telling me about it."

Poe looks shocked, and stares from Pat to Josh. "You're so fucking stupid as to try and lie to a mind reader?"

Pat smirks a bit. "No. We just… didn't mention it, or think about it, or put it in any of the briefings."

"And likely could have kept doing it indefinitely except this last sweep got too many people out of Physical Plant while Jon and Threepio were working with them." Josh glances to Jon. "Your boy noticed it."

Poe doesn't blink, or quibble at the characterization, he knows Josh is fishing, so he just says, "The man who thinks Jon's just a pretty face is too stupid to be on this level, so who in your chain of command fucked up?"

"And will they have the chance to fuck up again?" Jon asks.

"We have a list." Pat looks annoyed. "People who are problems get added to it. Whenever he leaves the ship for a few days, a random number generator picks numbers, and then we take care of them. We knew that if we were doing the picking by hand, eventually some sort of pattern would show up and someone would notice."

Kylo rolls his lips together. "Will of the Force."

"Or something," Pat says.

"How do you get on the list?" Kylo asks.

"By being so bad at your job that we hear complaints about it," Pat replies.

Jon winces. He knows he's the one who made the complaints. It's not like they were unwarranted. He just didn't realize he was signing men up to die by them.

"What did you and yours do about… incompetents?" Kylo asks Poe.

"They tended to die. Kylo, we weren't swimming in people the way you are. If an officer was bad at the job, that tended to be fatal." He glances to Jon. "Who's dead?"

"Top two guys in the diplomacy wing development plan, on the same weekend, and then Threepio noticed another one of them," Jon says.

"And the only reason they put it together is they're actively building," Pat says. "You did security work?" he asks Poe.

"For a while."

"If the General in charge of physical plant for the Empire had suddenly decided to retire, and they let him wander off, how long would it have taken the Rebellion to grab him?"

"I'm really not that old."

Both Pat and Josh shoot him the stink eye, and there's a definite sense that insubordination charges would have been forthcoming if they could have been.

Poe rolls his eyes a bit. "Half an hour, two or three if they hadn't been paying attention. Maybe a few weeks if he left with proper security. One way or another, they'd have gotten him before the codes on the doors had changed. But that's for the Empire. Don't you have most of your higher ups brainwashed into death before dishonor or something? We had a bitch of a time getting intel out of the men we captured."

"They don't want to retire," Josh says.

"Getting them out, competent or not, is difficult for different reasons," Pat adds.

"Finn wasn't the only Ex-First Order man you grabbed?" Kylo asks.

Poe laughs at that. "Of course not. But they generally didn't like to talk, and by the time we got enough drugs pumped into them to get them talking, we'd usually mushed their brains into soup. They'd tell us everything we wanted to know, after a point, assuming what we wanted to know were one word answers to things like: what color are the walls." Poe shoots him a grin. "You think I'd be willing to associate with you if you hadn't treated me with kid gloves in interrogation?"

Kylo's genuinely insulted by that. "You were screaming for most of it."

Poe shrugs. "I've never seen any reason to sit around and suffer in silence. The more you yell, generally the easier they go on you. And you're a fucking cream puff. Probably because you don't have to actually torture people to get intelligence out of them, and you know if they're telling the truth. So, I walked out, _walked_ , with my mind and identity intact, no broken bones, all appendages attached, and no electrical burns. I've had worse than you over the years, and I've been part of groups that did worse. It was a _war_ Kylo." He glances to the older officers. "What did he… do… during the war?"

They don't shrug, but it's clear they don't exactly know. Pat says, "Official rank: Master of the Knights of Ren, personal attache to Supreme Leader Snoke. Command privileges equal to that of a Captain, though the Captain who happens to be the personal adjutant of the man in charge." Poe understands that. If it _really_ mattered you could tell someone like that to stop, but generally, you let them do whatever, because you knew the Man in Charge would hear about it, otherwise, and most of the time, you were pretty sure the Man in Charge ordered the damn folly in the first place. "Sometimes he'd show up, grab a squad or two, and do _something._ You mostly worked with Hux when you were working, right?"

"We were both stationed on the _Finalizer_ , so yes. And," he shakes his head, "Just file it under _Force stuff,_ and leave it there. Some piloting, a few battles. Mostly _Force stuff._ " He shrugs again. It's been a long time, and it's over now. "Find Luke Skywalker and kill him. Find other Jedi, kill them. That's what I did."

"Oh."

"Find Force relics, grab them. Destroy them if they didn't help us find Skywalker. Occasionally, my cream-puff self was called in for 'difficult' interrogations of valuable prisoners. But Hux generally didn't like that because it meant admitting that I had some value to the group. In general, he'd rather, how'd you put it? 'Mush their brains into soup,' than call me in."

Poe rolls his eyes. "That's just stupid. If we had had someone who could—"

"How many interrogations did my mom run?"

Poe blinks.

Kylo nods.

"Oh."

"At the very least she always knew when people were lying to her. And if she'd bothered to work at it she could have developed enough voice control to compel them to talk. It's… you need to have a knack for it, but if you do, and she did, it's not freakishly difficult to use. Luke mastered it in… three days? It probably would have taken her a month or two if she'd felt like it." He glares a little at the idea of her, and his own past. "If she'd decided to take the time to hone the skills… Okay, she wouldn't have been," he floats the bottles off the table, spins them around, puts them back down again, and says, "And you just thought 'fucking shit' Josh, Pat thought 'show off,' Poe's starting to get angry at my Mom, and Jon's still thinking about Lane and Smanth. That sort of power takes a lot of training, and good control, and more talent than she had, but she absolutely could have trained up to the point where she could have done interrogation work a hell of a lot better than you could," he says to Poe.

"Why didn't she?" Poe asks.

"Probably because the only way Luke knew how to teach it meant not being Senator Organa, and not building the New Republic, and not being passionate and engaged and active and…" _And all the shit she was willing to put me through, but not herself._

Poe nods at that. _Talk later?_

 _If you want to._

Kylo sighs, because killing that conversation means paying attention to the reason they're here. "How many people are still on the list?"

Josh and Pat mentally go blank while staring at each other.

"Do you really want a first hand demonstration of what me being a cream puff is like? He survived. He's young and healthy and didn't really try to fight me." _What do you think will happen to you if you try…_ This time he doesn't have to think it out loud, it's enough that it's in his own head.

"Sixty-four thousand, give or take," Pat says.

"Some of them just die. Especially among the Imperials, a lot are rather old, and it's not easy work. The Hux grads who are flamingly incompetent at anything beyond order following, we… shuffle them around. What's his name… The Captain who was supposed to be reassigning the locations of the ships on the ZZ Deck. We just moved him. Try and put them in places where insane levels of loyalty can cover no tactical thinking skills, but… There are only so many jobs where follow orders is the only thing they've got to do," Josh says.

"Especially in a peacetime military. When we're actively fighting again… We don't like doing it, but you need officers who can be ordered into a suicide mission, and who will do it well. The Hux grads are great for that. You can even flat out tell them that the mission will get them killed, but as long as you point out why it's necessary, they'll go do it." Pat says. "We're… honestly, flogging a lot of them off into the different settlement programs. They don't like, 'Go to X planet, build a house, start terraforming, and settle down, then wait for orders, but they'll do it.'"

"And you can't do that with—Right, they'll just bugger off and start spilling secrets," Jon says.

"Yeah, the Imperials have active and functional senses of self, which means they need to feel valuable, even, and often, especially, when they aren't," Pat says. "And we have flogged some of them off into the re-settlement plans because… There's just not that much damage they can do out there. We're giving them instructions to work on fixing up planets we've beaten practically into dust. Sticking them in the new colonies to help shift the culture more toward the Order. If they fuck it up, well, the planet was already ruined."

"But that's still only some of them," Pat says.

Right now, Kylo's very much wishing he could go back to yesterday, and _not_ know about this. And, he feels bad about it, but… He doesn't know what to do, so he punts it. "Three years? What do you think happens in three years?"

Pat takes another sip of his drink. "We're expanding the number of people we've got, but we're no longer doing anything but upkeep and replacement on our military hardware. In three year, assuming they get their heads out of their asses, and they actually manage to work together, and they decide to do it, the New Republic can have allied with the Mega Corps, and built up enough of a military to be a threat. And they'll have the cash to bankroll every splinter of the Resistance left, and set them on us as a million stinging gnats."

"Also, as you know…" Schiff says, "the large banking houses don't exactly love us. Partially because they saw what you did with the Raclan, and partly because we owe several of them a shit ton of credits, and… well, like they say, you owe the bank a hundred credits, it's your problem, you owe the bank 30 billion credits, it's _their_ problem."

"So, they're in a situation where they can't afford to write our payments off, but they'd really rather prefer we didn't have the power to take them down by defaulting," Jon says.

"Exactly, so… Right now, we have the advantage on weaponry. Right now, they aren't sure if we don't have something along the lines of another Starkiller in the works, and we've worked very hard to make sure the rest of the galaxy thinks we do."

"No," Kylo says.

"Kylo…" Pat's voice is patient. "They—"

"No. Stop it. People join us because we offer them value. They don't join us because they're afraid we're going to kill them if they don't. 'We don't conquer' doesn't just mean that we don't land troops on the ground. Whatever the fuck it is you're doing to make the whispers of a new Starkiller go around, stop it."

"They're going to kill us if they think they can," Pat says. "A _lot_ of people have vested interest in getting revenge on us.

"Not today and not tomorrow, and with any luck we can be in a better position by the day after, right?" Kylo asks.

"Part of being in a better position is making them think we're stronger than we are," Josh replies.

"Not like that. We're still making the payments to the banks, right?"

"Yes."

"Good. As long as we're more valuable alive than dead, they'll at least think twice about making it easier for someone else to make us dead." He feels like there's something else here, something important, something that… Matters.

Kylo gets up and starts to pace around, jittering a little, trying to get his brain to find the thing it's looking for. "Stop it," he says to Pat and Josh, who've never seen what it is he actually does between meetings and behind closed doors when he needs to think, and are starting to feel a little alarmed. "This is just thinking. I'd punch it out, but my bag isn't here, and I don't want to break my home."

 _Fuck._

 _Kylo?_ Rey's voice in his head.

 _Yeah… Fuck…_

 _You need me?_

 _Yes. Can you just listen?_

 _Sure. You want me to come to you and actually talk?_

 _Got a bunch of people here._

 _Okay._

So, he thinks about it, and paces up and down their living room, his long stride eating the small space in a few steps. He doesn't pay attention to Pat and Josh watching him, or Jon and Poe quietly talking with each other about nothing, because it beats just sitting there silently.

And Rey listens. And she thinks, too. And then says _We could try to make them our allies. Like we did with New Alderaan. Take them, preemptively, a non-aggression treaty._

Kylo stops pacing. And he just stands there for a second. _Thank you._

 _You want to talk some more about your officers?_

 _Yes, but later. I think this needs to get out, now._

 _Okay. I can be there in a second if you need me._

 _I know._

He refocuses on the four men at his kitchen table. "How active is the New Republic now?"

"They have, loosely, more people than we do. Probably a few thousand active worlds. The same squabbles they had before the First Order fired on them, though they're having an easier time starting to come to a more centrist thrust at least in regards to developing enough of a military to engage in preemptive attacks," Josh says.

"Do they have… Formal meetings and a senate and stuff, like they used to?"

"Yeah," Poe says. "Security's higher. Even I don't know where the bloody capital is right now. They move it every few months, and last I heard they were looking to build a large enough ship so, like the _Supremacy,_ they could keep it moving, but there is a senate."

"What would they do if we offered them a formal non-aggression treaty?" Kylo asks.

Kylo's best guess is that they'd stare at him the same way the four men are staring at him, now. Like he'd just grown a new head. He's completely flatfooted all four of them, and Pat's so shocked his brain just went legitimately blank.

Poe's the one who leaps back into action, first. "You want to… ally with them?"

"They're in no position to fight us right now. We don't want to fight them. If we make nice now, maybe by the time they're in a position to fight us, they'll have had a few years of getting along, and decide that they like getting along, because it's good for everyone involved?"

"Would we… seek to join the Republic?" Jon says, slowly.

Kylo rolls that over in his head. "I don't think so. That's… not going to be good for us. But… at least… fifteen years ago… Anyone who wanted to could send Ambassadors, right? Hell, even Snoke had First Order people in the Senate. You had to join to vote, but you could go and be represented and speak and whatnot, right?"

"Your mom hated that. She'd be up there trying to rally people to fight them, and then some slick son of a bitch would pop up and talk about how they weren't a threat, and that every system in the New Republic was allowed to engage in internal peacekeeping, and the stories of conquest were pure slander made up by the people who hadn't wanted to join the First Order and…"

While Poe's been saying that Pat and Josh have been staring at each other thinking. Finally, Pat says, "I don't think they'll let us do that, Kylo."

"Maybe they won't, but we at least try. If we send someone with a treaty, they won't attack them, right?"

The other four of his advisers all look at each other. None of them seem to think that's likely.

"They might attempt to put them in prison for war crimes," Jon says.

Kylo's eyes narrow. He and his did _not_ blow up the Hosnian System. "That's on the Fir—" Kylo starts.

"Kylo, you're personally wanted in the New Republic on genocide charges for Jakku, and murder and theft for the Raclan Bank. So is anyone who wears an Order uniform," Kinear adds. "Those orders were absolutely war crimes, and anyone who chooses to be part of an organization that does things like that is a war criminal. Back when we were conscripting people, our foot soldiers could claim it wasn't on them. That we'd literally held a gun to their and their families' heads. And that was considered a 'mitigating factor' assuming you personally hadn't been involved in any actual war crimes. Now, though, they join, so they immediately become complicit in anything we do, have done, or will do.

"That's a big part of why we leave them alone. Sending someone in to get arrested puts us in the position of having to do something about it, and that goes against the image we're currently building. Getting too close to them basically means picking a fight, and one we _have_ to win."

 _Fuck._ Kylo mouths it. "What about… not wearing an Order uniform? Maybe someone they've got some history with?" Kylo just looks at Poe.

Poe holds up his hands. "No. No! They actually could toss me in jail for desertion. I didn't exactly… get permission to leave the Navy of the New Republic, you know?"

"Oh."

"And… uh… I… might have… in my New Republic uniform… engaged in some extremely illegal intelligence gathering."

"Oh."

"That… I mean that was sort of a game. Everyone knew I'd flipped sides, but most of the New Republic didn't like the First Order, but not enough of them to win the vote, so as long as I looked official, they'd be happy to have a chat and 'debrief' me on what was going on. And that way, if someone fussed, their ass was covered because I'd shown up in uniform and with the right credentials."

Pat and Josh look a little impressed at that. Kylo nods.

"And… I… sort of… used that uniform and my ID to borrow… some equipment, that I didn't exactly… uh… return."

"Uh huh…"

"And—"

Kylo raises his hands. "And I will not be sending you anywhere near the clutches of whatever is left of the New Republic." Both Pat and Josh seem to find that extremely amusing. "I do have one diplomat who didn't manage to do anything illegal, was on what the New Republic would call 'the right side' of the war, and would find any attempt to put her in prison extremely amusing."

The five of them sit there for a moment. Pat exhales a _long_ breath. "She's… an option." One more, long, breath. "Kylo, we saw what appeared to be holos of your mom when you were on New Alderaan. And, until then, we were awfully sure we knew the right answer to this, but… Uh… Is she… Actually dead?"

Kylo nods. "Yeah, otherwise, I would have suggested it."

"Okay," Pat replies.

Josh rubs his hand over his face. "They're going to want blood. Which means… even Rey… is likely going into jeopardy doing that, and… If they play nice… There's no possibility that they'd even consider accepting a non-aggression treaty from us without… strings… meaning at least a trial for you, which will result in an execution, attached."

Kylo can remember saying to Rey, 'My opinion on being executed for war crimes hasn't improved' and it still hasn't. He could, probably, wiggle out of a lot of what the First Order did, but… Not Jakku. That's on him, and only him, and he can't shirk it off. "As long as they sit down and talk with us, we can, negotiate the strings, right? And if they're talking, they're not shooting? Or less likely to shoot? Maybe?"

The older men look at each other. "It wouldn't be soon," Pat says.

"We'd likely need… at least a year and two is better, of building up alliances and treaties with others, making a good show of being legit," Josh adds.

"We'd have to do the work of building the reputation of being solid about this, and honestly, if I didn't think they were going to attack us as soon as they could swing it, I wouldn't even think of suggesting it until _after_ you're done Mastering," Pat says.

"We can do that. We are doing that," Jon says. "And… we wouldn't move on the New Republic until we've got our own diplomacy house in order, which… Shit… Brings us back to why we're here, right?"

"Right," Pat says. "This last week, how are things going?"

"They're in complete upheaval as JR-6678 tries to figure out what his higher ups were doing, and where all the bodies are buried," Jon replies.

"It will get better," Josh says.

"And if it doesn't, I know who to blame?" Jon replies.

"Yes, you do. The question is, do you know what to do about it?" Pat replies.

Jon sighs, looking at the men around him, wondering if, with his rank, he'll one day have to be the man who orders the execution of thousands. "I guess we'll find out."

Another quiet moment passes, and then Kylo says, "I understand why you didn't feel the need to tell me how many people you were killing. I don't understand why your three-year time estimate is just hitting my ears _now._ "

Josh and Pat both look a little sheepish on that, but Pat's the one who straightens his shoulders and gets right to it, "A good commander can look at his men, see where the pressure points are, and do everything in his power to _not_ lean on them if it means that the job's less likely to get done to his satisfaction. We need you and Rey up and ready and charming and doing everything in your power to make us _look_ like a story book fairy land of goodness and light. Neither of us thought that you two thinking that every misspoken word, lost deal, botched treaty, unintentional slight, or just bad hair day is a catastrophe is a good plan, because if you do, your nerves will show through, and if you look nervous, people will think you are nervous, and that will be counter to what we're trying to do."

Kylo can feel that's _not_ a terrible consideration to keep in mind.

Then he notices something. Pat and Josh are _considering_ something. He knows another weight is about to fall.

"Just out with it."

"We… don't know, for sure. Uh…" Pat looks nervous, and Kylo can feel that he doesn't know, intentionally, because this is the kind of thing he and Josh don't _want_ to know, but… "We'll talk to C8 and get it on the books."

"I'm not going to like this, am I?"

"It'll take a little while to get it set up and ready, but… Yeah, probably," Josh says.

"Are you trying to spook all of us," Poe says. "Be a little less vague so at least we know the flavor of the problem."

"The same problem any organization this size has, income, outlays, credit, debt, a growing body of people, and all the things in the galaxy needed to tend to them," Pat says.

Poe growls. "And this is why I'm not an Admiral. I hated dealing with the money stuff when our budget was in the tens of millions. I can't imagine it's any more fun in the trillions."

"It's not," Josh says.

"But, if you really want the whole mess in your lap, it means we've got to sit down with someone who can take those expense reports none of us actually read and our income statements, and tell us how far above, or below, water we are," Kinear says.

"I read th—" Kylo starts.

"No, you don't," Rey says appearing in their home. "You look at them and then fall asleep or go and run around to burn off the jittery."

"Trust me, Kylo," Kinear says, "so does just about every other commander, too. It takes a special sort of person to get into those numbers and not go cross-eyed or stupid, and it's probably about time for us to get one of them up to talk with us."

"Shit," Kylo says.

"Exactly." Josh looks at Rey. And then his chrono. "And I take it we're intruding on your supper time."

Rey nods, but she also says, "But you're welcome to stay if you like." Then she glances at the table, and Kylo, and the lack of food on it.

"I'm the one in charge of supper," Kylo says. He offers his hands to his high commanders a subtle, but not unnoticed revocation of Rey's dinner invite. He's going back to get food, and they're going back with him.

They don't misunderstand, and nod. "Not tonight, Lady," Schiff replies. "We've got things to ponder and set in motion."

And then Kylo pulls them back to the _Supremacy._

* * *

It's later. A lot later. And Poe, and Jon, and Kylo, and Rey are sitting around Rey and Kylo's kitchen table, eating, sort of, mostly poking at, dinner.

Kylo really doesn't like the way this feels. It's just… mucky and gray.

Rey's holding his hand, but also not saying anything. This is… icky compromise and doing things you think are wrong but… Maybe for the right reasons, and if they're wrong, they should keep being wrong, but…

Poe's the one who says it. "Welcome to adulthood."

Kylo vicously rolls his eyes. "Stuff it."

"Nope. That's part of why you two are pouting like that. I don't blame you. Especially after Snoke… You're trying to re-write yourself as the good guy and…"

"I'd be one thing if I'd done it myself," Kylo says.

"Like the training officers," Jon provides.

"Like the training officers. I could go in, take a look, rage, and destroy. I'm _good_ at that."

Rey's still holding his hand. "Do we know… who? Or why?"

Kylo groans at that, too. "They've probably got another bloody list."

"I promise you, they don't," Poe says. "Unless it's mental. They have to have a list to keep track of that many problems, I can promise there isn't one of who they've taken care of. And honestly, the list of terminations is probably labeled something like, 'Administrative Reprimand Count' or something tame and bloodless. There's no chance they put down how many people they've killed, anywhere."

"Fuck," Kylo says it, voice flat and listless. He's fiddling with his spoon.

"It really does come down to trust, doesn't it?" Jon says. "If they'd landed the list in front of you, and you picked and chose, you'd… Probably not make the exact same decisions they did, but… It'd be okay if you'd done it?"

Kylo doesn't like that answer, either, because it's a bright, flaring YES all through him. He trusts himself to wield his violence to his own liking, to his own sense of 'right.' "The worst part of it is, that, like they said, if we were in a battle, I honestly would never second guess either of them for any tactic they picked. They could literally destroy tens of millions of lives on the bridge of one of their ships, and I'd just nod and move onto the next report."

"Do they know… If they fuck up badly enough, they'll die for it?" Rey asks.

Jon shrugs. "It'd be hard to imagine they don't know. Snoke didn't go easy on people who didn't do what he wanted to, but… He also didn't encourage doing anything other than exactly what you told them to do… I guess that's part of the difference, we're not… giving the sorts of orders we used to give. We're making them do stuff other than land on a planet, crush it, and then give it to the miners."

"More training…" Rey says, half wondering, half suggesting.

Poe shrugs a bit. "You won't like this, but… If he's right about this mostly being the old coots left over from the Empire, they already got the sort of training you'd likely give them. And, he didn't say it, but… Competent officers got slaughtered en masse under Snoke." He shakes his head a piece of the puzzle falling into place. "We'd get reports, and for a while, the Old Imperials held their places, and positions, and from time to time we'd flip 'em and use them for intel. Then the Hux method started turning out officers, and we started getting reports of Imperials dying." Poe takes a sip of his drink. "How did you get those two?"

"Both of them managed to locate nooks of the First Order located on the far sides of the galaxy away from the rest of the First Order. I understand they skedaddled, sent in glowing reports that whatever it was Snoke wanted was happening, and made sure they were so far away from the rest of the First Order that no one would bother to take the multiple weeks of travel time to actually check and see if those reports were anything like correct."

Poe tilts his head a bit, and sips his drink. "Wouldn't be the first time someone made a long and glorious career out of not being in the direct view of the guy in charge."

"Lane was under Schiff, at first. In the Empire. He was a kid, then. Tested into the logistics program, was a seventeen-year-old Ensign, on the _Excelsior_."

"Fought at Endor?" Poe asks.

"Not exactly. His ship did. He was logistics. Schiff's fleet was part of what got brought in for that final battle. And at that point his job was mostly just making sure that things got loaded up correctly to get them from the landing bays to wherever they needed to go next on the _Excelsior_. The Death Star blew, and Schiff got his fleet, what was left of it, out. Way out. Didn't bother to see if it could be salvaged. Just picked up and buggered off."

"I know Kinear turned himself and his command in. Schiff didn't," Kylo says.

"Kinear was… I don't know, out in the boonies doing pretty much nothing. Schiff provided transport, naval superiority, and tactical support for the pacification of the Raynelian, Sthetherine, and Vlan systems," Jon says.

Poe winces. "He'd have been executed for war crimes, along with everyone with a rank above Captain."

"And most of the rest of his command would have joined my mom's buddies for 'an extended vacation on beautiful Celjonia.'"

Rey and Kylo wince at that.

"So he got his command, and took them out, far, far beyond the edge of the Rim, and apparently ran into Snoke, and came to the conclusion that his men could die out there, get picked off one by one as they ran out of fuel and friends, or join up with Snoke and survive," Jon says.

"And in one agreement, Snoke's military gained a third again it's numbers," Poe says.

Jon nods. "And got one of the best naval commanders of likely the last sixty years. That's how he got a lot of his ex-Imperials. I'm not saying that the New Republic was… wrong, about what it did. I'm sure they needed to prove that they could be strong and keep the people who got hurt happy by hurting the ones who wielded the blade in the first place, but… I lived it, and Lane talked about it, a hard peace doesn't make friends, it just encourages the next war."

Kylo drums his fingers against the rim of his plate. He doesn't like thinking about what Kinear and Schiff are doing 'so the whole survives.' He does like thinking about how to _not_ get into another war with the rest of the galaxy, and how to learn from the mistakes of the New Republic.

"They'll absolutely execute me for Jakku if I let myself fall into the hands of the New Republic," Kylo says. It's mostly a statement with a hint of question.

Poe nods. "That'll be the 'official reason.' They'll really execute you because you're the highest ranked member of the First Order left, and even if you hadn't blown Jakku, they'd kill your ass dead because if they don't, what's the point of their existence?"

That's a good point. One they all sit there quietly and just feel.

Kylo looks at Rey. "Ten years… That was the idea." He takes a drink, and then another. It's easier to think, let alone say things like this, if you're at least a little drunk. "I'm awfully hard to kill, you know? And I'm sure I can fake it better than anyone else in the galaxy. Jedi… Force sensitives… They just vanish when they die." And then he's on the other side of the room. "I'm good at that."

That gets a _very_ quiet moment, followed by three _long_ exhales.

"If that's the kind of thing that could buy peace. It's not… impossible," Poe says, voice _very_ tentative.

Rey sighs, long and loud. She opens and closes her mouth. "I… Think we'd have to be damn certain that you can pull that sort of trick off, and we've got to make it _extremely_ clear that Jedi do not leave corpses, so that when they do… whatever it is they do, and you vanish, that's it. It's just done."

"You're thinking in ten years, though, not now," Jon says.

"Not now. Maybe not then. Maybe not ever. See how it goes. See where we are. I'd want to get past the first spate of elections at the very least, but… I don't know, maybe the next Master, feeling… conciliatory or something, might offer me up as a peace gift."

Jon just stares at him. He knows that Kylo thinks that he's the next Master. Or at least the one he'll personally vote for. "I'd hate to do it. Even knowing it was fake, I'd hate to do it."

"If it bought peace, real peace, between us and the New Republic…"

"Big if, Kylo," Poe says. "And none of us have such good prescience as to have any idea if this is even going to approach a feasible situation in the future."

"Yeah. I think we table this for much, much later," Rey says. "Much. Let's focus on the first part, making the Order so bloody useful that other people won't want to take it down."

And maybe that's not the solution to everything. Maybe it's kicking bigger issues down the road, but it's something concrete they can all work on.


	53. Date Night I

4/18/2

"You sure?" Finn says to Rose, who gives him _a look._ Yesterday, Poe brought them three weather satellites, from Ren. Tomorrow, he and Chewie and Jacen are taking them to Achc-To, to set them up, and begin getting started on finding somewhere to live that isn't testicle-shrinking cold.

Today, they're in the hold of the _Falcon_ , with the satellites, and his wife, and Rey, who are both 'checking them' to make sure that no little bugs came for a ride with them.

He sighs. "Look, I know… I'm not saying…" Because he can feel the way Rey is watching him, and how less than thrilled she is at the idea that he might think that Kylo did something to muck up the satellites. "Just because _he_ wouldn't mess with the satellites, doesn't mean that there aren't a million people on the _Supremacy_ who wouldn't _leap_ at the chance to find out why Master Ren wants three weather satellites, or where they're going."

Rey does have to incline her head in agreement with that.

Chewie's voice rumbles with _Good point._

Rose nods a bit, and says, "I'll double check." And she and Rey get to it.

* * *

He's working with Chewie on the engines, when he half-hears Rey say… "Yeah, day after tomorrow. When he gets back."

That snaps his attention onto Rose saying, "That works."

"Great, I'll tell him."

"Me, too."

He's got the sense that _something_ just happened, and from the way Chewie's grinning at him, it's likely something good, but… He blinks. Right. Rose covered for Rey while they went out and did… date night stuff… (Which is as close to contemplating whatever the hell it is Rey and Kylo do on _date night_ as he needs to get.) which means Rey has agreed to take Paige for an evening and let the two of them go out and have several uninterrupted hours of baby free time.

Suddenly, Finn's universe got a _whole lot_ brighter.

* * *

4/19/2

Jacen's looking at the navi chart. His expression is somewhere between confused and stunned. "Is this… a hell of a lot closer than it should be?"

Chewie shrugs and Finn just sort of looks at him before saying, "I wouldn't have guessed Luke's super-secret hideout would have been an hour from here at hyper speed, but… Unless you've got a chart with the path through the Heln Nebula… That ups it to what, nine days?"

Jacen keeps looking, and figures the track if you had to go _around._ "Yeah, at least. And there's no good route in four other directions, too. Okay. I guess that makes sense. It's not so much on the edge of nowhere, as in the middle of a lot of where."

Finn smirks.

 _Okay, Flyboy, get us there,_ Chewie says, strapping in.

Jacen grins, slipping into the pilot's seat.

Technically speaking, the trip is an hour in hyper speed, and twenty minutes in not-very-hyper-at-all-speed through a thin spot in the nebula, but… Well, that'll be the _interesting_ part.

Finn offers up a silent prayer to the Force, and straps in his own belt. Flying with Jacen is… exciting… in a way he doesn't always enjoy. That said, the kid is _fast,_ and the sooner they're there, the sooner those satellites are placed, and the sooner he's home with his sweetie.

Plus, the sooner they're there, the more time they have on this first pass for just… looking around. They likely shouldn't pick a place until they've got at least a full orbits' worth of data, but… Doesn't hurt to look.

* * *

"So, what are we coming up on?" Jacen asks, which makes Finn nervous, and Chewie growl at him. "I'm paying attention. I can fly and talk at the same time."

Both of the adults are skeptical of that. Through the nebula isn't through an asteroid field, but there is enough stuff, packed closely enough, that he's got to fly it by sensor and eye.

 _You fly._

"Fine, but maybe you could talk while I do it? You've been there before, what's it like?"

 _We didn't circle the whole thing, not below the cloud cover, but… Lots of water. Most of the planet is covered in ocean. Didn't see any big continents. Lots of little islands though. Small rocky mountain tops, worn down and covered in grass._

"The part where Luke was…" Finn leads.

 _Cold, wet. Tall. Million steps to the little settlement. Tiny little beach to land on. We hit that thing with maybe three meters to spare._ And it's clear by that, that if Jacen doesn't stick the landing, Chewie will be disappointed.

"I'll land her."

"Of course you will. Sooner or later, it'll touch down. Question is, will we be in once piece?"

Jacen flips Finn a rude gesture. "I'm already better at this than—"

"HANDS ON THE CONTROLS!" Finn yells.

 _Stuff it. Pay attention to the—_ And they all jerk to the right, feel their bellies drop as Jacen pulls up fast, and the universe spins as he twists them into a tight corkscrew turn to get them past a collection of asteroids.

"I told you I can fly and talk."

 _Just fly. Finn finds the deals. You fly. I shoot the sons of bitches who look like trouble._

"Yeah, fine. Islands?"

Finn's clutching the armrests and muttering about how maybe the long way wasn't a bad plan. "Nine days. What's nine days compared to dead?"

His voice is low and they pretend not to hear him.

 _Lots of them._

A long, deep inhale, as Finn makes himself calm and not focus on the way Jacen's whipping them through space. He peels his fingers off the armrests. "So maybe we go looking for a cove of them or something. Find a quiet bay, surrounded by a few of them, and set up as we like."

"I could see that," Jacen says with a grin, not minding the idea of him and the rest of the teens having their own little cove.

"Yeah, well, we're already lax enough about looking after you older ones. You're not going to get to build orgy island, okay? Some adult will be somewhere nearby."

"I'm an adult!"

Finn and Chewie snigger at that.

"I'm literally flying the ship." Another swooping curve. "You've put your lives in my hands." And a _hard_ right. "How much more adult can I get?"

Chewie mutters something that Jacen understands to mean _You could have a…_ cruchalak… _and three cubs, and it could be your job to make sure they eat every night, and have a roof over their heads._

"I'm remarkably unlikely to be making cubs of any sort, anytime… ever."

 _Yeah, pull the other one, it's got bells on. That's what Han thought, too. And that one._ He nods to Finn. _And Lando. And Wedge. And-_

"That's not how I meant that, Chewie."

Chewie looks confused for a moment, as Jacen pulls them in a corkscrew roll through a few more tightly grouped asteroids. He glances to Finn, still confused, and Finn says, "He prefers boys."

Jacen sighs. He doesn't feel like he's even remotely subtle about his preferences, but… Well, it's not like he's got a boyfriend, and it's not like he's had time to cruise when he's been on these trips, so he supposes that Chewie just didn't notice.

Chewie blinks and then growls. _Oh, well then. Maybe not for you then. Maybe._

Jacen rolls his eyes, but doesn't get pissed off about it because it's clear that Chewie's mental map of how human sexuality works has some _big_ holes in it, likely because it doesn't work exactly the same way as it does for Wookies, and adds, "And what's a cruchalak? You use it to think about Han, but also in places where I'd stick spouse, but you don't use it to think of Finn and Rose, but you do use it to think of Kylo and Rey, but only in one direction. Rey is Kylo's cruchalak, but he isn't hers, so…" and another stomach jumping into the throat drop as they miss a chunk of floating debris by meters.

 _Later kid. Just get us there in one piece, okay?_

"Yeah, fine."

* * *

They break atmo twenty-seven minutes later. Finn swears he's got his first gray hair, but they are there, in one piece, and did it in sixteen fewer minutes than the Navi said they could. (Jacen looks stupidly proud of himself about that, and Chewie mutters something about _fourteen_ parsecs.)

Once they've got a view of the place, "Why the fuck are we freezing our nards off on Lirium?" comes out of Jacen's mouth. Though he only beat Finn by a tenth of a second with that thought.

Finn's just nodding, slowly, in agreement. Blue, glittering seas roll under them, dotted with a million small craggy islands. It looks… idyllic.

 _Just keep her steady kid. We want geo-synch while we drop the birds, okay?_

Jacen nods. He keys up his sensors to locate magnetic north. "I've got it. Want one in the northern hemisphere, one on the equator, and one in the southern hemisphere?"

"Sure," three separate orbits should give them decent coverage and a better feel for how the climates work on this planet. Just because it looks idyllic doesn't mean there isn't a nasty season hiding in the reserves. Maybe _several_ ones. According to Magiit, it was awfully warm and sunny on Lirium when they got there, too.

Chewie drapes a hand on Finn's shoulder indicating, _it's time to work_. He glances back to Jacen. _Figure the orbit while you're at it, okay?_

Jacen rolls his eyes at that, too, but given _why_ they're here, it's not an unreasonable request. "Yeah, sure."

* * *

While they're working, Jacen's plotting. He's got a great view, and he's got the controls set so the _Falcon_ is doing all the real work. (He's keeping an eye on the stabilizers. After all, they're opening and closing the jettison hatch, and mucking with the pressure can cause some interesting hiccoughs, but, for right now, everything is smooth.) So, he's got the mapping equipment, feeding a scan of what's under the ship into the start of a globe, that they'll eventually be able to use to plot the what and where of Achc-To.

While that's going, he's got the navi plotting the orbit for Achc-To. Problem with that is, he's not exactly swimming in data points, so the orbit's going to be _sketchy._ Still, if the bloody thing is an oval, they'll know sooner than later.

His best guess is that he's at least a thousand klicks off when he feels it. His brain, his Force, his… everything just _knows_ where they've got to go.

Where _he's_ got to go.

Maybe.

There's a need, and a pull, and… almost a revulsion. Something down there… doesn't sing to him. And something does.

And for once, he's fighting his immediate, knee-jerk, go-see-this, reaction. For once, he's feeling very young, and very inexperienced, and… He wants to come back here, but he wants to come back with at least Rey and Kylo, and with the other Maji, as well.

Whatever it is below them (And he can see the island getting closer. He just knows which one it is.) that's… not a place for him on his own. That… doesn't feel like a good place to be alone. It'd pull him if he let it, too light or too dark, maybe swinging in between, vacillating wildly.

He knows, that in himself, he's fairly well balanced, but down there… Isn't.

No, the closer they get…

He knows it, feels the flash. They'll go there. He'll likely go there… not a lot, but more than once. But he won't go there alone, because it's not a good place, not for a Maji, and not one on his own.

* * *

He's more… himself… by the time Chewie and Finn are back in the cabin. Granted, it's an hour later, and they're on an entirely different hemisphere of the planet, so, that helps.

"Thought the first, even if it's not where we're going to live wherever it is forever, we should move, soon," Jacen says.

"You hate snow, don't you?" Finn replies.

"Yes. And unlike one of us, I'm also not covered in a thick pelt of nice warm hair, so I'm not going to start liking it anytime soon."

Chewie smirks at that. He doesn't love Lirium's climate, either, but it certainly doesn't bother him the way it does the humans. Honestly, for him, summer was vastly more of a problem than winter is. He's built pretty well for cold, and not so well at all for keeping cool in 55 degree heat and 99% humidity.

"Thought the second?" Finn asks.

"Okay, I've got a rough map set, and… There are… some sorts of sentients on this planet. What if they don't want a pile of humans showing up and hanging out?"

That's likely a relevant question. Chewie's about to say, 'Doesn't matter. We grab what we want, and that's that,' because that's how they do it back on Kashyyyk, and that's part of that whole adult thing Jacen was asking about… finding, taking, and defending your home and family, but… Finn's on top of it, with a more 'human friendly' (or more likely to be Rey-approved) answer, and says, "I think the first thing we're looking for is going to be places that don't have other sentients on them. Which is likely _also_ part of not moving tomorrow."

Jacen sighs at that. "Yeah. And, I'm not great at this, but at least some of the islands look like they've got some _big_ critters on them. Big enough that there's tracks visible from orbit, so…"

"Attack turtles of doom," Finn rolls his eyes. "Great. That's another reason to _not_ just plop down tomorrow."

Jacen shakes his head. "I saw at least five hundred islands that I'm sure we could land on tomorrow, set up some solar panels, a few water processing stills, and be significantly more comfortable than we are at home."

Finn shakes his head. "I am _not_ camping with a toddler. NO! You and your crew might be under the impression that you can take a swim in the ocean and all is good, but my ass is not landing anywhere that doesn't have functional indoor plumbing."

Chewie nods, emphatically, at that, and he doesn't even wear clothing, or like showers all that much, but humans are pretty damn smelly to begin with and they get downright unpleasant if they're kept away from bathing facilities for too long.

 _Also, you've got no idea what the local insects are like._

Finn makes a loud, "OH!" sound at that. "Right. Not camping part two. BUGS." He squirms with a shivery look. "We were… Shit, I don't remember, one of the Resistance hideouts, and it looked great, until the sun went down, and then the ground started to wriggle, and a billion bugs crawled out. We lucked out, they only eat nectar and whatnot, but all night long everything rustled, and if you tried to get out of your bunk, every step would crunch, and they'd crawl all over your feet."

Jacen's wriggling in disgust at that, too. "Fine. Climate studies before we move. But we're getting more heated blankets before we go back home. You can snuggle up with Rose and stay warm, but my poor ass is just in a bunk all by itself, and it's _cold._ "

They look at the planet under them. At bright, shiny oceans, at islands. So many islands. No big continents, nothing the size of the landmass they're on on Lirium. The biggest one Jacen caught on the mapping scan came in at 800 klicks across. As they zip along, the go past islands covered in greenery. Past islands with snow capped mountains. Past islands with smoldering mountains, and steaming flows of lava into the ocean. Past low, flat islands, and tall, jaggy ones. Some are just swathes of sand or rock, some are small grasslands. Every sort of biome Jacen's ever imagined is down there, somewhere.

For one of them, the largest one they see, at probably a thousand klicks across, Chewie brings them closer down, and they zip over a huge herd of… something. They're big and black-brown, shaggy, quadrupeds, and they try to race the _Falcon._

Chewie's nodding. _I could call this home._

Finn looks pleased, too. "You going to find a place to land and see if Waldo and his mates want to visit home?"

Jacen can feel Chewie's a little sad at the idea that the Porgs might leave him (he mentally pats himself on the back for successfully empathizing), so Jacen rescues him. "I felt Luke's island, and… I wouldn't mind not getting too close to it without Rey or Kylo."

That surprises Finn, because he can't believe there's anything in the universe that Jacen would be willing to admit not wanting to tackle.

Jacen shrugs a bit. "It's not bad, but… It doesn't feel like the kind of place I want to go without some other Force sensitives. There's something… there."

Chewie nods. _Even for me… That island's… intense._

"Okay, not checking out Jedi-land," Finn says, though as he does, he sees something. "Jacen, I want a closer look at that one, okay?"

Jacen nods, and pulls them lower, doing a sweep over an island maybe twenty klicks long and five wide, curving into a gentle cresent. There's not much, from what they can see in the air, on it. Mostly sandy beaches, and a swath of grass turning to high jaggy peaks in the middle.

"Put her down, okay?" Finn asks.

"I thought you wanted scans and stuff," Jacen says.

"I do, but… I'm not looking to settle here, just have a picnic. After all, tomorrow's date night, and it's been a long time since I had some quality time with my lady on a nice beach."

* * *

A moment later, _The Falcon_ is on a low, level swath of grass. Finn, Chewie, and Jacen are out of the ship, poking around, and the Porgs go streaming out of the hatch as soon as they smelled the air. They're trilling with pleasure, happy to be home.

It's a little warmer than ideal, at least according to Jacen, but nothing that pulling off his boots, rolling up his trouser legs, and wading in the surf won't fix.

So, he does it, and _moans_ in pleasure as his toes curl in the sand. Hot at first touch, and cool and damp deeper down. He's read about beaches before. He's imagined them. And seen some images, but the closest he ever got was a boardwalk carney show, on the far side of a collection of buildings blocking the view, close enough to smell the sea, not close enough to see it, let alone set a toe on it.

He wriggles his toes in the sand, feeling it shifting under his feet, before heading down to splash around some.

"I know you don't want to camp," he calls across the sand to Finn, who's digging down, making sure no unexpected insect guests will be joining his picnic, "but I'm pretty sure the rest of us could make do with this."

Chewie sniggers something about being nose blind and young, but he'd have to admit, it feels good to have ground under his feet that isn't frozen solid, and air that smells like sea and life, and also isn't whipping by at ninety klicks an hour.

"So, check one. Things actually live on this planet that aren't massive turtles or grass. It's got to be at least okay for us," Finn says, having found no critters. He wanders off into the grass. "Grass, flowers, nests, so I guess some sort of bird probably hangs out here when we aren't tromping around. You see fish?" he calls to Jacen.

Jacen looks down, the water's pretty clear. "All I see are toes."

"Okay."

"You swim?" Jacen calls out to Chewie.

 _Yes, but you won't like it._

"Why not?" he yells back.

"Force! No, Jacen. Wet wookie is not a smell you want to encounter."

"Can't be worse than Critt with Hiffa."

Finn inclines his head. "Okay, I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm also not saying you want to spend a few hours in the _Falcon_ with a slowly drying wookie."

Chewie rolls his eyes and says, _Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you fart sunshine and roses. Kid's trying to be nice._

"I am. And unless you need me right this second," he pulls off his shirt and tosses it to the sand, heads out of the surf, then starts on his trousers, "I'm getting a swim. And since opportunities to swim are thin on the ground back home, maybe you want to join me."

Chewie shrugs a bit, unclasps his bandoleer, and goes racing toward the water, leaping in, making a huge splash.

A minute later, Finn goes streaking past them, into the surf, yelling in pleasure.

And though none of the three of them say it, sometimes, there's something very nice about having the kind of job where you get to decide for yourself when you have to work, and when you can play.

* * *

"Let me fly the next leg, okay?" Finn says as the three of them lay on the sand, basking in the sun, drying off.

Jacen smirks a bit at that. "Gray hair is distinguished. You'll look fine with it."

Finn sighs, debates gently punching Jacen, decides that involves moving more than he wants to (basking in the sunshine is awfully nice) and then says, "If this is _date night,_ " and it does seem to be a very nice place to spend a few hours on their own, "then I don't want to need _you_ to get me and Rose here. So, let me fly it. Yes, it'll be slower, but…" And left unspoken is that Finn can fly now. And he's _competent._ In fact, for a guy who didn't test into the First Order's pilot program, and has only spent two years learning, he's doing really well, but _excellent_ piloting, when done without the help of the Force, requires years of training, amazing spacial recognition, and lightning fast reflexes.

So, if he needs an assist on the way back, because the route they're using is _tricky_ he wants to know that _before_ he's attempting to get Rose there.

There are several flavors of excitement he's hoping for with date night. Just about getting killed because a huge asteroid came out of nowhere and he barely had the time to pull the _Falcon_ out of the way is not among them.

"Sure. Go for it." Jacen glances to Chewie. "Where to, next, Boss?"

 _Cloud City. You and I are going to spend a bit of time increasing our operating capital, and Finn'll go home and have fun._

"What are we going to do?" Jacen asks, liking the sound of increasing operating capital.

Chewie nods to Finn. _The plan is, we're going to pay for this,_ and he gestures to indicate the settlement that will be _by going out and cheating at cards. And it occurs to me, you read minds, too._

Jacen lights up in a _huge_ grin. "Chewie, you just made my year."

 _Yeah, I thought you'd like that. Just like Poe teaches, we're going to lose, a lot._

"Yeah, but we're going to win when it matters."

 _Fuck yeah, kid, we will!_

For a moment, Jacen's feeling really good with that idea, and then… "Shit… Maybe we should have done some more scans. My skin feels weird."

Finn sits up in a rush, a little alarmed, and looks at Jacen, tries not to laugh out loud, and calms down. "What sort of weird?"

Chewie's also sitting up, and trying not to smirk.

"Hot. You don't… I can feel you both mentally giggling. What?" He sits up and looks at himself. He's bright pink all over. "FUCKING HELL! What's the in the water here?" He's on the verge of really concerned, but neither of the other two are, so he holds onto some calm.

"You're a ginger, Jacen."

"Yeah. Know that. Have known it since the first time I looked in a mirror. Why do you think that matters?"

 _Sunburn. Is this the first time you've been out and about, naked, in a bright sunny place with a yellow sun?_

Jacen knows that the naked bit is an absolute yes, and he's less sure about the yellow sun part. "Probably. What's sunburn?"

"It's not the water here. It's the sun. Pale dudes like you have a hard time with bright sunlight from yellow suns. Go back to the _Falcon,_ get a cool shower, and rub bacta on everything," Finn says. "You'll feel better in about an hour."

"Why just me?"

Chewie shrugs. He's got no idea why this only seems to happen to pale people.

"I'm dark. Dark skin can burn, but it takes a _lot_ of effort. Pale skin, pale eyes, red or blonde hair, you guys spend too long in the wrong kind of sun, you turn pink, or red."

Jacen rolls his eyes and stands up. "Fucking lovely. Is there a way to keep this from happening?" As soon as he starts moving his skin starts to _hurt._ "Eh… Oh, I do not like this!"

 _Yeah. They make goop for it. Ben always needed it, too._

"He's got dark hair and eyes."

"And really pale skin," Finn adds.

Jacen gingerly bends down to grab his clothing, and then limps toward the ship.

Once he's out of earshot, Finn says, "We're you actually planning on going to Cloud City?"

Chewie shrugs. _As good a time as any. You want the bird for yourself. I've got the kid, might as well see what the two of us can do. Sure'll be slicker than anything Han and I came up with._

"You two were cheating at cards, too?"

Chewie's smirk indicates _sometimes._

Finn shakes his head. "I think you like breaking laws just for kicks and giggles."

 _So, you're paying attention. What's new about that?_

Finn looks back at the ship. Jacen's out of earshot. "You ever worry about being a bad influence on the kid?"

Chewie gets a little more serious. _More than you think I do. Less than I did about Ben. I think this one's pretty solid, so all I'm doing is giving him options he might not have otherwise considered._

"Options that might get him killed young."

 _It's Cloud City. The gaming tables there are practically respectable. We won't even be wearing weapons._ Chewie makes an exasperated sound. _It's a terrible thing when a proper pirate gets civilized. The stories I could tell you about Lando..._

Finn waves that off. "Just… I don't know. That one's got a shot of not running from the law all his life, maybe we should… encourage that."

Chewie just gives Finn a _long_ look.

"We've been over that."

 _Uh huh._

"I've got to build up more of a nest egg before I can go legit."

 _You spend too much longer with me, and the option might fade away._

"Rose tells me that, too."

 _If Canto works for getting this place built… It'd work for setting up a stake for you and her and something where you don't have to pray your fake ID holds. An extra hand or two at the rate they play, that'd be mighty comfortable if you're wise with it, and I know you and her would be._

"Yeah, I know."

Chewie stands up, and shimmies to get the sand out of his fur. _You coming?_

Finn lays back down on the sand. "In a bit," he looks over the water. "Figure the sun'll be down in an hour. Going to enjoy it, and the figure out if I need to get torches or something for our picnic. Should be well past dark when I bring Rose here."

* * *

The ride out of the nebula is not exciting. It's also two hours long.

 _They going to take Paige all night?_ Chewie asks when they're finally free of the nebula and zipping toward Cloud City.

"Maybe. I'll talk more with Rey when I get home." He's half wondering if maybe Rey and Kylo would take Paige all night. It's been a damn long time since the two of them got a full night, alone, together… Well, one when they weren't wishing they were dead from Hiffa. Enough time to have a real conversation, and a good meal, and not rush the sex, and sleep… His voice is practically dripping with desire as he says, "Maybe…"

It's a few moments later when it occurs to him that he's contemplating giving his child to Kylo Ren for an entire night, and _not_ breaking into a cold sweat at the idea.

Jacen's just sort of grinning at him, and Finn rolls his eyes. "Yeah, he's not the devil, and even I can see it, great. Shut up."

"Not saying a thing."

* * *

Finn lifts off, leaving Jacen and Chewie on a landing pad overlooking candy fluff clouds in a variety of pinks, oranges, golds, and whites, threaded through with long, verticle oblong dwellings, pricked through with long, vertical windows, looking out on hundreds if not thousands of other ships zipping along on their business.

For a moment, Jacen just looks around. "I mean. I heard you say the name, but… I didn't think it would be a literal city floating in the clouds."

Chewie smiles at that.

"What do they do here?"

 _Pretty much anything and everything anyone does in any city. But, it started out as a mining colony. Lando won it in a game of cards, and… The rest is history. Turns out he was good at running things._

Jacen does a tight spin, looking in all three hundred and sixty degrees. "Well, Boss?"

Chewie nods, and leads him toward one of the buildings.

* * *

People _know_ Chewie here. That's the first thing Jacen notices as he's moving through the crowded hallways of the building they're in. (Housing, businesses, shops? Jacen's not sure what people do here, but a lot of them are doing it. He's hoping they cut out on playing early enough that he'll have some exploring time.) Now, it's true that in any given place where Wookies aren't the majority species, people (especially human/humanoid ones) are going to notice the huge, furry guy with the big ass weapon moving through their space. People who don't notice that tend not to survive long enough to add their DNA to the next generation's gene pool.

But here, people don't just notice, they _know._

And they _respect._

Jacen's not actively looking for other people's thoughts, but Chewie's so _Chewie_ that when people notice him, they tend to think loudly about it.

* * *

Eventually, they're in front of a door, that Chewie opens with his hand print, and slips inside.

"You have a flat here?"

Chewie nods, and hangs up his bowcaster and bandoleer. _The Falcon's always been home, but from time to time, Han needed it on his own, or I did, same for our other ships, so it was always good to have a place to land._

Jacen spends a moment looking around. It's not a huge flat. It's probably a bit bigger than the cottage he shares with Critt. It feels smaller because the furniture is Wookie-sized, so it eats up more of the space.

The room they're in now is a combination sitting room and eating space, and he can see a hallway leading to what he assumes is a sleeping quarters and refresher.

"It's nice."

 _Thanks. Lando wanted to do us up with penthouse suites up in the expensive part of town, where he and his cronies lived, but… We tried that, and it never really stuck._

"Tried it with Leia?"

Chewie nods. _Lando leapt into the deep end and swum. We hopped in and drowned. He said we had the wrong attitude. We kept thinking we were poor people dropped in the wrong world. And he thought he was a millionaire born in the wrong world. That's why when he got to the top he flew, and we fell._

Jacen contemplates that, but doesn't have enough experience with… well… anything to know if that's right or not. "Oh."

 _That's how Han reacted._

Jacen nods. "So, now what?"

 _Get cleaned up, put on your decent clothing, and we'll go see if we can scrounge up a game._

"That easy?"

 _That easy._

* * *

It's not that easy. Cleaned up and in his 'good clothing' meaning a shirt, vest, and trouser that actually fit and look decent on him, Chewie's just staring at him.

But he's thinking of the other men they're going to play against.

And wondering.

 _Is there any way you can be less pretty?_

"It's not going to break my heart if one of them makes a pass at me."

Chewie scratches his chin. He's not worried about someone making a pass Jacen's happy to accept. He's worried about the ones Jacen's not interested in. The ones unlikely to take 'no' for an answer.

"You know enough about guys who go for other guys you're worried about this, but you're still thinking I might end up with kids one day?"

 _Lando did._

"Okay." He tucks that into his mental map of Lando, and decides that he likely doesn't need to set Chewie down and explain the finer points to him.

Plus, Chewie's still eyeing him and wondering how protective he needs to be. This was never a problem with Han. They went some shady places with sketchy people, but he also was always wearing a blaster and knew how to use it. Plus his… Hanness… tended to make people decide _not_ to push their luck in certain directions.

"I don't need a blaster, Chewie. Not for this. Trust me, I say 'No,' and they won't press."

Chewie's thinking about the scars on his back.

"It took a droid to do that, and if another droid is showing up with bad plans, I trust you to shoot his ass before he's trouble, okay? I fly, you shoot the bastards, and we both clean up at the table, right?" Jacen says with a smile.

Chewie shakes his head a bit, slips the bandoleer back on, but doesn't grab the bowcaster. This is a no-weapons game.

 _I clean up. You watch my back and tell me when and how to bet. You're playing my young, new help, just learning the ropes._

"So, myself?"

 _Yeah. And if anyone gives you a drink, you do not drink it, okay? You can pretend to, but don't actually swallow._

For a second Jacen's confused, why the hell would anyone try to poison him? And then he's not confused, "Oh."

 _Your voice has to work for your 'No' to work, right? Unless I hand it to you, or you get it directly, for yourself, from the bar, don't drink it, okay?_

"Yeah, okay."

 _Let's go._

* * *

After that set up, Jacen's expecting a dark, dingy, somewhat dirty nook in a wall with sketchy men and furtive deals. Not this wide open, glowing gently orange-pink from the candy fluff clouds reflecting the starlight around them, expanse of tables and chairs and card games.

The tables are clean. The men at them are… Honestly… Old. (Chewie rolls his eyes at that assessment. Though part of that is that to Jacen, anything over thirty-five is old, and to Chewie, anything under two hundred _isn't._ )

The place smells like alcohol, cologne, and not the cheap stuff, but not the expensive stuff, either, a trace of excited sweat, smoke, and anticipation. The hunt for the next good hand. The exhilaration of the win.

Jacen _likes_ it here. (He'd like it better if the men were younger, but… Well, nothing is ever perfect. Still, if someone vaguely Jon-like were to wander in, it'd make his day. No one does.)

He thinks to Chewie… _How long has it been since you got back here?_

Which would be when it occurs to Chewie that it's probably been at least a decade. He thinks more and realizes the last time they were here was when they were trying to get Lando to help them get Ben back, and it's been... Shit... Thirteen year, and humans age _fast._ A lot of the guys at these tables may have grown out of their dangerous ages. Maybe. Old coots can be more slippery than the young ones. Less likely to get fussed about stupid shit, but once they decide to kill you, they're more likely to succeed.

Decade or not, they seem to expect Chewie, and welcome him.

"If anyone would know, that one would," they hear a moment after walking in, then a voice calls over, "Chewie, come settle a bet."

 _Been here for thirty seconds, and you're already dragging me in?_ Chewie growls to the quad of old guys at one of the tables as he and Jacen head over.

"Stroke of luck. That Ren guy, making a big deal of himself with the Order, rumor has it he's Solo's kid, you know what's up with that?" He's got decent posture, and a comfortable hold on his cards. His eyes are bright, hair gray, and a fine collection of wrinkles and scars. Chewie doesn't introduce him, nor does he introduce himself.

Chewie pulls back a chair for himself, settles in, and waits for Jacen to settle in, too. Then he looks expectantly at the place in front of him, which currently does not have a drink.

"Yeah, fine. I remember, nothing out of you without a little liquid enticement," Gray Hair nods and a drink comes for Chewie and Jacen.

Jacen watches the bartender pour it, and bring it over, and hand it directly to Chewie, who gives him one of them.

 _Okay?_ he thinks the Chewie.

 _Yeah._

Jacen sips his, cautiously. He's glad he did, too, from what he can tell, it's straight lighter fluid. The only thing he'd do with this at home is clean industrial grade lubricants off of the joints on an engine.

Chewie shoots his back, offers something of a grin to his companions and then says, _Been out for a bit, what's the gossip?_

Gray Hair, who apparently has dealt with Chewie before, repeats himself. "They say Ren is Solo's kid. If anyone'd know, it'd be you, right?"

Chewie looks to the bartender who sidles over with another drink. This one he sips. _Yeah, he's Han's kid._

That gets a _lot_ of excited chattering around the table, and two of them jump up to go make calls.

"You think he'd make good on his old man's debts?" the other one who stayed at the table, also with gray hair, and wrinkles, but no scars, bright green eyes, and the kind of hopes Jacen expects get dashed a lot, asks.

Chewie smirks, _The kid was never stupid. He makes good one one of them, and every con man in the fucking galaxy is going to show up at his door claiming Han owed him._ Jacen laughs at that.

Which is the first time anyone else at the table pays any attention to him.

"You get yourself a new pet?" This one is just coming back from whatever he did with the intel that Ren is indeed a Solo. He's got dark brown hair striped with gray, and squinty eyes. "What happened to the dark fellow?"

"I'm not a pet!"

"It speaks," Gray Hair says.

"It's name is Jacen M'Gy, and I'm not a pet."

Stripy Hair snorts a laugh at that, sips his drink, and says, "Yeah, well, you're not a partner, and you're obviously not his kid, and… Oh… Wait… Shit. What was her name? The pretty redhead?"

Chewie shakes his head. _I'm training him up. Finn and I need a good pilot, and I know one when I see one._

Stripey nods. "And let me guess, grown-up ones are too fucking expensive."

 _They're sure as shit not getting any cheaper._ Chewie replies.

 _Who's the woman he's thinking of?_ Jacen thinks to Chewie.

 _Han's last girlfriend._ Chewie thinks back. _And no, you couldn't be theirs. He hooked up with her fourteen years ago. But these sots are so drunk their grasp of time is off._

 _Okay._

"So, Ren really is Solo's kid?" Gray Hair asks again.

Chewie nods.

"Did he… know?"

This would be when Jacen comes face to face with the fact that a lot of the galaxy doesn't seem to know what happened to Han Solo, and that Chewie doesn't seem to feel a need to enlighten—wait… They do know, they're just _wrong_ about the how part of it.

Chewie nods at that, too. _Yeah, they… talked, before the end._

Jacen doesn't let the shock show on his face. He really doesn't let it show when he senses what else is going on here, now, and that Chewie's doing this, saying these things, because he's got an awfully good feel for what _Han_ wants people to know.

"His Mama know?"

Chewie rolls his eyes at that. _Yeah. He took off the mask, and she disbanded the Resistance. You're hooked in enough to know that, right?_

"You mean right after he more or less promised to start running the Order like a Republic?" Stripey adds.

 _Right after._

That gets more nodding. "Rumor has it," Hopes-Dashed says, "that she got him in, and used him to take out Snoke. That it was a deep cover fake the whole way through."

Chewie _laughs_ at that. Then he shakes his head. _Just Ben being a tit. Worked out okay in the end, but... Even Leia wasn't going to do that._

"She gonna come around? Been a long time since we've seen the old lady. I know she and Han had some rough spots, but, for a Princess…" He offers Jacen a little grin. "Probably shouldn't be telling tales, but you expect a Princess to be all hoity-toity, too good for the likes of jumped up scum like us, but she could put it back just as fast as we did, and there wasn't a dirty joke ever written she didn't know."

Jacen likes the idea of that, and it shows on his face.

Chewie's howl indicates that Leia's going to do whatever it is she's going to do, and that's that. Then he looks at the cards. The other men at the table settle back. "You got the credits for this, or are you hoping we'll stake you on _goods?_ "

Jacen knows, from talking to Chewie that most of the contraband left now is just not worth the risk, so… _Weapons?_ he thinks.

Chewie thinks back, _Nah, not here. Lando's woman doesn't like canashish. I've always got a few kilos of it when I come by._ Jacen sees him lay three fingers on the table, and Stripey nods.

 _And it's illegal here?_ Jacen thinks.

Chewie thinks back, _Yeah, and twenty-times the price of anywhere else. She won't raid my ship, so… I take advantage. Never bring in enough to make her decide she's got to take notice, always bring enough for a decent bump in the coffers._ He says out loud, _Was hoping you'd stake me on goods._ And thinks to Jacen, _One way to move hot goods, and wash credits, is to win them at a place like this. He'll bet the going price, I'll bluff, he'll fold, and then later one of his skaks'll pick it up and take care of it._

 _Ah. And after that?_ Jacen thinks back.

 _We'll be lucky._

 _Sounds good to me._

* * *

Torches, check.

Blanket, check.

Basket full of goodies, check.

Music cube, check.

It's been a while since he and Rose have had a proper date, but Finn is ready, willing, and able to do this up right.

It's just… Flying back to Achc-To, and his snazzy little island picnic spot, it's a really long trip. And as much as he enjoys any flavor of alone time with his wife, spending four hours of their precious alone time flying back and forth…

If only there were a way to skip that.

There is. He shivers a little at the idea. It just seems… wrong. One second you're in one place, the next you're in another… but…

Poe does it, and it doesn't seem to have done him any harm. And… well, the last time they talked, he mentioned that Ren could just take the image out of his head and port right to his ship, so…

Anything Ren can do, Rey can do, too…

And… it would cut a _lot_ of the transport time out of the deal… And… He supposes if he could just leave the _Falcon_ on the beach, just do it one way… But that'd give up the surprise, so it's got to go home with them, but…

His eyes narrow a bit as he continues to ease the _Falcon_ back through the nebula, and think of how he's going to set up his surprise for Rose.

* * *

Two hours and twenty-three minutes. That's the run from Achc-To to home. That's just… Even if they have all night, that's longer than he wants to spend.

 _The things I do for love…_

He heads over to Rey and Kylo's place.

Rey answers the door, ushering him in, listens to the plan, grinning. "That's awesome, Finn!"

He relaxes, pleased to see she enjoys the idea, and then steps over the ledge. "The traveling time's the issue. Uh…" He looks uncomfortable, but musters up to say, "Could you port us there? I'm thinking I'll ask her to come to the _Falcon,_ and then you'll remember something on there you want before we head off, and then once in, you port us, okay?"

"I don't have a problem with that, except, I've never been there, you know?"

"Well… Poe says Ren ported him back to his ship, bedroom, where he'd never been, by pulling the image right out of his head, and…"

"Do you want to ask Kylo to take you?"

Finn looks a little panicked at that, but covers fast, "He's not—"

"I'm in the bedroom," Kylo says, stepping out, and going over to kiss Rey.

"I swear we were alone when I got here."

"You were. I just got here and felt you being very certain I wasn't here. What's going on?"

Finn explains again, and this time points out that, "And, look, I know you," he glances to Kylo, "already know how to do it, but… There's absolutely no reason why I'd take you with me to the _Falcon._ Rose'll smell something is up the second I even think about suggesting it. It's got to be you, Rey, or otherwise the surprise falls apart."

Kylo's listening to that, and nodding. "He's right. It's… Okay, I was about to say it's not hard. I didn't find it hard, but, we can practice." He glances to Finn, "You've got a good image of it, right?"

Finn blinks, starting to feel the creepy sense of something about to happen wriggle through his spine, and then Ren nods, takes his hand and Rey's, and then they're on the beach.

"See?" Kylo says.

Finn rolls his eyes at Kylo. "Show off."

Kylo rolls them right back at him. "Like you don't do fancy stuff to impress Rose."

That gets another little eye roll, because he absolutely does, if the opportunity presents itself. Though he assumes Kylo's in the same ship with him, long enough together that impressive feats of being awesome are getting fewer and further between.

Kylo nods at him.

Finn shrugs a bit, sort of a 'what can you do?' gesture.

Kylo nods at that, too.

Rey's not paying attention to either of them. She's looking at the ocean lapping against the smooth beach, everything lit silver-blue by the moon and stars overhead.

"I can feel it's the right planet," she nods to Kylo who also seems to have twigged to something. They're both looking in the same direction. "But… we're far away, here, aren't we?"

"We're in the southern hemisphere. We put the satellites up today," he says to Kylo, who's also checking out the surroundings. "Chewie and Jacen took off for some gaming at Cloud City, and I've got the _Falcon_ to myself for a few days."

Rey turns from the water to Finn, "So, we set a time, and I'll come get you?"

Finn nods. "Are you," he's already been over this with Rey, but it's probably polite or something, to ask, "okay with taking Paige all night. Rey said yes, but…"

Kylo leaps on that with both feet. "Of course!"

Finn blinks at that. He knows, intellectually, that Kylo likes Paige, but except for the few minutes she was in Rey's lap and Kylo was making funny faces at her the last time they all talked, he hasn't really seen Kylo interact with her.

"She gets up at 04:00."

"Are you trying to talk us out of this?" Rey asks.

"You know, no. I'm really not. Just… Babies can be a lot."

"One night. We can do a night," Kylo says, grinning at the idea. He glances around at Finn's set up. "It's nice."

Finn's not sure what to do with that. Part of him wants to bristle at it, but… Kylo's not being condescending, he genuinely seems to think this is nice, and appears to be thinking about how to do something similar for Rey. "Uh, thanks. Our… wedding night was like this, on Lirium, but the beach there is probably under ten meters of snow and frozen solid, so…"

He sees the way Kylo's watching Rey, who's looking out over the ocean, wind gently ruffling her hair. "I was there," Kylo says. "I mean… Uh… Not that part. But…" He swallows and runs his fingers through his hair, memories of what he and Rey were doing that night, on a different chunk of the same beach dancing through his mind. "Yeah, if it wasn't frozen… Good beach."

Finn sniggers a bit. "You're blushing, aren't you?"

"No."

"Uh huh." _Banthashit!_ Finn thinks.

 _I heard that,_ Kylo replies, also mentally.

 _I know._

Kylo's eyes narrow a little, but he returns to speaking out loud. "I missed the main part, but… The part I saw. I liked your wedding."

"Yeah, Rey said. Gonna find your own chunk of beach for the private one."

"That's the idea. Feels right, where water meets land, and sea meets sky, dusk or dawn, one slipping into the next… "

Finn smiles at that. "Yeah, feels right."

Rey (who just may have, possibly, wandered off a bit to give the two of them some time with each other) moseys on back. "What time are you hoping to head off tomorrow?"

Finn thinks about that. "Uh… What time can you start?"

"I'm done with meetings at 18:00, so 18:30'll work for me," Kylo says.

"I'll fob dinner onto Poe and Critt, so 18:30 will work for me, too."

Finn smiles at them. "Great. Now, tell me something you want me to 'pick up for you' from Cloud City that I could have left in the _Falcon._ "

Rey thinks for a moment. "Uh… Camera specs. Something about different kinds and what to look for and what to buy."

"You're… thinking of getting a camera?" Finn asks. That's outside of his idea of Rey or Kylo.

"Yes," Kylo says.

"Oh… Uh… Well, we've got one. When you've got Paige, play with it some, and see if you like it. It's pretty basic, but it'll take images and holos, and that's pretty much all you need."

More nodding, and Kylo's possibly developing plans for after Paige goes to bed.

"But I'll make sure to tell you that I've got some review magazines," Finn says with a smile.

* * *

"Gods, kid! Tell me you're a better pilot than a card player," Stripey, who's actual name is Settheroth, says.

"Nobody's worse pilot than he's playing tonight," Jiffery, another of the old, white-hairs replies.

Jacen smirks, and pushes his last two chips into the pot. "Unlike the cards, I can make the ship do what I want." That said, he's been playing _shit_ poker tonight. He's intentionally bluffing loud and stupid, and throwing away decent cards, and just… Well, playing like shit. "These little bastards just hate me tonight."

This has done two things, completely distracted from the fact that Chewie's winning an unusually large number of hands, and also means that Jacen hasn't had to spend any spare attention toward trying to figure out what to do to win his own hands.

The third benefit is, when K'Rzznk (Gray Hair) wins this hand, he'll be out, so he can sidle back, relax, sip his drink (he asked for sweet fizz, which just about had the men wetting their pants they were laughing so hard, but this is a situation where he wants to look as small and harmless as humanly possible, and honestly, if he attempts to drink another one of those 'whiskies' he's going to end up under the table drooling on himself.) and begin to really _play._

After all, right now he's using his ability to watch the cards in everyone else's hands and report to Chewie who's got what. In a minute, (where, shock of shocks his Emperor high card does _not_ win the hand) he's going to start, subtly, encouraging some of the other people at the table to get a little less guarded in their playing style and a tad more exuberant in their betting.

"For someone who just lost everything, you look really pleased by yourself," Shufty, one of the old gamblers who goes 'way back' with Han and Chewie, who's a little sharper at this than Jacen would prefer, says.

"I stayed in for three hours. This is my first time playing. So, yeah, I lost, but… Shit, do you guys even remember the first time you played? How'd you do?"

He puts a little extra emphasis onto 'How'd you do?' and suddenly he's able to sit back, relax, and listen to a lot of detailed, and somewhat entertaining lies about glorious gambling careers. He listens attentively. There's something about a 'kid' listening intently that makes a certain kind of man (over the hill, used to be dangerous and important, and might, in a pinch, if they really, really needed to, could maybe do it again) _talk._

Chewie's _very_ pleased with how Jacen's running the game. Sure, the stakes here won't be too high. He knows how far ahead to get when he quits. But this should wrap them up a nice twenty-five thousand credits in addition to the fifteen thousand for the canashish.

 _Forty thousand in five hours. Not a bad night,_ Jacen thinks to Chewie.

Chewie smiles.

* * *

And two hours, and a lot of losses, but some _very_ good wins later, they're ambling off, back to Chewie's apartment _._

Jacen knows enough not to talk about, with his voice, what they did. He may not be experienced when it comes to this stuff, but even he knows that you never, not for sure, know who's listening when, and since he doesn't _have_ to add his voice to his thoughts, it's better off not getting past his lips.

But, they'd talk, right? It wouldn't just be silent and go to bed. So…

He thinks for a moment.

"Cruchalak… Now a good time?"

Chewie looks… not annoyed, but it's clear he'd hoped Jacen would forget.

 _We'd normally talk some, right? Especially after a night like that. We wouldn't just go straight to bed._

 _You think they're listening?_ Chewie thinks.

 _Don't know, but… You want to come back here, right?_

This time he howls instead of thinks, _Yeah. Sure, Jacen. What'd you say? I use it in places you'd use spouse, but it's not… how you think that works?_

"Yeah. Uh… Spouse, it works both ways. Cruchalak, doesn't?"

 _It can, and often does, but it doesn't have to._ He flops into the sofa, and stares at the ceiling for a moment. _Life debt… That's part of it. But it's not just, did you save this person's life, because Rose saved Finn, and he probably saved her, and they aren't cruchalak to each other._

"But—" He's about to say Rey is to Kylo, but remembers that he doesn't know if there are ears on them, "Han was to you? And you were to him? And… Uh…" He rubs his lips together. "I… uh… maybe don't know everything there is to know about being married but…"

Chewie laughs at what Jacen's desperately trying to not say about him and Han.

 _Oh, kid! Yeah, '_ not _my type.' And vice versa. There's life and there's life, and there's what you're willing to do to cherish a life, and serve it, and… The most basic level involves saving someone's life. Han saved me from Imperial slavers. And I saved him from… A bloody shit ton of stuff. But that's just the one level._

Chewie looks sad, and Jacen can feel Han behind him, though he doesn't turn to look. Apparently, he can turn up in places other than the _Falcon._ Jacen's never been sure if he was bound to the ship in some way, but apparently not.

 _He didn't just save my life. It wasn't worth all that much back then. He saved me to the point where I could have a life worth saving. Picked me up, literally out of the mud, and metaphorically out of… A lot. And I did it for him, and…_

"Saved your soul?"

 _Yeah. Probably the most easy way to understand that._

 _And that's why you call Rey that for Kylo, and not vice versa?_ Jacen asks in his head.

Chewie nods. _Someone does that for you, they stick with you, and you stick with them, and you become family, and yeah, spouse usually has… connotations… that certainly weren't true for Han and I, but family you chose, that you'll defend to the death, that you belove above all others, spouse is an okay name for that._

"Or… cruchalak."

 _Or cruchalak._

He thinks about Critt for a moment, and how he used his powers to talk his parents out of not immediately running off with him. For a second, there's a romantic, and proud feeling that maybe that counts. But then… No, it likely doesn't. That was… just being a good friend.

 _Would Kylo be mine?_ He thinks to Chewie.

Chewie looks a little confused at that, but then realization dawns. He shakes his head, and thinks back, _Usually, it'd be a personal thing. You saved yourself, kid. He just gave you a place to land once you got free._

Jacen nods at that. He's a little tired, but not too bad. "You mind if I go wander a bit?"

Chewie smirks at him. _The market is three floors up. Stay out of trouble, and call if you need back up. Hell, call if you don't, but think you'd like it._

Jacen smirks back at him. "I'll be fine, Dad."

 _Yeah, you will. Key-code is 6678._

"Got it. Ta, Chewie," And with that, Jacen's off for a bit of exploration.


	54. Date Night II

4/20/2

"So, wait… They're coming _here?"_ Finn says to Rose as they're both getting dressed to go 'out.' He hadn't quite envisioned that as part of the plan, but… if that's what his wife and Rey have come up with... Well, Rey's got his back, so…

"That's the idea. Just seemed easier to have them here, rather than transport all of her stuff over to them."

Finn sighs, and pulls on his trousers. He's standing next to their bed, and Rose is in the bathroom. The door is open so they can talk, but she's got a 'surprise,' so he's not looking. Given all the fuss that went with getting Paige's stuff back last time… Them coming here makes sense. "And he's coming, too." (He's fairly sure that if he makes no comments about Kylo being part of this, Rose will immediately decide something is off.)

"You know he is. You wouldn't be pouting like that if he weren't."

He is not, in fact, pouting, but… This time last week, he likely would have been. "Yeah. It's just…"

"I know, but Paige loves him…" Finn flashes a not real glare at his daughter, who is sitting on the floor seeing how many of her blocks she can get on top of each other, and mouths the word _traitor_ to her. "I felt that."

"I didn't—"

"Yes, you did. We did not just meet, Finn Tico. I know your ways. Think about it, babysitting. Real babysitting. We get to go out tonight, and don't have to be back for _hours._ "

He smirks. She doesn't know the half of it!

"There is that," he says with a nod. "Hours!" And he has _plans_ for those hours. So many _plans._

He's putting on a tie. They're going to be a tad overdressed for the beach, but he's not doing to complain about getting to see Rose all… She steps out of the bathroom, and his jaw drops. "Oh… baby…."

Rose does a little twirl for him. Her hair is soft and fluffy, and she's in a low-cut jacket and snug trousers, pretty shoes that lift her up several centimeters, and his heart is beating fast, and his tongue feels too big in his mouth.

"Out. We are getting out of this house!"

She grins at him. "And are we going anywhere other than your bunk of the _Falcon?"_

He smiles at her, eyes wide and happy, pleasure just pouring off of him. "Never you fret; I have _plans._ "

Rose giggles at him, looking very pleased as she picks up their daughter and then saunters out of their bedroom, a sassy sway in her hips. Over her shoulder she calls out, "No matter what, you're on the hook to feed me."

He swallows, mouth dry, a few images that likely aren't what she meant by that statement rushing through his head. He quickly glances at the chrono, and then thinks, _Get here fast, Ren._

He just about falls over when, _I thought we weren't supposed to be there for another ten minutes,_ rings in his head.

"Are you reading my mind?" Rose is looking at him in surprise, since he just said that in an empty room. Finn rolls his eyes. "I thought to myself, 'Get here fast, Ren,' and now he's _talking to me._ "

Rose laughs at that.

 _Not intentionally. I was getting changed out of my work clothing and talking to Rey, and then you were yelling in my head. Do we need to be there now?_

"No. I…" He's blushing, or would be if his skin were lighter. As it is, his cheeks feel hot and…

 _Oh, you just want to get going. Right. We'll be there soon._

* * *

Rey's smirking at Kylo. "Are you being _friendly?_ "

He's pulling on his sweater, running his fingers through his hair, freeing it from the ponytail it was in all day. "I'm attempting to follow Poe's instructions and engage in acts of empathy. He was so eager to get his wife alone, he thought loudly enough I could get it, so…"

"And that's something you've got empathy for."

"Amazingly enough, yes, I do." He kisses Rey. "Apparently, loving your spouse has a finite number of flavors, and both of us understand them."

* * *

 _Be there in a second._ Finn has just enough time to understand the thought in his head, and then Rey and Kylo are in his living room.

"That still gives me the shivers," he says.

To which Rey replies, "Yeah, but you'll let me port you to the _Falcon_ anyway, because walking out there will _really_ give you the shivers."

(The arrival of what the denizens of Lirium would call a _minor blizzard,_ meaning that it'll be gone in a few hours and he can take off in the _Falcon_ through the winds) shifted his and Rey's plan a bit, so now there's no reason at all to come up with any lie for why Rey needs to go to the _Falcon,_ and there's no need for stealth porting. They just… won't land where Rose expects them to.

Rose is looking eager. She hands Paige to Kylo, and for a moment they just look at each other, then she's saying, "Okay, we've got her bottle in the cooler, and the rest of the baby food is in there, too. Bedtime is usually—"

"Baby," Finn says. "I wrote it all down for them, and sent it to Rey. She's got it. Let's go."

Rose looks a little skeptical, but Rey nods at her, and Paige doesn't appear to be upset, so… "You can get us if you're having problems…"

Rey's nodding. _I can literally think questions in your head. We've got this._

"Okay. Maji babysitters. Right." Rose gives Rey one hand, and Finn the other, Rey grins at Kylo, and then they're gone.

* * *

Kylo looks at Paige. She's looking up at him. It's not the first time he's held her, but it's also not yet the fifth.

"This okay?" he asks.

She makes a noise. It's… an attempt at talking. She notices that the people around her make noises at each other, and he's got a pretty good sense that she understands at least a few words, but the concept of _I think this is okay, but I'm also a little uncertain because it's just you and me, and you feel like maybe you don't know what you're doing_ is vastly beyond anything she can attempt to communicate.

"Yeah. Me, too." They keep looking at each other. "Rey'll be back soon."

She wriggles and just about manages to flail her way out of his arms, and he feels his heart rate spike into the stratosphere at the idea that he might have dropped her less than two minutes into looking after her himself.

The downside of this is, because she attempted to flail her way out of his arms, that he slammed his Force around both of them, so _nothing_ is moving anytime soon, which has her severely rattled and yelling at him. It takes him a moment to calm down enough to grasp that she wants to get down, and is attempting to let him know that, but she does not understand the idea of the meter and a bit between her and the floor.

He exhales, releases the Force, and puts her down on the floor.

She sits, back very straight, now that she's on the floor the yelling has stopped, and then tugs on his pant leg, so Kylo gets down, too. For a moment, they're just there, staring at each other, when Kylo feels a familiar presence.

And sees a blue glow.

"You look stumped," Han says.

Paige's attention snaps to the new visitor.

Kylo rubs his hand over his face. "It's not like I spend a lot of time with babies."

Han laughs a bit. "But you're raring to change that. Lay on your back, pick her up, and let her 'fly' over you. Babies like that."

Kylo says to Paige, "Want to try?"

She looks away from Han, and starts to crawl toward Kylo. He settles onto his back.

"Looks like a yes," Han says.

She's kneeling next to Kylo, hands on his chest, when he says, "Okay. First off, no trying to leap out of my hands, okay? I will catch you, but I didn't like that."

Han laughs at that, and leans against the wall, watching his son gingerly pick up Paige and hold her over his head. (Or, as he tends to think of her, Chewie's grandbaby.)

"Just lift her up and down."

Kylo does, and Paige makes happy noises.

"Sometimes they like it if you toss them a little at the top of the arc, but their moms generally don't, and I imagine Finn'll skin you alive if he caught you doing it."

Kylo smirks. "Do you like getting tossed?"

Paige smiles down at him. "Okay, let's try this." He lets go of her, but she hovers above him. For a second, she looks _really_ startled, and then starts to shriek with laughter as Kylo zooms her around a bit, swooping her up and down over him, using his Force.

"We did this," Han says to Kylo as he hovers Paige above his head. "Granted, I had to use my arms to do it, but…"

"She seems to like flying better when she's… flying." He experimentally tries rolling her over in the air, and the laughing just gets louder.

"Show off." Han looks at the floor next to Kylo. "No bloody knees anymore. Damn things are completely gone, but the idea of sitting on the floor still seems daunting."

Kylo's almost not sure what to do with that, and then he pulls a chair up next to Han. "Have a seat, old man."

Han snerks at that, and does sit down. "I'll admit, I was hoping that we'd eventually see the Solo smartass come out of you. Be nice to know something of me was in there. Put her down for a bit, let the girl breathe."

He catches hold of her, and gently lowers her to his chest, before sitting up and letting her get back on the floor. "I got your crooked chin, too." Paige starts to crawl toward Han. "You can't touch him, honey. He's just there to look at."

"So, she sees me?"

"I'd guess." He takes a moment to get a feel for what's in Paige's mind. Images and emotions mostly. "Yes. She's curious about you."

She reaches, and her hand passes through Han's leg. That gets a mad wave of confusion from her, and she sits back on her haunches to think. A moment later, there's another tentative swipe at his leg, and again her hand goes through.

Han watches her do that. "Finn doesn't see me. Sometimes, I think he's got the sense of me near, but it might be he's getting really good at reading Chewie, who always knows. Rose never has. Jacen gets me as soon as I even think about showing up."

"How… does it work?"

"How would I know? You're the Jedi."

He shoots his dad a stink eye, but chooses not to argue about the Jedi/Maji thing. He knows Han means Force-sensitive. "Not, how does Jacen get a feel for you? How do you show up?"

"I…" He shrugs a bit. "Sometimes I'm there. Sometimes I'm not. If I want to interact, I can sort of… pull myself together, and do it, otherwise I'm sort of drifting."

"And Jacen gets you as soon as you decide to… pull together?"

"Yeah."

"Well, he would. Kid's off the charts as a mind-reader."

"Better than you?"

Kylo shrugs a bit at that. "I'm not really a mind reader, not the way he is."

"Always seemed like you knew what we were thinking."

"I always knew what you were feeling, and your feelings shaped your thoughts. A lot of people work that way. But if you're just flat out thinking about something, without feeling it, I'm going to have to work a lot harder to get it out of you."

Han smirks. "That's why you couldn't just read the answers to the math problems off the tutors. I couldn't for the life of me figure out why you weren't doing that, and your mom just got annoyed when I talked about it. She thought I meant, why wouldn't you cheat if you could, but that's not where I was taking it."

Kylo shoots him an _I'm so over this_ glare. Then rolls his eyes. And then says, "Yes. I could get it now, but back then I didn't have the focus for it."

Han thinks that's pretty funny. Paige is staring up at him, and smiles at him when she sees he's laughing. "Is she…" He glances to Kylo. "Like you?"

"Force sensitive?" he shrugs. "Not that I can feel, but she's awfully young, and this place is swarming with Force sensitives, so…" He glances at Han again. "Does it rub off? Did you feel more… sensitive… aware, when you spent a lot of time with Luke or Mom?"

He exhales a long breath. "Not sure. I've always had that… bad feeling… when things were about to go wrong, and it seemed to come up more acutely if your mom or Luke were around, but…"

"But they'd pick up what you were feeling and mirror it back to you?"

"Maybe? Or the bad things I ran into tended to be worse when they were around? You're the Jedi Master, you tell me."

"I'm really not, Dad. Certainly not now, and not really back then, and… Even if I had been, that isn't the kind of question any of the books I read even thought to ask, let alone attempt to answer."

Han shrugs. "Maybe. Sometimes it felt that way."

Rey appears in the living room and Han blinks… "You know, you'd think, with the way I show up now, that this wouldn't feel weird, but… Do people not walk anymore?"

"Han!"

"Hey, darlin'"

Paige goes crawling over to Rey, who picks her up. Rey looks at the Solo men, and Paige, and back to them, and then says, "Are we… having a family dinner?"

* * *

Honestly, it's a little awkward.

Han, of course, doesn't eat.

Rey doesn't know if she's ever had a family dinner, with… well… family.

Kylo doesn't remember the last time he and Han did this, but he assumes it had to have happened at some point.

And Paige is starting to get suspicious that Mama and Daddy are not coming back in the next few seconds and is getting a little anxious at that.

So, there's an undercurrent of tension burbling along beneath a bit of just standing around figuring out what happens next.

After a few more seconds, Kylo jerks into action. "Food," and then he's gone.

Han blinks again. "This is just… normal? You or he just blip out?"

"You get used to it," Rey says. "It's awfully convenient. Especially, here. Our place is only a few hundred meters away, but it's _cold_ out there."

Han nods at that. "Okay." He thinks. "Yeah, if I could have blipped from warm spot to warm spot on Hoth, I'd have done it."

And Kylo's back with a bowl and platter. And gone. And back again with a pitcher and mugs. Then he's standing at the table portioning out their supper.

Han just shakes his head a bit, and sits down at Finn and Rose's table. He can see Rey looking around for where to put Paige while she gets food for her, and he chuckles a bit.

"That one, over there. That's a high chair. She goes in it."

Rey slides the high chair over to the table, and settles Paige.

"She gets little bits of what we eat, too?" Kylo asks her, as he's spooning up their supper. (Veg, more veg, some sort of chop, and rolls.)

"Yeah, she's still mostly on soft food, so probably just the muruls and rolls." Rey is poking around in the cooler, knowing that there are little jars of mushed food for Paige in there.

He nods and breaks a few tiny pieces off of one of the rolls, and plops a few muruls onto the little tray on the chair. Paige grabs for a bite of roll, and side eyes the muruls. He looks at her, picks one up, and eats it. "See, they're good."

She does not appear to be convinced as she eats her bite of roll.

Once he's got the meal served out, he puts the remains in the cooker to stay warm and pours for them.

And Han watches. It's… dinner. Most people do this every night. He and Chewie did a version of this thousands of times. It still feels a little amazing to sit here and watch his son and his lady, working together, to put a meal on a table, and then sit down with every intention of eating it.

"You're the cook?" Han asks Kylo.

Kylo shakes his head a bit at that.

Rey nods.

Han looks between them.

"If one of us is going to cook, it'll probably be me. Luke didn't exactly teach us gourmet food preparation, but I can make eggs and porridge or whatever."

"Cookies," Rey says with a smile, sitting next to Paige with one two of the little jars and a spoon. "Okay, peas and potatoes, or ham and squash?"

Paige makes a little grabby gesture toward the ham and squash, so ham and squash it is. Rey cracks the jar, and gets some on the spoon.

"Bib!" Han says as Rey's about to give Paige the food.

Both Kylo and Rey are staring at him blankly, and Paige is annoyed that the food is hovering just out of her reach. "I promise you, somewhere around here, there's going to be something like a napkin that you're going to wrap around her neck, so all the food that doesn't end up in Paige doesn't also end up on her clothing."

Kylo's the one who spots the little pile of fabric that is indeed bibs. He grabs one, and leans across the table to hand it to Rey. "Got it. Better?"

Paige appears to be mollified because the food is in her mouth now.

"Have… either of you ever taken care of a baby before?" Han asks, wondering exactly how brave Finn and Rose were in this mission.

"We've babysat her before," Kylo says.

"Just the last time we did it, she was still eating her meals from a bottle."

Han nods at that. "Yeah. That's a bit easier." He grins a little. "More fun."

Kylo raises a brow at him.

"Well, when they get to this phase, most of your job is just making sure the food actually gets in them, instead of on," And Paige, as if understanding the lesson Han wishes to teach, spits out some of the squash and ham, and then smears it on her chin. "them. Just scoop it back up and try to get it in her mouth again.

"But a little guy with a bottle is cute and cuddly, not as messy, and in general, less frustrating."

"Are you saying, once upon a time, I was cute and cuddly?" Kylo asks with a brow high.

"And little, too. Once upon a time," Han cups his right hand about pectoral high, and his left hand about shoulder high, "my right hand would have been on your bum, and the left on on the back of your head." He grins at Rey. "Ears like scanner dishes, and like Lando said, he always had a schnoz, but the rest of him was tiny."

"Dad…"

"Oh, please. I never thought I'd get the chance to embarrass you in front of your girl. I'm enjoying it."

"What's a schnoz?" Rey asks.

"The only thing you could have possibly asked to make this worse," Kylo replies, with a little bit of a smirk.

Han grins at her, pats his nose with his index finger, chuckles, gives her a dirty wink, and then says, "Not that."

Kylo rolls his eyes extravagantly, and reaches across the table for the salt. Apparently, when he wasn't paying attention Rey's drink moved, so it's not where his hand thinks it should be, resulting in him accidentally whacking it, sending her drink cascading across the table.

"Fuck!" And then he looks really alarmed at Paige, who isn't quite talking, yet, but… There's a few heartbeats there, as the cider drips onto the floor, where it looks like she might decide fuck is a perfectly good first word.

But she doesn't.

And there's a bit of a mental sigh, and Kylo fetches a rag to clean up the mess. As he's mopping up the cider Han says, "You were… I don't know… Little. Only sporadically talking. And it was a night when all three of us were home. And I was… fixing… the oven," Kylo flashes Rey a look, "And it wasn't going as well as it could have been, in the sense that I'd whacked everything that needed a good whacking and it _still_ wasn't behaving. So, I pulled a condenser out, and sparks started shooting out of it, which was not exactly making my day, so I told the kriffing thing that it could fuck the fuck right off and out again through the other side and then I was going to sell it's shitty crap for scrap, and there you were, very quietly watching the whole things, eyes like saucers, and Leia's staring _daggers_ at me, and my hair's singed.

"And then you chirp up in your tiny little toddler voice, 'FUCK! Fuck? Fuck. FUCK!' It was the single clearest thing you'd said up to that point, and you tried it as every possible part of speech and with every inflection you'd ever heard.

"Not exactly my moment of crowning glory.

"But, like I told his mom, and technically you, though you don't remember, it's best for children to learn words like that from someone who knows how to use them with style." Han offers up a sassy grin, and Kylo does laugh. Rey covers her mouth, attempting to envision that.

"And yes, she was just as happy to hear it as you are imagining. I stand by it, though. If a kid's going to learn how to curse, and they all do, eventually, you can either teach them to do it right, or listen to hours of uncensored word play from people who think talleyknocker is a bad word because _someone_ decided to plant that idea in one of his padawans in order to keep them from stumbling onto real bad ones."

"I _knew_ that was banthashit!"

"Luke didn't let you curse?" Rey asks. The formal rule among the Maji is no bad words where the adults, or the young kids, can hear you. This has worked… to a degree. At least, Rugh hasn't told anyone to fuck off yet, and that's about as much a victory as they hope to get.

"We weren't ever supposed to be irked, frustrated, or angry enough to do it. But, everyone, even Jedi Master Luke, gets irked on occasion, so he let that one loose once, and a bunch of the kids didn't know any better, so… I got a stern lecture for saying kriff, and Luke was less than thrilled when I pointed out that you said it to him all the time and…"

Han's chucking. "Oh, I bet." He looks up at the ceiling. "Gods… I sometimes wonder how things would have gone if we'd just done what we wanted instead of what we thought we were supposed to be."

"He… didn't want to be the Jedi Master?" Rey asks.

Han shrugs a bit. "No one ever asked; I don't think. I remember him talking about the will of the Force, and feeling pulled by it, but… I know I didn't ask. Never thought to. I went under the freeze and he was still Luke, and I came out, and he was _Jedi Master Skywalker_ and… he was different. I mean, I get it, I was under for a while, and… Things, people change, and he was a kid when I went under, and after… Was, well, after, so… Last of the Jedi, destiny, the Force, Darth Vader for a father, all the rest of those big capital letter words that mean something to people who have things to mean something for and… Chewie and I sort of just went along as much as we could."

They eat for a few moments, and it's Rey who gets up the courage to ask. "Did you," she gestures to the Solos, 'used to do this? I mean, when he was little?"

Han nods. "Leia and I really did try to make a go of it for the first three years. I wasn't home every night, couldn't be, but we got to see each other, and you, a lot more often than any time after."

"What did you do, those first three years?" Rey asks. She's scooping up a bit more food and trying to get it into Paige, who appears to consider not getting the food in her mouth something of a game.

"Tried to pretend to be General Solo. It was an honorary title. Leia got it for me. I think it made her happy. I never commanded more than a handful of men. Really wouldn't have known what to do if I'd ever had more than twenty of them.

"The first year… You were cooking away, and the war was wrapping up, and I'd be out on missions mopping up bits and pieces of the Empire. The first year after the Concordance… We, Chewie, Lando, and I, were chasing his Grand Admiral. Schiff was the biggest defector from the Empire. He refused to come in and seek terms, and he was wanted for a list of war crimes longer than my arm, so we went looking for him. Fastest ship in the galaxy. The three best pilots. Three of us on meant we could go all the hours of the day. More sources, intel, ears, out of the way cafes where people'd whisper the right intel for the right currency, and we actually had an expense account so there was plenty of it, and… We couldn't do it. We got within seven minutes of him once, and that was it. Never got closer."

Both Rey and Kylo know how close, and how far, seven minutes is in a galaxy of hyperspeed.

"What happened?" Kylo asks.

"Best pilots in the galaxy," Han says. "But we weren't _in_ the galaxy. We were on the rim, and Schiff was going past it. We've got the _Falcon,_ so we're faster, more nimble, and better at hiding. If we can find him, we can tag him and skedaddle before he knows we're there. And it's not like we've got to get his flag ship, just… Any fucking TIE'll do. Tag it and go. Then the Navy of the New Republic can show up at their leisure and bring him in.

"But again, he's on the rim. And he's got a fleet, which means he can carry _way_ more fuel than we can. And he's not shy about just grabbing any fuel he finds along the way, while we're being nice and paying for it. And yeah, we can call for help, but once the _Falcon_ is out of fuel, it's got 22 hours before everything in it is dead, so we can't go more than 20 hours in hyperspeed past the last friendly outpost if we want someone to come before we're frozen solid." He gives them _a look._ "And I know for a fact that _once_ on that was enough.

"Schiff knew the territory better than we did, and he could go longer without refueling, and put those together and we couldn't keep the hunt up. So that was a year of maybe getting home once every other week. Refuel, get more intel, see you and Leia.

"It's not that we wanted to be out there, but… Supposedly, it mattered. It… looked good. Made the New Republic seem… respectable. A lot of people out there wanted everything in Imperial colors to burn, so…" Rey and Kylo can feel the tired heat of arguments over, long past the point of fighting anymore, but not settled.

"Lando gave up first. Once the New Republic was really up and running, he retired his commission, and became the First Senator of Cloud City.

"Chewie and I did it for another six months before throwing in the towel, too. It wasn't going to happen. We weren't going to catch him, and… Leia didn't like that, but she had other things to work on, so she wasn't too upset when we gave up, and Chewie and I retired our commissions. She tried to get Chewie to seek to be a representative for Kashyyyk, but he said no to that."

"And you tried to be Han Organa-Solo, Prince of Alderaan, political spouse?" Rey asks.

Han flashes them a sheepish look. "I think that was part of being _General Solo._ So, I'd look better for the constituents. I'd say I tried. She'd say I didn't. The truth is likely somewhere in the middle, closer to her or me depending on the day and the situation."

Kylo and Rey share a look. Rey's wondering if _General Solo_ was also trying to help Han feel more like he belonged up with the powers that be. Kylo mentally shrugs. He could see his Mom trying something like that.

"But you were a bit older than little girl here, and for about a year and a half there, I was home every night. So, I did things like this, gave you bottles, and tossed you around, and held your hands while you worked on walking. Technically, Chewie and I were _being respectable._ For a while there, we had an on-the-books, legal shipping company." He glances to Kylo and Rey. "Don't look so shocked." He shakes his head a bit. "Okay, yeah, I was still running goods under the floorboards that weren't supposed to be there, which was another reason why Leia didn't think I was trying, but… No one searches a senator's personal ship, and… Well, that's what the _Falcon_ was. It'd have been a crime not to do it!"

Kylo can just imagine how his mom took that. "What changed? Kylo asks. "Why… stop being respectable?"

There's a heartbeat with a _lot_ in it. And Kylo's fairly sure that if he dug a little there'd be… well, all the things Han is desperately trying to _not_ think about right now. So, he leaves it alone.

Han relaxes a bit when it's clear to him that Kylo and Rey chose not to go see what was floating around in his mind, and says, "Beyond the most obvious level, that we were complete rubbish at it?"

Kylo and Rey both look at him.

"It's fucking boring! We'd run goods from one side of Chandrilla to the other, and back again, weren't even breaking atmo, and… Pick stuff up, drop it off, pick more stuff up, drop more stuff off, come home, go to sleep, do it all over again. Break the week up by getting dressed up in the most stupid fucking uniform you ever laid eyes on, with a billion jingly medals that all bonked around every time I had to move, spend a few hours sipping something that needed to be a hell of a lot more alcoholic for me to deal with political dinners, and feel your mom staring at me like I was an abysmal failure in everything I'd ever set out to do."

Neither Rey nor Kylo have much to say to that. There's still the feel of old arguments, well past the point of won or lost, scarred over, but the wounds still ache.

"Yeah, that's a light and fluffy dinner conversation," Han says, running his hand through his hair. "Uh… How was your day?"

Rey and Kylo sort of look at each other, and then back to Han, and there's sort of a sense of, _you really want to know…_

"Yeah, I mean… You're my kids, so… Families talk about what they've been up to. So, how was your day? That's a thing people do, right?"

Kylo's about to shoot back with _I wouldn't know,_ when Rey squeezes his hand and leaps into the conversation with, "Pretty good. Our places here are all pre-fab units put together following the directions, so they all look and work pretty much the same way, but we're moving, so we spent the day reading up on how to make functional buildings and trying to figure out what we'd need, and stuff like that."

Kylo smiles at that. "Pipes to electric and over and above?"

"Yeah, start on the ground level, what's got to be _under_ the houses to make them work, and then how to build them up. The kids seem to think domes make more sense than squares."

Kylo thinks about that, while chewing. "Sounds like a lot of space that'll be not terribly useful. Too short."

"Yeah, well, not everyone is two meters tall."

He rolls his eyes. "I'm not either."

"I don't know when they measured you last, but you are at least two meters."

"Uh huh." He rolls his eyes. Phasma was two meters. He's not.

"We can get Jon here."

"Okay, fine. I'm tall. Unless it's a dome on a cylinder, it sounds like you're going to have this edge of your home you can't do much with."

"Who's Jon?" Han asks.

"Our friend," Kylo says. "He's also a designer, and makes clothing for me, so… If anyone knows how tall I am…"

"Someone makes clothing for you?" Han asks.

"For both of us, when we have to be fancy, but primarily for me, because I don't… look right… in anything off the shelf." He hunches in a little on himself, making himself look smaller. Rey squeezes his hand.

"Fuck that," Han says. "You look fine, the bloody clothing is wrong."

Kylo raises a brow at him.

Han just looks back. "It wasn't _me_ that was stupid or wrong, it was the bloody uniform. I was fine. You're fine, too. The clothing is the problem."

Kylo and Rey keep looking at him.

"It's a… code or something. Lando told me about it, not in so many words, but… It's like a club, and the outfit is part of how you know who belongs in the club and who doesn't. Nobs who were raised in it, know how to wear it, and people like me, and… well, you maybe, don't know and feel weird about it. So, either you sit there feeling weird, or you tell 'em where to shove it, and and be comfortable in your skin.

"I'll grant you, it's easier if the outfit actually fits, but… Look, there is no possible way to make a pair of tights, and a tunic, and a billion jingly little metals, with fucking _shoulder pads,_ and shoes with _buckles,_ and the stupid fucking hat had a _plume,_ look like anything other than a steaming pile of stupid. But that was the traditional, formal outfit of a Knight of the Republic, so I've got to prance about in that stupid pile of… Lace. Did I mention _lace?_ There were little lace knickers that went under the tunic and on the cuffs and…" He shudders. "Chewie took one look at Lando and I and literally _hurt_ himself he was laughing so hard. He actually sprained a rib! I didn't even know ribs could get sprained, but apparently, that's a thing that can happen. We got through the whole damn war, and the biggest injury he got was laughing at us at the first, formal opening ceremony of the Senate of the New Republic."

Kylo's voice is dry, "And let me guess, Lando _added_ a cape to that, put the hat at an angle, and next thing he knew there were thirty women crowded around him wanting to get to know him better."

"And five men, six I could just identify as 'not human,' and one droid." Both Rey and Kylo are just staring at him about the droid bit. Han shrugs a bit. "Lando had broad horizons, and apparently, other things with broad horizons liked him, too. Anyway. He's dressed like the fop, but on him it looks good, so he grinned at Chewie, swept the cape over his shoulder, and sauntered on out. According to him, he was _showing me how to do it._ " Han sighs. "It worked for him. And your mom looked great, she was…" His eyes and smile are soft. He swallows. "That was one of the last things we went to before you were born, so she was seven months along, and… Uh…" Both Rey and Kylo can feel the extremely content, possessive, and sexually thrilled energy that goes with his mental image of his woman beautiful and round with his child. "She looked great. Didn't much like standing around in those shoes, but that gave us an excuse to cut out early, so… It worked out.

"But the costumes, that's just… A way for them to make sure you feel like an outsider. Fuck it. And them."

Rey's smiling. She actually really likes that lesson.

"I think I would have liked Lando."

"You would have. Granted, the old coot would have flirted with you mercilessly and made B-Kylo blush, but… That was Lando."

Rey's amused by that idea, and Kylo's _over_ it.

"Made him blush, how?" she asks with a naughty little grin.

"Probably the same way he made me. He'd have swept on over, all cool and perfect, kissed your hand, looked deep into your eyes, told you you were beautiful, and he," he nods to his son, "wasn't nearly good enough for you and the luckiest man in the galaxy to have you. And he wouldn't _say_ it, but unspoken would be the idea that if you wanted to trade up, he was _more_ than available."

"And what did Aunt Anilie think of that?" Kylo asks.

Han chuckles. "She'd sweep over and beg you to take him and get him out of her hair. They were pair, those two."

Paige redirects attention to herself by flinging her cup off the highchair. She's really surprised when it stops mid-flight and then levitates back onto the table area.

"Nice catch," Kylo says, mostly so his Dad knows which one of the two of them did it.

She nods at him, but is looking at Paige. "You're done now, aren't you?"

Paige doesn't nod, but she does try to twist and lift herself out of the chair.

"And on the floor you go," Kylo says, standing up, and picking her up, depositing her onto the floor. "Better?"

She looks up at him, and seems fairly content. Then she's spotted her toys and is scooting toward them.

She's been on the floor for a minute when Han stiffens and says, quietly, "Uh…"

This has Kylo and Rey's attention. He's looking at Paige, so they are, and… "Uh…" Rey says.

There's a smear of… food and drool on the floor, trailing behind her, because it didn't occur to any of the three of them to take the bib off first.

All three of the adults look a little embarrassed. Han sighs, "This is the kind of thing I'd do, and your mom would just _look_ at me, clear on her face that anyone with the brains of a gruslack would have known whatever the hell the thing I didn't do, was. It's actually, relieving, to see that you two don't know, either."

That gets a little snerk from Kylo, and Rey quickly hovering Paige off the floor because she's almost to the carpet, and getting mushed food off the tile is one thing, the carpet is another all together.

"Looks like you two have this figured out," Han says.

"And by figured out you mean…" Rey asks.

"Uh… At our place, baby eats, then gets cleaned up, then bed, then adults get to finish dinner or whatever."

"Ah…" Kylo says. "And let me guess, you're not volunteering to clean."

"There's not a lot of times when I like being a ghost, but right now, it's not so bad," Han says with a smirk. "I'll let you get to it. Enjoy her." And then Han is gone.

And Kylo and Rey are in possession of a food-smeared, and somewhat sticky baby.

Who does not want to stop hovering around the room.

* * *

The job breaks down into two parts. Wash the floor or wash the infant. Having not particularly enjoyed Paige trying to leap from his arms when they were both dry, dressed, and standing in the kitchen, Kylo doesn't exactly jump on washing the floor, but he also doesn't argue when Rey takes over on shower-time.

Yes, he will, no matter what, catch her. No, he didn't, at all, enjoy the spike of fear that went with her trying to launch herself out of his arms, and he can't imagine it'll be even more fun if she's _wet._

Meanwhile, the floor is just sitting there, slightly smeared with food, and a good wiping off will take care of the issue, no heart rate jumping to the ethers involved.

Rey's amused by that, but she doesn't comment on it.

He can sense humming. He's sure he can't hear it, because Rey's got to be in Finn and Rose's bathroom, and he can hear the water running, so… But he can sense it, and imagine it, Rey getting Paige ready for bath time, humming to her…

He likes that image.

Enough that he hurries through cleaning the floor so he can join them.

Kylo's not at all prepared for how what he walks into is going to feel. He's just… Not.

Just like their cottage, there is no bathtub in Rose and Finn's. Just a shower. So, Rey's in the shower, with Paige in her arms, holding her close while they rinse off. Paige is looking like she might be getting a little sleepy, or maybe she's just enjoying the cuddle, or the water, because she's draped all over Rey, looking very content.

And Rey's holding her, lips against the top of her head, humming softly, eyes closed and…

He feels like his heart is going to explode. Not fear, not this time, just… He doesn't have words for it. It's so intense, how badly he wants this, how much he adores seeing it, how… This isn't his child… Well… His niece, right? His woman, his niece… Not his blood or body, but she's still _his._

Hell, even Finn likely wouldn't mind if he and his saber were _between_ Paige and something dangerous.

His _family._ The start of it, anyway.

Rey looks up from Paige, and sees the way he's looking at them. That… aching hunger to be part of this, to be in it, not on the far side of the glass, staring at it. "Come on. We're just getting wet. Grab the shampoo, will you?"

So, he does.

* * *

Bath time with an agreeable little girl is fun. It's soapy and slippery and splashy and just _fun._

Rey's holding Paige, and Kylo's washing her feet, tickling each little toe, kissing the souls of her feet, and Paige is squealing with laughter.

Then he's holding her, and Rey's soaping up her back and hair, careful about the hair, because, according to Finn, her tightly curled hair is a bit more complicated than taking care of straight hair, and Kylo's shielding her face with his hand, making sure she doesn't get shampoo in her eyes.

Then Rey's got her, and Kylo's _attempting_ to clean under her chin, and she very much does not want under her chin washed, so she's doing her best to make sure that soap goes nowhere near her secret stash of not quite eaten dinner, but Rey blows on her ear, and that distracts Paige, gets her looking up at Rey, and Kylo sweeps in with a washcloth and a decisive victory against the crud hiding under her chin is won.

* * *

And if bath time is fun, story time is better. Apparently, story time is usually in Finn and Rose's bed, or at least that's where Paige seems to think it's supposed to take place. And, well, she's not exactly a font of extensive communication, but it's clear that when they attempt to move her to her room before reading the story, she is _irked._

So, they're on Finn and Roses's bed, reading.

It can't be an old book. Rose doesn't have family heirlooms, and if Finn does, they belong to the family he lost when he was taken.

But it is a _book._ An actual, physical _book._ Rabbity-Babbity Says Good Night. It's got thick, stiff pages that look a little gnawed on around the edges, and those pages are covered in bright pictures of what the illustrator is calling a rabbit (It does not, on any level beyond the ears, look like the critters that Chewie brought home, but… well, rabbits, at least the ones in the barn, also don't roam around a house saying goodnight to _everything._ ) as it wanders about, tucking everything into it's house into bed, and saying goodnight to them.

Paige is in Rey's lap, back to her chest, staring at the pages. Rey's sitting between Kylo's legs, back to his chest, too. She's reading, Paige is listening, and he's holding both of them, feeling so… everything… he can barely stand it.

"Goodnight forks…" And Rabbity is tucking each fork in the kitchen into its own little bed. "Goodnight storks," and he's got a few bird-looking things that he's settling into nests. It's a beyond silly book, and he has to assume it's just to help build vocabulary for little guys, or maybe just the base sounds. (After all, how many kids really need to know what a stork is? The author must have been looking hard for something to rhyme with fork. Maybe on his own planet they're all over the place…)

He's not really thinking about that. It's just buzzing around in the back of his head as Rey reads and Paige looks at the pages, relaxing against his wife.

In the front of his head is how _good_ this feels. Shockingly good. Stupidly good.

Sex good.

Which is… well, weird. He's not turned on. Certainly not hard. And while he's hoping things will move in that direction later, it's not like he's gotten off recently, but…

It does feel a lot like drowsing in afterglow, except he's not sleepy, and hasn't gotten off, and…

Weird. He files it under 'sex is how you get to be in situations like this' and snuggles closer against Rey and Paige.

* * *

Story time, done.

Bedtime, up.

It's true that Kylo has spent exactly no time thinking about what kind of, or how, Rose and Finn parent. He just doesn't. But he's about to start now as they head up to Paige's room, and there's the crib, and it's… Just a mattress with a sheet on it.

It's a nice sheet. And the crib is nice, too. But there's no pillows and he doesn't see any blankets, and okay, yeah, it's warmer in here than in their house (Which he'll wonder about eventually, and find out that since Finn and Rose's place was done later than theirs it's got extra foundation insulation… But… Yeah, learning curve when it comes to putting together houses…) it's not _warm_ in here, and there's no possible way he's going to put Paige in a cold crib all by herself.

Nope.

She can come and stay warm and sleep with them until the end of time or until someone (and he's thinking that may be him) smacks some sense into her parents.

Fortunately, Rey, who has put Paige down before, knows what's going on, and she flips on a little switch, and suddenly the crib starts to hum slightly and the air above the mattress warms up.

"Oh," Kylo says, putting a sleepy Paige into her bed.

"Yeah," Rey replies. "Little babies don't get pillows or blankets because they can trap pockets of CO2, and they can smother. That's what Rose said, at least. So, the crib has a self-contained atmosphere field that keeps everything and one warm, and circulates the air around."

That's a whole bunch of things he didn't know, and the idea that babies can smother in their own exhalations is ice down his spine, and now he's not sure if he's going to sleep tonight, but… The crib is humming away, and when he lowers his hand to rest it on Paige's belly, he can feel the air moving, so…

It's probably okay.

He still feels that it's just wrong that she doesn't have some sort of little stuffed toy or something to keep her company in there.

"What are you thinking of?" Rey asks, quietly.

Apparently, he's thinking loudly of his own little stuffed friend. "Moomoo. My stuffed tokka." He hasn't thought of it for decades. But once upon a time, a very small Ben Solo had a little blue and yellow stuffed tokka that went everywhere with him. And it _had_ to come with him when he slept.

Rey nods to the rocking chair, which was not used for story time, and is currently housing something like ten little, soft toys.

He nods, deciding that Rose and Finn maybe do know what they're doing.

He bends down, kisses Paige, and says, "Goodnight, baby."

Rey does the same, grabs the monitor that'll let them keep an ear and eye on Paige, and they creep out of her nursery, to go and finish dinner.

* * *

Back to dinner. Which is good, because Kylo's still kind of hungry. Between talking and watching Paige, he basically got a snack, instead of a meal.

But he also wants to sort of go back up and just watch her sleep for a while.

Or maybe scoot in close to Rey, and snuggle into her, but… "Do they just not cuddle or something?" he asks, noticing that nothing in this house is well-suited for people who like to be in close contact all the time. There's no sofa, or benches, or… Anything besides the floor and bed. The chairs they're in are nice, but he can't just scoot closer to Rey and eat hip to hip with her the way they do on the bench at their house.

Rey shrugs. From what she can see the Ticos are affectionate, but… Outside of bed, there's not a really good snuggle spot in this house.

"C'mere," Rey says, standing up.

Kylo heads to her chair, pulling his plate along, and sits down, so she settles in his lap. "Better," he says. She spears one of the now lukewarm murals on her fork, feeds it to him, and then takes a bite of chop for herself. They chew quietly for a moment, him holding her, her relaxing against him, feeling what's in his head.

"You're baby-drunk," Rey says.

Kylo shrugs a bit. That's probably an okay way to describe it. Maybe. He thinks while he takes a sip of his tea. "Yes, but no. It's silly, but… Drunk is loose and giddy, and… This isn't that. This is… Shit…" He feels stupid, but… If anyone gets stupid-Kylo, it's Rey, "It really feels like after sex."

"You about to start snoring?" she asks with an amused lilt in her eye.

He gently bites her ear. "Later."

"I'm going to hold you to that."

"Good." He chews another bite of supper, and pulls out of his own feelings enough to check in with hers. "You're not. Baby-drunk. You liked that, but… not the way I did."

It's clear Rey was rather hoping he'd have not noticed that.

He shifts a bit so they can look at each other a bit more easily. "Hey… Just… talk to me, it's… okay." Though he's not sure if it is.

"I know you want it, so bad." She looks anxious and guilty. "And… I… like doing things that make you happy, but…"

"And you don't." He feels… he doesn't know… at that. And he can sort of feel another shape, Rey pressing herself into versions of herself to make him happy, and he doesn't know what to do with that, either. Rey who spent more than a decade trapped, trying to be good enough to make her parents come home. That makes him feel awful. He bows his head and presses his forehead to hers. "It's okay."

"I don't want it the way you do. And… Rose says it's normal to be terrified at things that will completely upend your entire life. And it's normal to fear starting relationships you know have to end. That… it's _normal_ to be… uncomfortable with the idea that you'll build someone and love them so much and then they just… leave…"

And both of their histories crash into that. Into Rey's parents abandoning her, and Kylo running away from the life his parents wanted for him, and all of the scars and aches of being parents and children and…

"It'd be different for us," Kylo says.

"Probably," Rey says, because she knows that most adults manage to successfully parent their kids and… "But we don't actually know that, and… Three years, like Kinear said, we've got… Stuff… The outside world, and…"

"And…" He deflates a bit. "Hope." As his mom said, what's more hopeful than a new life? A literal, new life. "What's more hopeful than building a new life?" Building a new home on Achc-To, a new life, as in a literal person, a wedding, all of it. Hope.

She can feel he's thinking in those directions. She adds to it, "The Order, getting people out, resettling them into new and better lives. Are we leaving time for our own hopes and better, and… How much time, realistically, do we have for a child right now?"

"Fuck." He mutters it because she's right, realistically, right now, they've got all the balls in the air, and if they add another person to the mix, it means shorting something else. Like all the stupid shit they're supposed to start going out and doing to make the Order presentable and respectable and peaceful and… "Shit."

For a second, he's imagining the beach. They could just… leave. Build a home there. Follow through with the Order long enough to sweep Canto, get the funds, and then take the Maji and vanish.

She strokes his hair. "You'd hate it after a month. And Jon'd come find you and kick your ass to next year if you tried to leave him in charge. And if you didn't leave him in charge, in a week those two old coots'll be rebuilding the Empire in their image."

Long, painful exhale of breath. "I know… It's…"

"A fantasy."

"Yeah." His face is pressed to her shoulder. "You're rationalizing reasons not to do it."

"Doesn't mean I'm wrong."

"I know."

She squeezes his hand. "The Jedi dealt with fear by not wanting things."

He kisses her neck. "And that's part of this?"

"Maybe. But the Order stuff already scares the shit out of me, so… One terrifying adventure at a time, okay?"

He sighs. Breathes in and out long and slow. "Okay." Quiet. "But, eventually, right?"

"Not today," because it's clear he wants to be in the medbay tomorrow to get his shot reversed, "not tomorrow, not before the wedding stuff, sometime after that… When… we feel like we've got things stable enough that we don't have to be your parents, juggling the galaxy with one hand and a child with the other." _Dropping both._ She doesn't say it. She doesn't have to.

She's rationalizing again.

But she's also not wrong.

* * *

Slow and easy, on their sides, facing each other, belly to belly. Soft kisses, gentle touches.

Her leg over his hip, his arm under her head, lips together, just the tiniest bit of the tops of their heads out from under the blankets. Warm and secure in and with each other.

Meal sex. Nothing fancy, neither of them going out of their way with fast and frantic. Just… connecting and re-connecting and ending the night in a good place.

He pauses, just feeling this, her, him. Their bodies and lives, physical, and more, the intangible flowing in and through these physical forms, and how this slow, wet slide is supposed to make more life. How the glow, his, hers, contained in these physical forms, sparking with pleasure and purring with the contentment that comes with being with each other, underscored by a low ache of wanting, how all of that can/should/will eventually spark another life.

He's praying as they speed, as pleasure kindles, as life force, life/Force surges, and he can feel it, in the pulse, in the quieting of breath and heart, in the thrum of her life surrounding, cradling his, that now isn't time.

But there are things he can do to bring that time closer. Things he needs to do to help build the home their child will need.

The past is dead, but that doesn't mean he/they can't or shouldn't learn from it.

* * *

Kylo's seen his share of 04:00s. And several other people's as well.

And it's not that he thought Rose and Finn were kidding about Paige waking up at 04:00, he just thought that maybe it was… an estimation or something. Like maybe she's get up at 04:03 or 03:58.

But no. It's _exactly_ 04:00, and they're listening to the sound of a small person announcing to the world that she is apparently _starving_ and if food, and someone to get her out of her crib does not arrive _right now_ the entirety of the universe is going to explode.

It's also occurring to him that he and Rey did not figure out who would be removing themselves from their nice, warm, soft, sleepy bed, and getting up to take care of the small person who is screaming into the heavens as if 30 years and not thirty seconds had passed. (He does, absently, notice the sound of someone singing in the background of the sounds coming out of the monitor. Apparently, Han's keeping watch, too.)

He feels _I'm getting them at 07:00 and breakfast with the kids at 07:30, and your first meeting isn't until 10:00. You've got her._

And that seems to be a sensible argument, especially coming from someone who very much appears to be asleep.

* * *

"Okay, I'm here."

"You're naked."

"She doesn't care, Dad." And Paige doesn't. She also doesn't immediately calm back down when he picks her up, but a bit of snuggling seems to help. "Yeah, I know. Mama and…" He looks to his father. "What does she call Finn?"

"Daddy."

"Mama and Daddy are out, enjoying sleeping through 04:00 for once. They'll be back, soon."

Tiny baby eyes glaring at him. Likely because he does not know the routine. He blinks, and holds her, bopping around a little, trying to think what comes next.

His sense of smell fills him in just about the same moment that Han says, "Usually, diaper first, then food, then play for a bit, and back to sleep."

"We're going to play?"

"She looks awfully awake to me."

Kylo doesn't growl. "Okay, diaper…"

* * *

Breakfast, first breakfast, is a bottle.

Paige is definitely disconcerted by this. She should be in Rose's arms, nursing. Instead she's in Kylo's and he's warm, certainly, and has a good hold on her, but this isn't sleepy drowsing in bed with her parents getting her first snack of the day. This is sitting up, in the living room, and the lights are bright, and…

And he doesn't smell right.

And for that matter a bottle is not a breast.

"You'd give me that look when I'd take over a feed from your mom," Han says, hovering behind them.

"Yeah, and she's not so much hungry as a little peckish and wants a snuggle. I can feel that." He looks back down to Paige. "I'm not going to turn into her, so I'm doing the best I can. You want the bottle?"

He holds it to her lips, and she does spend a moment contemplating before deciding that she'll deign to have a snack.

"With the way you were screaming earlier, I was sure you'd be starving."

She's staring up at him, bright black-brown eyes taking his face in.

"I think little guys mostly just like knowing that if they yell, someone'll come and get them," Han says. "According to the nannies, that's part of what we were supposed to be training you in by not running in the second you squeaked. Self-soothing."

He shrugs a bit. "Apparently, I'm still shit at that."

Han doesn't have anything to say to that.

* * *

"You done?" Kylo asks Paige when she's slowed down on her bottle. He can feel she is, but… conversation is good, right? Part of how babies learn to talk and stuff?

Or maybe it just feels weird not to talk to her.

Either way, she's done. "Now what?"

She's eyeing the floor and her toys. "Okay. Good. Down you get." He doesn't see Han, but he can feel him near. "You keep an eye on her while I go put some clothing on?"

Paige is in a nice, warm little onesie and sweater. He's wrapped in a blanket, because he didn't think through the logistics of get dressed first, tend to screaming baby later.

"I've got her. Just… yell if she needs something?"

"Sure, I'll be there in a heartbeat."

And Kylo's gone.

* * *

And a minute later, he's back, this time with pants and socks and a sweater.

Han's next to Paige, on the floor (apparently having gotten over his literally non-existent knee issue) and from the looks of it, trying very hard to stack the blocks for her. He looks up at Kylo when he's back. "Sometimes, if it matters, I can move stuff, but this…" His hand passes through the block. "Not happening today."

Kylo nods and sits next to him. He hovers one of the blocks up. "When I do it… I just… Feel the block, get a good sense for what and how it is, and then," and he hovers the next block up.

Han tries, the blocks stay on the floor.

"I didn't get it my first time, either," Kylo says. Stacking the rest of the blocks by hand. Paige grins at them, and then takes a wild swing at them, sending them scattering through the living area.

"Okay, little girl, you go get them, and I'll pile them up again."

And Paige goes off on a seek and fetch mission.

Han's smiling at him, a very soft look in his eyes.

"Did you want to be a dad?"

Han shrugs a bit. "I… uh… Obviously didn't go out of my way to avoid it… Well, not with you, but I also wasn't thinking about it. Uh… When I was… I was about your age when I met your mom, older when I got out of the ice, and…" He looks a little uncomfortable and a little naughty. Halfway between confession and pride. "She wasn't my first."

Kylo rolls his eyes, and shoots his father a completely deadpan look. "Look at how shocked I am."

"Yeah, fine." He gestures between them. "We didn't do this, when you were a kid, so… I don't know exactly what's in your head or may be shocking to you."

Kylo can't stop it. There's this huge surge of anger. At all the conversations with Poe and Jon where both of them want to slap the shit out of Luke because he didn't do the job right, and that he should have had the chance to have conversations like this, with someone who actually knew something about how to be a sexually functional adult male. "That wasn't my choice."

Han looks confused for a second, and then his face hardens. "Oh, stop that! It was your choice, at least some of it! I _tried_ to talk with you about stuff like this. I'd visit. I'd call. You'd ditch _me._ You kept me at arms length from the time you were fifteen, and then ran away at twenty-three. I _tried_ to get closer to you, and you froze me out."

"Ran away? He fucking tried to kill me, and then half the school went after me, too, and by the time that was done I had nowhere left to go!"

"You had me! And… Don't give me that we wouldn't have believed you shit you told Chewie. That's… I don't know, Snoke in your head or something. Yeah, maybe your mom would have had a hard time with it, but you didn't have to go to her, you could have gone to _me._ Or fuck, Lando, if you couldn't have stood the sight of me. You two always got on. And he would have given you a place to get your head on right if you couldn't have come to me. You were not an orphan adrift on the whims of fate.

"Hell, Lando fucking sold me to Vader, and we're still friends. Nothing happened that couldn't have been fixed."

"I murdered M'Gll, Dad!"

Han's quiet for a moment. And Kylo can feel what he told Rey and Finn, that Luke had had a student who murdered the others. Because that's the version of the story he had, what Luke believed. Luke turned on Ben, and Ben blasted him into the rubble and when he got out, everyone else was dead. And he's remembering what Kylo told Chewie. That he'd killed _one_ of them. Then he says, "You just crept up on her in her sleep and stuck a blade through her? Like Luke was going to do to you?"

"I… no."

"She armed and fighting you?"

"Yeah."

"She go after you? With a saber?"

"Yeah."

"And she was Luke's star Jedi. The only other Master. A full-grown adult who had just as much skill as you did with the Force?"

"Yeah."

"Then you didn't fucking murder her, and you know it! And Chewie and I have been through versions of this a lot, and maybe we don't read minds, but we know banthashit when we smell it. We would have known you were telling the truth. You could have come to us, and you didn't."

Kylo just glares at him. "You knew I was miserable with Luke. You knew I didn't want to be a Jedi. You knew I wanted to be off flying around with you. You didn't _do_ anything with it. You didn't tell Mom to stuff it. I finished the training, but you didn't offer me a lift to get away from Luke. You left me stranded on a planet, in a life, you knew I didn't want, so why the fuck should I have assumed that coming to you after everything went… wrong… would have been any different?"

Han's silent at that, and then his voice is quiet, sad as he says, "Because it would have been. And… I'd always hoped that you could at least _feel_ that I wanted more, even if we couldn't get there. Your mom would say that to me, 'He knows you love him.' Did you?"

"Rey asked why I hated you, and I told her I didn't. I… never did. She told me I had a father who loved me, and I didn't correct her. So, enough. But I… didn't think you would, not after."

Han feels so sad at that. How many stories didn't they tell him? How much more easily could he have rested in the idea that one, or even _many_ bad decisions didn't mean it was all over… "Did you… feel it on the bridge? Could you?"

Kylo offers up a tiny nod. "And it just made me angry, because it didn't change anything. You asked me to come home, and… To what? What home? We didn't have a fucking home." He gestures to Rose and Finn's home, and to the little girl who is not playing on the floor, but is watching the adults intently, and to the sense of peace here, even with two thirds of the family gone. "We didn't have this. The _Falcon_ may have been your home, but it wasn't mine. I idolized Lando, but it's not like I got to visit him regularly, or more than twice a decade. I only went to Cloud City once. I never even saw Mom's apartments with the Senate after you shipped me off to Luke, the first time I set foot on New Alderaan was last bloody week, and I set fire to Luke's school, so what fucking home was I going to go back to with you?

"We didn't have a home, not us, not… Organa-Solos or whatever the hell it was we were supposed to be, because you and Mom didn't build one for me, and you asked me to come home and there was this aching _rage_ because the only thing that ever built a place for me was fucking Snoke, and he built a cage."

Han looks very old and tired at that. "Yeah. I know. We did. When you were little. Have a home. But… Once you were with Luke, there wasn't really… We didn't split up until after you left Luke, but we didn't keep a home after you went to him. Leia had her place. I had mine.

"We… If she hadn't gotten pregnant, we wouldn't have lasted. She'd have gone and found a prince or something, and Chewie and I would have wandered off, and…

"And… uh, no I wasn't exactly looking forward to being a father. It wasn't something I had dreams or fantasies of. And, especially, back on Corelleia, with my first sweetie… You have a kid, you've got to feed that kid, and making sure _we_ had enough to eat was a day to day thing, so…" He doesn't say it, but Kylo understands that adding a kid meant another generation of what he'd been born into, crushing poverty, early death, and kids on the grind by the time they could do anything useful. "I cared enough about both of us that we weren't going to risk it.

"And… I really wasn't thinking about it with your mom. When she said it, she caught me completely flatfooted because it hadn't ever crossed my mind that it could have been a possibility. I mean, for a good ten seconds I was really relieved she wasn't giving me the boot. And then the floor sort of opened up under me and there was a massive, 'Oh shit!' moment, followed by one of the few times where I actually managed to be something nearly as cool as my mental image of myself, because I realized she was freaking out, and… Well, at any given time only one of us got to freak out, and I figured she earned it more than I did, so… By the time I had a few moments to be on my own with my thoughts, well… That was that. I _was_ a dad. You weren't on the outside yet, and wouldn't be for a while, but…" He's looking at Paige. "The deal was done, you know?"

Kylo sighs at that. "You didn't… think about running away, or suggesting a termination?"

Han looks pretty surprised at that. "Running away, yeah. I… uh… did. Couple times, because I was sure I was liable to fuck things up pretty bad if I'd been around." And he just looks at Kylo. And it's clear between the two of them that he's still not sure if it would have worked out better if he'd just buggered off. It's absolutely clear that he's certain it couldn't have possibly ended up worse. "We'd fight, usually about something stupid, something that anyone with the sense the Force gave a button would have known not to do, but I'd done anyway, so I'd bugger off, sure you'd both be better off without me. But I kept coming back, before your Mom noticed I wasn't just away on business.

"Granted, when I'd get that look in my eyes, Chewie'd usually talk me down, too. He'd have ripped my arms off if I got too serious about leaving for more than a week or so.

"And, when she told me she was pregnant, I did tell your mom that I'd be fine with whatever it was she wanted to do, but… Even I'm not stupid enough to suggest a termination to a woman who hasn't brought it up first, let alone a member of the Church of the Force. And she never brought it up. But… You'd been cooking for a bit when she told me, so… That's a conversation she had with herself, I guess."

"So, one day, you're just…" Kylo's trying to get a better feel for what happened, and how, and… Just fill in the damn holes in his history and his idea of these people who made him.

"Working on the _Falcon._ About two months after the Death Star went up. We were still at Endor, dealing with victory, which was a lot more complicated than I expected it to be. There really wasn't a whole lot of plan after 'blow up the Death Star,' or maybe there was too much plan. Every third officer had a plan."

"And you didn't."

"Because I'm not actually an officer. I hunkered down and waited to see who'd sidle over with a plan. Your mom, though… She was sitting through all the meetings, and talking with everyone, and making plans, and working with Mon Mothma on what came next, and… I didn't really see much of her those days. Maybe catch a meal together. We didn't even get another _date_ in. She was _busy._ So, I kept busy, help mop up tiny pockets of the Imperial Navy with Luke and the rest of them, and I really was sure she asked if we could _talk_ to tell me that our fling had been fun, but she had bigger things to do, and maybe I could see myself out."

"That didn't happen."

"No. She got really tense, and she tended to get angry when she was tense, but I was pretty sure I hadn't screwed anything up recently, so for once I stayed calm, and then she's in my arms, which was fine, but then she was crying, which wasn't, and she didn't say anything, which was really worrisome, and… Eventually, she said, 'I'm pregnant,' and by the time she got that out, I'd had a million worse scenarios in my head all flying around, so I said something like, 'Oh. Is that all? I thought it was something bad.' And I guess she really wasn't expecting that, and she sort of collapsed and began to laugh, so I did, too, and then I held onto her, and stroked her back, and made sure her face was against my chest, because that's about the time when my brain caught up to my mouth and realized what she's actually said to me, and she _really_ didn't need to see my face at that moment.

"But, it worked out, and a bit later, I was holding you against my chest and… It felt right. The kind of deep, settled joy you maybe feel once or twice in a lifetime. Terrifying, too. Single scariest moment of my life. I suddenly had this _person_ I was completely responsible for, and who depended on me for everything, and who'd be… mine. The nurse told me later that I was doing fine. A lot of new dads pass out during the delivery or right after, and I didn't, so there was that.

"But, apparently, you needed more than someone capable of remaining upright and conscious, and…" He lets that trail off. After a minute he says, "I couldn't shoot your problems, and I couldn't fast talk them, and they didn't go away on their own, and the only other things I had left on my arsenal of problem fixing skills was to whack it with a spanner, which I knew wasn't going to do the job, or to run away, and that always felt… wrong.

"And what the fuck do I know? Your mom and Luke, they always knew. And, of course, your mom's a literal princess. We'd go to New Alderaan, and… I'd call her 'your highness' as a joke, but they'd _mean it._ People'd fucking _bow_ to your mom." He shakes his head and sigh. _"_ And Luke's fucking magic. He levitates and talks to dead people. People get near him and they look to the floor, and talk to him in a _whisper_ like he's sacred or something, and…

"And me. I'm one _tiny_ step above a pirate, and really the only reason Chewie and I have that step is because we didn't like taking out guys who were worse off than we were, and we weren't well enough armed to take out the guys who were bigger.

"And they _know._ And I _don't._ I'm a walking pile of mistakes, like, for example, knocking up your mom when it was utterly clear neither of us had any business trying to have or raise a kid, let alone _then._ It's not like I didn't know how it worked, but I just… went with it. They've got plans, and I've got… reacting to plans.

"All I've got is a feeling that maybe this isn't the way to go, and Chewie's backing me up, but it's not like he ever raised a human kid, and… I tried."

"I know."

Han looks at him, really looks, feels all the history of his life in those two words. "Do you?"

" _I know,_ Dad." Kylo watches Paige on the floor. She's crawling toward one of the blocks, so he gently tugs it a little further away from her. She lights up. She's never played _chase_ the block, so she goes after it, and Kylo tugs it around the room. "He was in my head… You said that; Snoke in my head. He was… All the time. Mom was upset about the 'grandpa' stuff. That was Snoke. Not Anakin. I saw him for the first time last year."

Han's quiet. "Yeah… She… didn't tell me, about him, and what he was doing… I knew about the Grandpa stuff, because you told me about that. As best I knew, your grandfather was lurking around the edges and we just couldn't get rid of the bastard. That was part of giving you to Luke. He'd at least listened to Luke in the past." And suddenly getting stuck off with Luke, and his father going along with it, makes a _lot_ more sense.

Han looks old, and sad, and he glances around this home, and Paige chasing the block that Kylo's still scooting around for her, and he says, "Both of us… Your mom and I… We… wanted, hoped, dreamed, that someday you could… be this." He gestures to Kylo, here and now, married, stable enough to keep watch on a child. "Even if we weren't good at it, we hoped maybe one day you might be. And maybe you'd get to have this. And, as best we knew, going to Luke meant that idea of a future vanished. We knew you had power, and darkness, and… There's a reason you didn't go off at three the way the Jedi used to be trained, and it wasn't just that Luke didn't have the school set up.

"But… this… and the hope of this sort of life got dimmer and dimmer, and… We knew being a teen was going to be even harder, because it's hard on everyone and… By the time you'd choked Master Hefper… We'd shifted from trying to get you to _this_ to trying to make sure you didn't have a tantrum and kill someone, so…

"Luke. And being stuck with Luke. And the life you didn't much want, but…" _You weren't killing people or yourself._ Unspoken, but Kylo understands. "I didn't know about Snoke… Not until… A few hours before. I knew you were dark. I didn't know… I didn't know that there was something I could have shot that might have helped."

"You didn't know?" Kylo's voice is almost non-existent as he says it. He doesn't know why that's shocking to him, but it reverberates through him like the crack of a whip.

"I knew you were dark. I knew you were like Luke. Neither of them ever saw any reason to tell me they thought there was a parasite in the back of your head trying to use you as a puppet, because why the fuck tell me that? I'm just your Dad…" There's the spark of a _lot_ of old arguments, also long past the point of any functional resolution. Though Leia pressing harder and harder to get Kylo under Luke's protection slots into place, along with the fire and effort she put into fighting the First Order, long before they were anything beyond a blip on anyone else's scanners.

"Probably because you would have tried to go and shoot him and just gotten yourself killed for your troubles."

"We all die, kid." He snorts at that. "Would have rather gone out like that, taken that old fucker with me, than have to…"

"Dad…" His voice is soft.

"B—Kylo."

"I needed you on that bridge. Because you wouldn't have taken the old fucker out with you. You'd have just died there, and that would have been that. He'd have owned me.

"It was a test. There were always fucking tests. And each time, another chance at breaking free vanished. Another door shut. Another tie to anything but him died. And he kept promising that, soon, soon, I'd be able to just settle into the dark. Soon it wouldn't hurt any more. Soon…

"I killed you. I fucking murdered my own father. I cut you in half while you begged me to come home. I gave myself, body and soul to the evil, and it just _laughed._ I didn't get better. I couldn't settle. I'm dark, but not evil, and I couldn't give into it, because I'm not of it, and…

"And Rey's kneeling in front of me, and he's promising that if I strike _her_ down, that this time it'll work. This'll be the magic moment where somehow—It was fucking shit! I was never going to settle, and he was using my pain, my anger, my anguish to feed himself, and all the fucking lies and promises cracked open with your body, and…

"I needed you then, and there. And you were there."

Han offers a little half smile, but Kylo can feel that him saying that, _knowing_ it, matters to his Dad. "Well, the one thing I was ever really good at was showing up at the last possible second to save the day."

Kylo sniffs. "Yeah. You are."

"Okay, enough of the mushy stuff." Han nods to Paige, who's not going after the block so aggressively anymore. "I think you tired her out. Time to go back to sleep."

Kylo exaggeratedly sighs, "Thank the gods, I'm tired, too."

"Yeah, you look it. Put her back down and go crash yourself."

Kylo nods slowly, and goes to gather Paige up.

* * *

When Rey gets back to Achc-To the sun is well and truly up.

Rose and Finn, not so much.

They look comfortable, though, snoozing together on the beach, wrapped in the blanket, and Rey smiles for her friends before making a bit of noise and deciding to go off and study the sea a bit.

She can feel them waking up behind her. "Good night?" she calls out, over her shoulder, feeling them getting dressed behind her.

She can feel the smiles, and the little smirk, and the rustling around grabbing for clothing.

And something _else._

She grins wider.

"Yeah, very good night," Rose calls out.

"Great!" Rey says.

"Just, need another minute," Finn says.

"Take your time," she gets a feel for Kylo, and then smiles at that, too. "No rush."

* * *

Finn and Rose are standing on the sand, holding the picnic goodies one second, and in their living room, the next.

Their silent living room.

Silent and empty.

A quick check on the chrono tells them that it's 07:10, so this is still during the time when Paige is in her morning sleep, but… That doesn't explain the lack of Kylo.

Rey looks really amused though, and heads through the living room to the open door to the bedroom, and points quietly inside.

Kylo's curled onto his side, mouth open, breathing deep and steady. Paige is on her back, head pillowed on his arm, also snoozing away. "He got the 04:00 wake up," Rey says, quietly. They back out a bit, and go into the kitchen area. "Looks like you two had fun," Rey says with a smirk.

 _Fun?_ There's a sleepy timbre to Kylo's thought.

 _You awake?_

 _Enough._

"Yeah," Rose says, and then gives Rey a little shove. "Gonna take me to the _Falcon,_ huh?"

Rey looks innocent. "It was his plan, I just helped."

They hear quiet footsteps, and Kylo joins them. For a second, he's just _looking_ at them, and then he grins. _Am I… feeling it right?_ He thinks to Rey.

She grins back to him. _Yeah, I think so._

"Good night, I take it?" he says.

Finn just _grins._ It's a very male, very satisfied grin. Kylo immediately smirks back at him, and for maybe half a heartbeat there's a moment of empathy and accord. Rose pokes Finn in the belly while starting to get out breakfast food. "Did she go down okay?"

"Oh yeah. She never gives us trouble about sleeping," Rey says.

That gets an eye roll out of Finn and some muttering about magic users, as he starts to put the picnic gear away.

"Yeah, well, magic means you two get to come home to a sleeping kid, so…" Kylo replies, still staring at Rose and her… glow.

The glow that wasn't there when they left.

The tiny… little… glow.

He looks to Rey and both of them grin at each other.

"What are you two smirking about?" Finn says. "Wait, were you… here?"

"Wait, what?" Kylo has the grace to look horrified at the idea of… that… in Finn's house. Hell, the only reason he was even on the bed was because they don't have a decent sofa or comfy chair in the living room.

"Okay, he's not a good enough liar to pull that look off and not mean it, so… What?" Finn's looking from Rey to Kylo suspiciously. "You look like you know a joke, and that was the only one I could think of."

"Just happy, for you," Rey says, suddenly also realizing she doesn't know what to do with this. Last time… Well, they were getting married and there was all the wedding stuff, and… she was a bit… preoccupied… and then she didn't see them again until after they were ready to tell, but now… That glow wasn't there when they left last night, so…

"You look like you had a really good night out," Kylo tries.

"We did," Rose replies, "And both of you are shit liars. You're pleased about something alright, and it's not that we had a good night out. You didn't prank us by having sex in our bed, so spill, what's got you grinning like that? Wait…" Now her eyes are glowing and she's got an idea, and a slow, wide grin spreading over her face, and Kylo and Rey both catch it, and it's the right idea, just in the wrong direction.

"Sort of. It's… related to the good night out…" Rey says, grinning. She shakes her head. " _Your_ good night out. Uh… You've got… a little glow… That you didn't have… before you left." And then she very pointedly drops her gaze to Rose's belly.

Kylo nods at Rose's wide eyes and Finn dropping the picnic blanket from shock-numbed hands. "We can both feel… well, living things. Two lives went out to picnic. Three came back. Sounds like it was an excellent date night."

There's a moment of absolute silence followed by Rose suddenly sucking in a very deep and excited breath and an all over frisson of joy just bounding through the house as she more or less leaps into Finn's arms. He catches her, head pressed to her neck, and he's very, very quiet, and it's clear that he's trembling with emotions too deep, too intense to be let out through sound.

Rey and Kylo watch for a moment, and then Rose waves them over to join the hug. Rey goes easily, wrapping herself around her friends, but Kylo holds back, fairly sure Finn does not want to be hugged by him, and also not sure if he's the kind of guy who hugs Finn even if this is a fairly big celebratory moment.

At least right now, Finn's so in the moment, in his love and the life of his second child, that he's basically oblivious to Kylo right now.

Kylo snuggles up against Rey and puts a hand on Rose's back. That seems to be a decent compromise.

A moment later, the hug breaks, and Finn's still holding Rose, his hand over her belly, his chin on her shoulder. "Can you tell… Girl or boy?" he manages to say through a choked voice.

Rey shakes her head and Kylo does likewise.

"Just a bright, steady spark of life," Kylo says.

Rey looks a little sheepish. "I… uh… honestly can't even tell that it's human, just that it is." She looks to Rose's long jacket. "You don't have a gerbil in your pocket or something?"

It's a stupid joke, but it gets a much too much of a laugh because everyone in this room is just stupidly happy right now.

Rose turns her pockets out. They're empty, and more laughter follows.

* * *

Dinner with the kids is rolling along. Rey and Rose are 'more or less' riding herd on them. And Finn's saying goodbye. Time to go get his partner(s?) from Cloud City. Time to hunt down the next deal. Time to make sure that nest egg keeps growing because he's got another chick to fend for…

He's not quite ready to leave, yet, though.

"Your man at home?" he asks Rey.

She, thankfully, doesn't ask why Finn wants him. She does focus and then nod. "Yeah, for about a minute from the feel of it. You want to talk to him?"

"Uh, yeah."

"I can port you over."

Finn shakes his head. Yes, it's convenient, but it still makes him feel mentally wiggly in a way he doesn't much like. "It's just cold right now." And blessedly, it is. For once, the skies are clear and calm.

He kisses his wife and daughter one last time, before heading out.

Kylo looks surprised when he opens the door. Finn does, too for that matter, because Kylo opened it before he knocked, but… Magic users.

"Rey's not here."

"I know," he says, stepping in. "Came to talk to you."

Kylo looks wary. "Why?"

 _Buggered if I know…_ He makes himself not think that. "I… This morning. You were really pleased for us."

Kylo nods. "I am really pleased for you." He doesn't say, _Wish I was in your shoes_ but he does, to a degree, feel it. Now may not be right, but that doesn't mean now isn't _wanting._ "Another baby, that's a good reason to be happy, right?" Then he stops. "I mean… You want another baby, right? Rose felt happy. I thought you did, too."

Finn holds up his hands. "I'm good. Yeah, we… Were planning on waiting for Paige to hit a year old, but…" His facial expression covers a lot of _but._

Kylo nods at that, smirks a little. "Yeah, but…"

They stand there awkwardly for a bit.

"Uh… When she was still on the inside, we were talking with Chewie about doing a life day party for Paige…" Kylo's nodding. He's familiar with how that works. "But we didn't get around to it. So, it got moved to her first birthday. That's the beginning of next month. I know she won't remember it, but I bet Paige would like it if you came."

Kylo smiles a little at that. "And would you like it if I came?"

Finn glares at him. Then he shrugs. "I wouldn't hate it."

Kylo nods at that. "I'll make sure I'm there."

"Good."


	55. The Black Line

4/25/2

"This is… the guy who does the numbers?" Kylo asks a moment before the meeting begins.

Kinear nods to him. "He got the reports done last night, and now we're here." There are a few things Kylo will completely toss a whole day's worth of stuff for, and a note from Kinear to him, Jon, and Schiff saying, "We need to meet, now, or tomorrow at the latest," is fairly close to the top of this list.

'We're' is Kylo, Kinear, Schiff, Jon, and Rey. "And we're the only people cleared to see these numbers," Schiff says, "And yes, General T3-4487 is absolutely on the kill immediately if it looks like he's going to retire list. With what he knows, he _can't_ leave."

 _Fuck._ Kylo mentally says to Rey and Jon. What he says out loud is, "And you honestly expect me to believe Ellie didn't read the report the second you got word it was done?"

Pat shrugs. "She got it before I did. I assume Thea's in on it, too?"

Schiff inclines his head. "Fine. You know those reports I send you about my 'bright boys' who figure out the right number for tolls and taxes? The ones who hunt down the number that gets us the most compliance for the least cost, thus netting us the most income?"

Kylo nods.

"She's the one who works those numbers. I've _never_ put her name on a report for the same reason you now wish we hadn't asked General T3-4487 to put these numbers together for us. Worst comes to worst, I've got a few of my tactical ops who aren't on the books who'll fake being the bright boys if I need them to, but…" He's shaking his head. "At this level, to do it well, you have to have someone you absolutely trust who can watch your back, read your communications, keep eyes on what's going on around you, and if you're lucky, they're good at some of the things you aren't." He glances from Kylo to Rey to Jon, point made very eloquently, and silently.

"You run into someone who's good at this job, and their partner is an airhead, pay attention, something doesn't add up, and don't rest easy until you know what it is," Kinear says.

C8 opens the door to Kylo's office. "General T3-4487 is here for your 10:30 appointment," and ushers the man in.

Kylo tends not to like this part of meetings. People come to him, which is vastly more convenient for him, but then he and his people sit there doing not much at all, waiting around, while they set up whatever it is, and generally they're _nervous_ while doing it.

This is the first one of these Rey's sat in on, and that's further off-footing General T3-4487, who knows he's got something very big, very sensitive, and very dangerous, and now he's giving it to the high command and the Master's Lady.

He looks about to pass out, and the only reason he hasn't visibly sweated through his uniform is that it's already black.

Once he's ready, he sits down. He's shivering with… It's not exactly fear, though fear is part of it. There's shame. And… something Kylo doesn't have a name for… Almost the sense of a job poorly done… And a level of fear… not… the usual flavor of it, but… fear that he's going to lose everything for this, even though it's the right thing to do.

There, under all of it. The right thing to do.

Rey squeezes his hand. This is the man looking at a mission that will likely kill him, but might save the whole, so he's doing it.

It's been a long time since anyone who's met with Kylo has been terrified to his bones, and deeper. He's looking at Kylo, but seeing him standing over the maimed corpse of his trainer, lightsaber burning bright in his hand.

Kylo blinks and breathes slowly to calm himself. If this man is this scared to tell him what's in this report, it's abundantly clear he is _not_ going to like what's in it.

Jon doesn't have great thought command, so it comes across as a scream in his head, but YOU'VE GOT TO GET HIM CALMED DOWN is very clear. And if this poor bastard is so scared Jon's picking it up…

Kylo stuffs his own nerves down, and smiles, and says, "General T3-4487, would you like a cup of coffee? Tea?"

That's thrown him for a loop, and unfortunately having done so, the man's not anymore comfortable about this than he was before. He shakes his head minutely, and steels himself. He knows this is the thing that must be done, and he's resigned to not enjoying the consequences. Vivid images of Kylo slashing the hell out of him with a lightsaber spring to mind.

Kylo stands up, hopefully making it clear that he's _not wearing_ his saber, (It's in his desk, behind the drawer that doesn't have a face. It could be in his hand in about three seconds with a little concerted thought, but… it's not on his hip.) and then fetches himself another cup of coffee. He looks to the rest of the table and gestures to the snacks, and tries to keep his voice soft and easy as he says, "Gentlemen? Rey?"

Rey leaps onto that. "A cup of tea and two of the sweet biscuits. Ostrae makes them, and they're lovely. You'd probably really like them," she says to the general.

By this point they've set the general so far off foot he's about to start hyperventilating, and apparently, he'd almost rather go up against the lightsaber. Kylo makes a mental note to try and figure out how to make the Numbers relax in his presence when they've got bad news, because clearly this isn't doing it.

"Go ahead, then," Kylo says as he sits back down, with snacks, and he does put a plate with a cup of tea and some biscuits on it in front of the General. He knows he feels better when he's got something to fidgit with (which is a big part of getting himself another cup of coffee) so maybe it'll help.

"Sir…" General T3-4487 takes a steadying breath. "We're… getting low on funds."

Kylo nods. That's been true the entire time he's been in charge. "And… I assume this is different than the low-on-funds we've been before."

T3 nods. He swallows. "We have an operating budget of 48.7 trillion credits and growing, per year. We are currently bringing in 40.2 trillion credits and growing, but more slowly than our expenses, per year."

Kylo swallows. He knew he was low on cash. He didn't realize every day he was in charge he'd been losing ground.

"And…" T3 grinds his teeth. "Due to the… unpleasantness with the Raclan Bank, no one, in the entire galaxy, will offer us credit, on any terms."

Kylo feels his teeth grind together, too. Rey lays her hand on his thigh, under the table, and he squeezes it. "Ah." He can almost imagine how Darth Tantrum would take this news, and decides that fear of getting up close and personal with his lightsaber is a rational response. And there is a little part in the back of his mind, that's very much trying to rush the front, that thinks that right now taking apart a lot of equipment with his lightsaber would be very, very _satisfying._

Rey squeezes his hand harder.

"We've been… able to stay afloat because…" his voice goes lower and a bit faster, "the destruction of the Hosnian system meant there was a wide array of creditors we didn't have to pay back, and we could shift funds to paying off our other creditors. And, after the… unpleasantness… our other creditors are, of course, willing to take payment on whatever terms we offer, so we were able to renegotiate our interest rate, but… They won't extend us any new credit."

Kylo feels his eyelid twitch. Well, it had seemed like a good idea at the time. "And we need new credit?"

"We need more income. It doesn't have to be credit, but that's generally the easiest way to get it." He has a holoprojector, and puts a graph up. It's a fairly basic graph. There are four lines. At the top, there's a black one, that's fairly horizontal, though it is minutely trending upward, away from the other three lines. There's a red one a bit below it, also almost horizontal but barely nudging upwards. There's a gray one that's trending upward fast, and a green one heading up in leaps and bounds.

"The gray line is our current expenses. The green one is the current influx of new people. As you can see, the green line pushes the gray line up. As long as the green one keeps going up, the gray one _has_ to go up, too."

Kylo nods at that.

"The red line is our critical limit. When we hit that, we can no longer afford to feed our men."

Kylo nods, not liking the space between those lines getting smaller and smaller. "And the black one?"

"That's our mechanical operating expense budget. We hit that point, and we don't have money for fuel."

Kylo looks at the black line. "So, you're saying, hit that line and the Order is, literally, adrift?"

The General shakes his head. "Hit that line and we die because we can't keep life support going on the ships any longer."

Kylo swallows, hard. "Ah…" He nods, trying to stay calm. Rey's squeezing his hand even harder, which is when he realizes that he's bruising his leg he's got such a death grip on it under the table. He lets his hand loosen, and she pats the back of it.

"Now, as I'm sure you can see, there are two ways to keep these lines from meeting. Either more credits come in, which raises the black and red lines, or our expenses get lower, which pushes down the gray one. But, if the gray line intersects the red line we are in _real_ danger. And if it crosses the black one, we start to die as our ships shut down."

Kylo makes a little 'mrph' sound and then begins to take a sip of his coffee, but decides not to because his hands are shaking badly enough he's in danger of spilling it. He's sure there's a question to ask here, probably a lot of them, but it takes him a few moments to locate one beyond just screaming panic.

Rey's still holding his hand, and he's very glad she is.

Finally, though, his brain flails around enough to locate something.

"At the current projection, when do the gray and red lines meet?" After all, it'd likely be good to know how much time he's got to try and avert his doom.

"Six months."

Kylo takes a deep breath. That's better than he was hoping. He notices that he's no longer feeling his heartbeat in his ears. "Tell me about the gray line."

"That's all of the credits going out."

"And, where, primarily, are our credits going?"

"Our expenses break into two primary categories, physical plant, and personnel. Personnel is increasing in leaps and bounds as we increase both the number of people, the training they receive, and are revamping their equipment."

It's very clear from the look on General T3's face that to him this is a problem that is very easily fixed. Stop bringing in new people. Stabilize the green line, and they're fine.

That's also, at least according to Kylo, the one thing that they cannot bend on, until they're a hair away from the red line, which if he can't come up with a miracle, is apparently six months from now.

A thought niggles around in the back of his mind. "The Citykiller fleet is done, right?"

Schiff answers that. "Yes, sir. Been done for months."

So much for that way to trim expenses.

"Good. General, how much of the gray line is us paying for droids to replace slaves?" After all, he doesn't _have_ to do that. He's probably in a strong enough position now that he can forego it.

T3 takes a moment to go looking through his notes. "Some. It's an expense. Enough to matter, not so much that it's on our top ten."

"If we stopped doing it, how far off does that push the gray and red lines intersecting?"

T3's surprised by that. "If you'll give me a moment." He starts to do the calculations.

"Master," Schiff says, it's only here, in meetings with others, that Kinear or Schiff call him Master. "A reminder. Just like with the free trade routes, if we make things too expensive for people, they will start to go around them."

"You mean fire on the recruiting stations?" Jon says, seeing how people who just lost an entire work force worth of slaves, with no chance of replacing them, are likely to respond to the people who took said slaves.

"Possibly, Grand Marshall," Schiff says, "And that makes them _more expensive._ "

"Possibly more so than paying for the droids?" Rey asks.

"Possibly, My Lady," Schiff says. "After this, the General can send me a full report on the numbers, and I'll have my bright lads see where the pain point is."

T3 looks up from his numbers. "Assuming the rest of expenses stay the same, which, of course, is what you're going to have the 'bright lads' check out, not paying for droids decreases our personnel expenses by three percent. Most of the people we're getting in right now do not appear to be slaves, and the ones that were, in many cases their owners cannot _prove_ they lost the slave to us, so that cuts down on the number of droids we've got to offer up."

Kylo wants to say, 'We make them prove it?' but decides not to. He probably doesn't need to show off how far out of the chain of command on these things he is. He will bring it up with Kinear privately. Then he blinks, remembering. Right. Some idiots were claiming farm animals were slave to get droids. Some of them were trying to offload old and sick slaves to get droids. Some of them were just claiming they had slaves run off to get droids… Kinear had someone… handle that. Apparently, it's _handled._

"For personnel expenses, right now the biggest expenditures are in training, equipping, and caring for them. We have space. In the sense of a physical place to put people. Right now, our personnel is increasing faster than anticipated, so we are at 14.3 million people. Housing them isn't a problem. Everything else, is. Training is a… pain point… right now. We have first-year training capacity for 8 million, and—"

Kylo knows this. The last time he looked at his total numbers they were at six million, and most of them were new recruits, so… "We've got something along the lines of twelve million somewhere in the basic first three years training routine?"

"Exactly, Master. As of this point, we are actually warehousing people because we just do not have enough trained… trainers to take care of them," Schiff replies.

"That's something throwing money at the problem won't fix." He looks to Kinear. "We can't get experienced trainers any faster than we already are, correct?"

Kinear nods. "Yes, Master. We have to train them first, and that takes a minimum of three years, longer in some specialties."

General T3 says. "Keeping people just sitting around, doing nothing, while we feed, clothe, and house them is a huge waste of resources. If we were to modify our current recruiting plans-"

Kylo blinks, angry, so angry at T3 for completely missing the point of doing this. It must be on his face because T3 physically winces at him, moving slightly back, waiting for the strike. Kylo makes himself pull back, makes his face clear.

Rey's thought in his head: _This is a Number. He's been trained since babyhood to feel this way._

Kylo takes a breath. "No, General, it's _not._ Think of it as… waiting for your crops to grow. Seeds in the ground do not appear to be doing anything, and even once they sprout, they are still sitting there, sucking up resources, doing, apparently, nothing. But, if you don't plant them, there's no harvest, and you starve."

T3 is not impressed. He's thinking that they've got every available inch of ground filled with seeds, and then more seeds in the barn, and seeds on top of that in the house, and more coming out of the silo, and the damn things are going to rot before they'll ever see a speck of dirt.

Kylo decides not to respond to that. "Tell me about our other expenses."

"Aside from personnel, our main set of expenses is physical plant, which is also increasing. Between capital improvements in the _Supremacy,_ capital improvements in our new colonies, capital expansion to our training locations, and the standing order we have placed for four new Dreadnoughts, money is bleeding out of the Order."

Kylo nods at that, too. The first thought he has is a basic one. "Can we put off some of the Dreadnoughts to loosen up our cash flow?"

"Ish." Schiff replies. "In the short term, the penalty for cancelling the contract is high enough it'll hurt. Longer term, it might be a good idea." He's staring at those lines.

"How long?"

T3 takes a moment, and then runs more numbers. "The penalty for cancelling two of them will push us to the edge of the redline for the next three months. If _nothing_ goes wrong, we'll stay, _just_ on the right side of it. Once the penalty is paid off, we'll drop back to a safe buffer, and stay there for an additional year and a half."

"Ah…" Kylo can feel Jon thinking _And when has nothing ever gone wrong?_ "Don't we usually build ships in house?"

Schiff glances to Jon. And Jon finally has something to say. "We designed the specs for the dreadnoughts, and we'll certainly do most of the technical work for them, but because they're supposed to be capital ships, and not warships, we hired a company that makes ships attractive, livable… pretty. To take care of the exterior and most of the visible-to-the-public interior. The final bits, where we give her some teeth and claws to go with the pretty smile, we'll do in house."

Kylo nods at that, and then says, "What's our income situation?"

T3 replies, "A third of our income is our tax base. That's coming in from the planets that were conquered by the First Order."

"And if I attempt to raise that enough to matter, they'll revolt."

Schiff nods at that. "Maybe. Or they'll start to cheat enough that our revenues will drop. Or—"

Kylo nods again. "I know, your bright boys found the sweet spot, so I shouldn't mess with it."

"As best we can tell, yes, Master Ren."

T3 continues, "Half is coming from fees levied on ships moving across our border with the Unknown Regions."

"And if I raise that much, it'll encourage smuggling. Schiff's sweet spot again."

Schiff nods at that.

"And the last twenty percent?" Kylo asks.

"Myriad sources. Tens of millions of them. Rents for shops on the _Supremacy._ The few protection contracts we have. Most of them are too small to be worth fussing over."

Kylo purses his lips, and looks to Jon, who says, "We have people looking into using our services as neutral space. If ten percent of them take us up on it, that will pay for the most recent round of 'capital improvements' to the diplomacy wing of the _Supremacy._ If we can get all of them, that'll pay for the Dreadnoughts."

"If," T3 says. "If you can get a steady income from that, it would be _beyond_ welcome, but as of yet, it's not worked into my projections, because as of yet, the number of signed contracts that are actually producing income is too small to matter." Kylo feels Rey mentally blink at that. She knows that she personally got a contract that's bringing in, over ten years, eight billion credits, and the idea that that's 'too small to matter' is staggering. "Likewise, when the colonies we have collected get to the point of actually producing something worth having, they too will be valuable, but right now we're putting more into them than we're getting out."

Kylo looks to Jon, and Jon nods.

Kylo sighs. He nods. "Okay." He sighs. "Let's start with this. I want a real audit. I want to know where we're getting money from and where it's going. There's got to be some places we can tighten things up." He takes a sip of his coffee as he says that, and feels T3's eyes burning him.

Not him. His cup. Of coffee…

He can feel a wave of annoyance aimed at him. A sense of trimming off the bits and bobs that make life worth living, for everyone but him.

Kylo's eyes narrow a little. He does not have expensive habits… Then he glances at the coffee in his hand. And remembers how shocked Poe was by it. And… Well, he knows coffee is rare and expensive, but… Shit…

He swallows, hard, again. "How much does this cost?"

T3 eyes his cup. "Sixty-two thousand credits per kilo, give or take."

A long time ago, when Kylo was young, and had first gotten Luke to agree to letting him fight with the other Padawan, he was sparring with M'Gll. It was before he had his height, so they were both about the same size, and she'd bull rushed him, got her shoulder right into his chest, elbow into his sternum, and he went down on his back, with her on top of him, and everything in his body just _froze_ when she knocked the air and light out of him _._ He couldn't think or breathe or anything.

Eventually, his body came back online and a huge, shuddering gasp filled his body with air.

And that's more or less what happened as soon as the words 'give or take' hit his ears.

C8, deciding to be helpful, adds, "And as of this month, you're drinking about two and a half kilos a month worth."

Technically speaking, he, Rey, anyone he entertains in his office, Poe (and Jacen, sometimes) are drinking two and a half kilos a month worth, still, the idea that he's going through more than a million credits a year in _coffee_ is staggering.

After a moment, he gets his breath back, and says, "I didn't _know._ "

The other people at the table stare at him in stupefaction.

"I knew it was expensive, but… A hundred credits a kilo? Two hundred? Something like that."

The rest of them blink.

"Why did no one say anything?"

Jon quietly says, "What do you think happened to anyone who suggested that maybe Snoke was spending a tad too much on golden slippers and silk robes?"

"Shit!" He inhales again, hard, the Last Night party, shit, everyone had coffee with dessert. Tiny cups, but 500 tiny cups and… His eyes go wider, if they didn't tell him about the coffee… "Do I have any other horrendously expensive habits?"

Jon shakes his head. "Nah. Rey's Order of the Maji medallion wasn't cheap, but it wasn't a kilo of coffee, either."

Kylo spends a moment just sitting there, feeling stunned. He knows, rationally that a million a year on coffee is not even the margin of error on a rounding mistake in his budget. He still feels like the most wasteful human in existence, though.

He reaches out, looks for what Rey's thinking, but apparently sixty-two thousand credits per kilo has so effectively short circuited her brain, she's not back online, yet.

He glances at Jon and thinks at him, _Next time I'm embarking on a horrendously expensive endeavor, let me know, okay?_

Jon nods. He's about to respond when Kylo thinks at him. _Just think it normally at me, I'll get it._

Jon nods again. _I had no idea you didn't know. Everyone knows this._

 _How many other times have you seen me run head first into something everyone knows without a clue at all?_

Jon has the grace to look embarrassed at that.

"Gentlemen," Kinear says, stopping the mental conversation. He nudges Kylo's cup. "Drink it or not, as you see fit. To the extent that people watch your consumption of things like this, it makes us look richer than we are. In that we go through the kind of money you spend on coffee in less than a second, every single second of every day, foregoing it doesn't matter beyond, of course, if you start asking people to forego their little pleasures, too."

That makes sense to Kylo.

"Get me a full audit. I still want to see where our money is going. Schiff, have the bright boys give me options that don't involve shutting down recruiting. That's the main value we bring to the bloody galaxy, so we're not stopping that. Jon, go chat with Ellie about… how we bring money in on those contracts of yours."

Kinear says, quietly, "It's possible that we don't have to warehouse people, Master."

It's clear by the look on his face that he doesn't want to talk about this in front of T3, though.

"General?" Kylo says.

"Nothing else to report, Master."

"Good. Uh… Set me up with a live display of those lines. I want to be able to monitor them as I see fit."

He gestures to the chart that's glowing above the table. "It already is a live feed, sir."

"Excellent, dismissed."

A palpable wave of relief washes over T3 as he grabs his things and hot foots it out.

Once he's gone, Kinear says, "We're… obviously aware of the current personnel crunch."

Kylo raises a brow.

"My best… option for what to do with them is… Imperial, and I didn't think you'd be immediately welcoming to it."

"So, you just don't tell me about the problem?" Kylo asks, feeling a flush of annoyance.

There's some challenge in Kinear's gaze, and also a sense of the history of Darth Tantrum, and gingerly handling the fragile, broken but mended, and unpredictable explosive that's in his hands. "I prefer to come to you with solutions, and me and mine are still… working on them. If we hit you with every problem as soon as it's on the horizon, we'd do nothing but talk about the things that _aren't_ working, and honestly, none of us are better off with that."

Kylo grits his teeth and sighs, mostly because Kinear's right about that. He's not sure how much _everything is falling apart all the time_ he can handle. "Fine. Talk."

"You remember asking for a report on all of the planets under the Order?" Kinear asks.

Kylo nods. And then feels a flush of embarrassment. "I didn't get through that report." He'd read a bunch of it. Probably a good five thousand planets worth, but other things kept popping up, and there's really only so many times you can run your eyes over the word 'liquidated' and not want to scream.

Kinear offers a soft smile. "Technically speaking, I didn't either. That's what adjutants are for. I did get a full report on the report. Basically, under Snoke, we had four million planets. Then you pulled us back to a manageable number given our troop compliment. Then we had sixty-thousand planets. Those were the sixty-thousand most central to our empire, and the ones we'd actually been… active… on. Now we have 18,000 inhabited planets that we've left in somewhat functional shape. We have an additional twenty-two hundred that are in _good_ shape."

"Most of the tax base," Rey says, her brain finally lurching off the fact that Kylo's coffee habit has cost more than her entire settlement on Lirium. Times two.

"Yes, Rey," Schiff says. "The other 18,000 of them range from minimally profitable to places we're losing credits in droves."

"Okay," Kylo doesn't like the sound of losing credits in droves, but he doesn't know _why_ that's happening, yet, so there might be a purpose for it.

"And we've got a lot of people who left places that weren't very good for them to come here," Kinear says.

"I'm still following," Kylo replies.

"And we have another six thousand planets that are currently not inhabited that we can, probably, fix up some. Granted, it's not like we're low on things we could do to improve the 18,000 with people already on them, too."

Kylo blinks. "The most valuable thing in the galaxy is people."

"Yes." Kinear sips his coffee. "We've got labor. We've got things that need to be done. Maybe…" He pauses to think, and starts again with, "Our current training program turns everyone into soldiers, fliers, or some piece in a military machine. But we have a huge space for civilian populations we just aren't using."

"And places we actively damaged," Kylo's starting to think he knows where this is going.

"That said, since billet space is tight in our training program, we're only taking the people who test at the highest range for each empty spot, and putting them immediately into training, and the rest are cooling their heels."

"But they don't have to be," Kylo replies. "They could be… off making improvements to the planets that pay us taxes and maybe get us more taxes that way?"

Kinear nods. "That was… part of what the Empire did. Conscript troops were conscripts who tested well on combat-oriented things. But not everyone did or could be troops, so they'd get shunted into farming or construction or mining or… street sweeping if need be. The Empire didn't waste men. They sent them wherever there was an open job."

Schiff clears his throat.

"You're going to hit me with another sweet spot thing again, aren't you?" Kylo says.

Schiff nods. "Local construction companies get very _irked_ when they suddenly don't have contracts for construction because the Empire showed up and built the damn things instead."

Kylo sips his coffee without thinking, and then does think, and feels his hand shake. _What was that? A thousand credits? Fifteen hundred. FUCK!_

Rey gently squeezes his free hand. _About six hundred credits per cup. At least, when I make it, I use ten grams per cup._ He nods at her. Understanding that _now_ isn't the time to panic about this.

He refocuses on the task at hand. "And the Empire just… shot people who mouthed off about being irked and built the thing anyway?"

Schiff nods. "Local politicians tended to like that. The Empire would offer labor. They'd see extra room in their improvements budgets because they didn't have to pay for labor. They'd bow to the Empire, and often offer up their own prison populations to pad out the labor force, as well. The job would get done. Meanwhile, the local construction team, or refuse removal, or miners, or… whatever it was, would grumble and die, or the smart ones quietly closed up shop and joined the Rebellion."

"So, we don't just march them on in and start work," Kylo says.

"Not if you want to stay popular," Rey says, starting to feel like she's getting the shape of some of the problems.

Jon's thinking. He takes a sip of his tea, almost says something, then shakes his head, and thinks a bit more. Finally, he does say, "We demand five years service. We never said what kind. And… well… I know Mum's shop would get swamped sometimes. Too much work, not enough hands. And… we're low on trainers. But we've got planets with people on them who have to have businesses that do stuff."

"And we've got labor," Kylo says. "All sorts, right? People who leave wherever it is and come here. They have to know how to do things, right?"

Kinear shrugs a bit. "On the most basic level that's true. But we do get a good number of families, or young people on their own. And… It's not a huge problem, yet, because no one's had the bright idea to try it en masse, but… Not everyone is functional, you know?"

Kylo blinks again. "Functional, how?"

"A whole slew of ways," Schiff says. "So far, we're just… warehousing them, too, until someone can figure out a 'humane' way to deal with them."

Kylo blinks one more time, and then says, "I need you to spell out functional, because all I'm thinking of is my temper issues, but I don't think that's what you mean."

Schiff and Kinear look at each other.

Kinear takes a sip of his coffee. Then he pulls out a flask and doctors it. Then he takes another sip. "Kylo, because we accept anyone, many people have taken advantage of that as a way to get rid of inconvenient people."

"I know Long and her system are using us as a way to ease the pressure on their prisons. So far, that's not fussing me too much." Apparently, everyone in her system who gets convicted of a non-capital crime gets the option of joining the Order or jail. Shockingly enough, a lot of them are not interested in jail.

"We'll get to that, and why that's another hiccough in the road to resettlement, later," Schiff says.

"But that's not who you mean by functional?" Rey asks.

"No, it's not. We are being given…"

Kylo raises a brow, _given_ is not a word he's looking for in this context.

"Many of these people cannot really… offer up an opinion one way or the other," Schiff says, nodding to Kinear who passes his flask over.

Kylo exhales low and slow, finally starting to understand _functional._

"They're either very physically damaged, or very mentally damaged, and sometimes both," Kinear says. "Some of them are very old. Many of them are sick and the kind of sick that doesn't get cured."

"So, we have people who just offload their vulnerable?" Kylo's got _ideas_ for how to deal with them.

"That's a way to look at it. Some reports indicate that we're given them because we're the best shot at an okay life for them. Some of the sick ones we actually can cure. Some of these families are so close to the edge of survival that the resources necessary to take care of someone who can't contribute will be the difference between starving or not."

That rolls over Rey in a long, depressing swell of bad memories. "If you got too sick, too hurt to work… The draught of kindness… That's what they'd call it. Better than starving." She sounds listless as she says it, feeling trapped by situations with no good answers. This time, it's Kylo gently squeezing her hand.

Kinear and Schiff both nod.

Kylo gestures for the flask and takes a sip of it himself. He offers it to Rey, but she shakes her head. She doesn't remember it, not as images, but she has the feeling that drinking to numb pain is a trap, one she shouldn't go near. Jon takes the flask, and a long sip, though, and then hands it back, nodding to Kinear.

Kylo _hates_ running into things like that. Rage is his friend, and he can righteously aim it at people like Rey's parents, but… If feeding the person who can't work starves the group as a whole… Who's he going to rage against there? The Force?

An officer is the person who makes the hard choice so the whole survives.

And in these cases… Now he's got the person who can't work, but he's also got to figure out how to feed him, and…

"Fuck," it's a soft, tired defeated sort of sound.

"Exactly," Kinear says.

Kylo takes another sip of his coffee and another sigh. "You said en masse?"

"It's just a matter of time before some society that has rules about these things decides to offload a few hundred thousand of them on us," Schiff replies.

"Shit. Uh… Okay." He rubs his forehead. The whole has to survive, and those lines are moving toward each other, and how many people can he afford to warehouse… "Put it in the regs that anyone who wants to join the Order has to be able to articulate, for themselves, by themselves, a reason for why they want to. Anyone who can't answer that question, give back to their people."

"That'll cut down on the number of children," Jon says.

Kylo drops his head to the desk.

Rey lays her hand on his back and says, "Children with parents get to come. Children with older siblings, cousins, other children, get to come. Unaccompanied children have to be old enough to say they want to join, on their own."

Kylo mutters to himself. "Parents leaving children who don't want to be left get shot on sight," but he doesn't put much voice to it, and the others pretend not to hear it. Pulling his head up, and with his full voice, he says, "And let me guess, Josh, no one wants a pile of petty criminals invading their home planet, especially if they joined us to get out of going to jail somewhere else."

"Exactly." He sighs. "Uh… we execute a lot of them, too. They get here, we put them in the holding camps, and they start robbing and raping and getting into fights, so the MPs take care of them."

"Shoot first, ask questions never?" Kylo asks.

"Pretty much," Kinear replies. "We catch you in the act, you die. We catch you after the act, you die."

"Do we have laws?"

Schiff, Kinear, and Jon all sort of look at each other.

"There's a code of military conduct that all officers have to sign," Jon says.

"Great. Do we show it to the new people? Before they join?" Kylo asks.

"No," Schiff replies.

Kylo glances at Jon, and can see that there's something in there he's not going to like. "Get someone who can produce a legal document that won't make me want to hit him with a lightsaber. Have them pare the laws down to three pages. Anyone over the age of 12 has to read and sign it to join up. Then if they start breaking those laws… Shoot the rapists and murders. Put the thieves and batterers at some form of extremely unpleasant hard labor. I assume we've got to have something, somewhere that's astonishingly awful and dangerous, too."

Schiff nods. "We do."

"Excellent. Everyone else… Can we… I don't know. Get the people on our planets to offer up apprenticeships or something? We give them free labor. They give training room and board."

"And displace the people currently on those planets who would take those jobs," Schiff says.

"Fuck. Why is this so damn hard!" Rey squeezes his hand again, but this time she's doing it because she's echoing his feelings. "Uh… The planets we broke. The things we broke on those planets. They need labor to fix them, right?" Kylo tries.

"They usually use the people already on the planet to do that," Schiff says.

"Yeah, but could they do it faster if they had more people?" Kylo asks.

"Probably."

"Good. Let's see if we can find places, people… who don't have enough people where they are. Where they need… shit… settlers. That's what I'm talking about, right?"

Schiff and Kinear nod. "Sounds like it."

"Can we just… do that? Take families and just plop them onto a new planet?" Kylo says.

"I'd imagine that would work better if they were coming with something more than the clothes on their backs," Jon says.

He grits his teeth. "Probably. Which makes it more expensive."

"But possibly not as expensive as full-time taking care of a family for five years," Schiff replies. "We can work with this. We test everyone when they come in. Take the most… attuned to our needs for our training plan. Not everyone needs to be ready, willing, or able to work a military job.

"We can build up a jobs bank. Anywhere under our control that needs people can list jobs. For people who have work but don't have people. People in our holding camps… They can apply to those jobs, and we'll get them where they need to go. That way we're not displacing the local economy."

"Think bigger," Jon says. "This is just a matter of matching jobs with people. Everyone on those planets is supposedly an Order Citizen. We can get the computer hub up and working, like the ID register. People put up jobs, and apprenticeships, and whatever that needs to be done. We've got everyone's test results. Jobs go in, search for people who meet the basic criteria, job offers go out. And anyone, from anywhere, in the Order is an option. Local doesn't matter. Everywhere in the Order, everyone wearing the Hexagon, is local. The computer matches them up, and if they come to terms, great, we provide transportation, and off they go to become happy little taxpaying citizens of the Order."

Kylo likes that. He's smiling. "That's the idea. We're the… lubrication that keeps the machine moving. We get people where they need to go, and let them figure out, more or less, where that is." He thinks about the list of planets under his control. "But citizenship requires service. Five years just… living… making a home and businesses and clawing a life out of the wreckage we left behind on some of those planets. That'd be worth citizenship, right?"

Kinear nods at that. "A reclamation program… Especially for people who know how to terraform, that'd be something we could do. The worst planets of the bunch are naked bedrock right now. But we've got some we didn't destroy that thoroughly." He laughs dryly. "We're going to colonize our own planets."

Kylo sips his coffee. And then he really looks at it. _Really_ looks at it.

Rey catches what he's thinking, and she looks at the vase on the conference table. The vase holding the flowers from Alderaan. She pulls it to them, and hands him the dried spray of coffee flowers, with a few dull red coffee cherries on it. "We get farmers, right?"

"Some. We mostly pull out of urban areas, but that's because most of our recruiting stations are in urban areas, because that's where people are," Kinear says.

"Some…" Kylo keeps looking at the withered branch in his hand. "C8, coffee isn't the only plant going for thousands per kilo, right?"

"Not at all, sir."

"Huh…" He looks at Kinear and Schiff and Jon. "We've got dirt, and we've got farmers, and I'm sure we've got some sort of solar energy. That's the ingredients to a farm. C8, I want a list of every plant you can find that fetches more than twenty-five thousand credits per kilo."

The other three are starting to get where he's going.

Kinear looks pleased. "Ellie tells me New Alderaan, famous for farming technologies, wants our support in certain internal matters."

"Agronomists… That's what we're talking about needing, right?" Rey says.

Kylo and Kinear nod.

Schiff's got the beginning of a smile. "Usually, if something is that sort of expensive, it's either very hard to grow, or there's a cartel controlling the production of it."

Kylo nods. "Probably can't do much about hard to grow. I very much doubt there's a cartel we can't beat into doing business with us. Say… offering up a few kilos of seeds."

"A little exuberant involuntary patriotism?" Jon says with a straight face.

"A gift to ensure ongoing goodwill," Schiff replies, eyes glowing, face straight.

Kinear settles back, and stretches. "You know, it's been a while since Drogan the Hutt and I had a chat."

"They're into recreational pharmaceuticals, gambling, and prostitution. I don't think that's what Kylo's talking about," Schiff says. He looks to Kylo, who shrugs. They could be talking about that, right? If the price were high enough. "And honestly, even if he were, since we dropped the prohibition on the pharmaceuticals, the price for them dropped like a rock in any territory we control. I doubt any of the raw plants are over 10K per kilo."

"No, not anymore," Kinear replies, "and also not how I'm thinking of this. They know who is in the kind of markets we want to move into. And where the weak points are. And… not to put too fine a point on it, they've been a trifle miffed at us since we legalized moving… well… everything they're into, through our space, and, as you said, the prices dropped like a rock, so offering up a nice gesture in their direction will go away to preventing knives coming for our backs."

"And… finding out who runs the sort of thing we'd like to get into, and then… having a chat about goodwill gestures…" Kylo says.

"Will go a ways toward not ending up in a situation where the largest organized crime family on the rim decides that our border patrols are getting tiresome," Kinear says.

"And that's a good thing?" Kylo asks, thinking he could probably take the Hutts, and then realizing the Empire, who were willing to fight a hell of a lot dirtier than he is, _didn't._ And the New Republic, or for that matter the Old one, didn't even _try._

"At least for the time being," Schiff replies. "If that damned gray line ever drops low enough, maybe that'll shift, but for now…"

For now. They all look at the chart still glowing over the table.

Kylo nods. "Jon, you and Ellie get Rey and I invites to… Anywhere and everywhere that looks like it'll put the right people in our orbit. People with money and problems."

Jon's clearly thinking something.

"Just say it."

"I think for right now, especially since you haven't done any of them yet, we've got you booked at max capacity. You've got to be fun and fresh and charming at these things, in addition to just showing up, so…"

Kylo waves that away, and feels Rey's relief at it. "Yeah, great, fine."

"Once we have a better idea of how this works though," Rey says.

Jon nods.

Schiff settles back in his chair. "To sum up, we're changing up our policy for how we take people. You've got to be capable of articulating a reason for why you're joining up, or in the company of someone who can do it for you who is _also_ joining up. We need some sort of basic laws of the land, and people who join have to agree to follow them.

"We're going to build some sort of jobs bank, and anyone, anywhere in the Order, has access to it, and we'll provide transport to get our people from one place to the other.

"Five years service is still necessary for citizenship, but those five years may be terraforming, or settling on one of our less desirable planets, or working a job somewhere that needs people."

Jon breaks in. "How do we do our taxes?" At least, as best he knows, he's never paid them, and now he's starting to wonder if he should have been.

"Income, usually. Though if you work directly for us, or sell to us, you either don't pay or minimize what you pay," Schiff says. "We don't pay taxes on our income because it'd be stupid. We're already getting paid out of the main fund. Likewise, if you're on a planet of ours, and say, one of the farmers keeping us in food, you don't pay income tax on anything you made selling to us. We offer lower prices for what we buy, but we don't make you pay tax on them. It's just cleaner that way."

"But if you're the guy who sells the farmer his seeds?" Rey asks.

"You'll pay taxes on all your income."

Jon's nodding. "That works. Five years service, or five years of paid taxes, you get your citizenship." Jon's eyes light up. "That'd make most of the adjuncts on the C, D, E and F decks citizens, too. They'd like that."

Kylo thinks about working on Luke's farm, and what they did to make it work. "Five hectares of reclaimed land?"

Josh thinks that sounds good, but he's got an idea for better. "Ten, but for every ten you reclaim, you get to keep five, free and clear. That should get us settlers. They'll cherry pick the bits that are easy to reclaim at first, but we can sell the half we keep to people who want to settle and don't want to put the really hard work in, or use it for things like roads and trading outposts, and they'll pay taxes on whatever it is they do with the parts they keep."

"C8, are you recording this?" Kylo asks, because he knows it won't all stay fresh in his mind.

"Certainly, sir. I'll have notes ready before the Grand Admiral and Marshalls are back to their offices."

"Thank you. Uh… Pause production on one of the Dreadnoughts?" Kylo says.

"That'll likely free up some cash without killing us when whatever blows up blows up in the next few months," Kinear says.

"C8…"

"I've already sent the communique requesting the pause on the one ship. And we've also already—" And they see the gray line leap up, "paid the penalty for not keeping up with our contract."

They all stare at the graph.

"I already hate this thing," Kylo says, looking at his coffee, thinking about sipping it. Looking at it gets him thinking again. "New Alderaan… What do we have that they want? We need to give them something to get a few agronomists, here? Right?"

"I think that's going to be something we'll talk with Heloise and Samanth about, without the recorders going," Rey says.

"Okay… Uh…" Kylo looks at the stars spinning around them. "Was that all?"

They share a look, but Jon's the one who says it, _"All?"_

"Yeah, I know. Uh… Droids for slaves, that was on there, too," Kylo says to Schiff.

Schiff nods. "My bright boys will run the numbers and get back to you. It's entirely possible that that may be the sort of thing where we assess local threat levels and act accordingly. Assuming you approve of that."

Kylo sighs at that. He'd made a big deal of not letting rumors of another Starkiller out to keep people in line, so he can see why Schiff may not be sure if the threat of violence is something he wants here.

"I'm fine with this. People come to us. And if we've got to point guns at them to stop their owners from grousing about it, I'm okay."

"And if we have to shoot?" Kinear says.

"Shoot," Rey's the one who says it, but Kylo doesn't disagree.

"That will make things more expensive," Schiff says.

Kylo grits his teeth, and then stops when Rey says, "Poe."

He blinks. "Right. We're working around that." He looks around again. "Are we… good?"

Kinear stands up. "For now. We'll start bouncing it around with our seconds and thirds and fourths, and then you'll get more reports, and we'll keep tweaking from there."

"And pray those two lines don't cross," Schiff says.


	56. The Farmer King

4/25/2

When Jon, Schiff, and Kinear have left, Rey and Kylo look at each other. There's a breath when they're both still looking calm, and then it cracks and shatters.

Kylo feels a wave of exhausted jitters break over him at managing to keep himself from beating the shit out of anything during that.

"I… You should leave." He doesn't want to rage in front of her. Sometimes, he just has to break stuff, but he doesn't feel like she needs to see him do it. And right now, he wants to pull his saber and cut everything in this room to pieces.

"Fuck that. I'm scared, too. Let's… Go to the training gym." She's looking up at him, eyes intense, and he can see she's trembling, too.

"You want to… fight?"

"Yes! Let's go kill things!" Because this feels awful. This feels hopeless. Even with a plan, this feels like just staving off death, slowing it down… The gray line is hovering behind them as they stare at each other, completely aware that it won't change anything, but it might make them _feel_ better.

And that's worth a lot.

"I love you." And he means it, deeply, devotedly, and right now, that's worth a lot, too.

"You should. I want to kill things and throw up."

"I think that's mostly me." His knees also feel loose and shaky. He _needs_ to fight right now.

"Eight trillion credits. We're EIGHT TRILLION CREDITS SHORT…" She's feeling herself moving from trembling to shaking. And he's got her wrist, and they're in the training gym.

He shoots home the bolt on the door and starts to pull off his blacks. They're too finicky to really fight in. He's not ever fussed about training in just trousers and gloves. Rey's outfit is too nice for fighting, though, and he'd rather not get a visitor in here if she's topless.

Rey's looking around, muttering _eight trillion_ over and over. It's very clear that she does not, generally, go beat the shit out of things when she's feeling stressed out, because she doesn't look like she knows where to start. She turns back to Kylo, seeing him in his trousers and boots, and that seems to jerk her into a somewhat better mental space. She does smile a bit at that. "We are fighting, right?"

He pulls two training sabers and then tosses one to her. "How hard do you want to go?"

She spins it around in her hand, feels the swish and the movement of it. It's _good._ Stable, satisfying. You can fight your problems, or run away from them, and neither of them like running away. She keeps staring at him, black trousers, boots, gloves, and a training saber in his hand. "How hard do you need to give it to me?"

He blinks slowly at that. She can feel his mood start to lift at that comment, and hers follows. He doesn't say anything. though. She's setting the boundaries for this.

"Nothing I can't heal in less than ten minutes."

Kylo nods. He'd really rather like a few good licks of pain right now. Something to feel real, and here, and grounding. Something he can pull off of and resettle himself. "I'm good with that. You want to take your shirt off or pull your hair back?"

She does notice he's got his hair back now and seems to keep some ties around here. He pulls one of them to her, too. She does up her hair and tosses off her shirt. Her eyes widen a bit, mostly in curiosity, because she can feel this is sparking some more intense non-combat-oriented interest in him.

He just shrugs a bit. "I don't think I ever gave you any reason to think I didn't like fighting you, did I?"

She swishes the training blade around a few more times. "You did mention something about not wanting any more scars from me."

"Yeah, but I also said I was game to fight. I don't want to bleed for this…" Maybe not entirely true, but he doesn't want the kind of hit that'll scar. "I'm perfectly fine doing it for kicks though." Plus, this time she's not angry with him, which is also making him enjoy the idea of a fight, more.

"Good to know," and then she leaps at him, aggressive, moving fast and jagged, and Kylo falls back, _grinning_ bracing himself to take the strike. He does, it cracks across his chest and shoulder, stinging with a burn, and he beams at it. _This_ is what he needs right now. His arm is up, his blade moving, as he spins into better position.

Rey's flying with it. This is better than fretting. It's cutting through the hopeless and helpless, fast. And it seems to be doing the same for Kylo. No matter what, no matter how bad the news, he can _fight._

"Yeah, love, come at me! Give me your anger, I can take it!" His eyes are sparking as he deflects shot after shot, dodging right and left.

"You're not attacking," she says, training blade missing his head by centimeters.

"Give me some time. I'm learning. Hard though it may be to realize, I've never actually really attacked you, love. You've always come at me."

"Really," she says, starting to breathe hard. That's not exactly how she remembers it, but it could be true.

"Really." That sounds too damn good, too damn dirty, coming out of his mouth like that. Then the blade that had been reversed, tucked behind his arm as he dodged out of the way is suddenly coming at her and she's twisting back, trying to get her blade into the path of it, and they strike a loud, jarring crack, one both of them feel deep in their bones and thrumming into their shoulders.

"Fuck, that's good," Rey says to him, riding the feel of that hit.

"It really is," he's leaning down into her, making her take his weight, using his height to his advantage, and she makes a little kissing gesture before letting herself fall back, taking him down as she twists out of the way. He rolls with the fall, coming up on his feet seconds later, flipping back to face her easily.

"We really should do this more often," Kylo says.

"We should," Rey replies, dodging another blow. She gets her saber up, slicing deep and even into his with another hard, solid hit.

Again, it's _good._ The power, the speed, the _hit._ The feel of it coursing through the blade to hand and arm and shoulder.

His next shot gets her in the shoulder. She winces and hisses; it's hot after all, and he wasn't just playing; it hit _hard._

He drops his training blade and is immediately at her side, kissing the burn.

She pushes him away and lifts the saber to his grip. "I'm not some little fancy flower that'll die if it bruises. Come on."

He stands, blade at his side, and smiles at her, before gesturing for her to come to him.

"Well, if you want it that way," she says.

"I always want it when you're giving it to me."

She leaps forward again, putting him on defense. He's moving back, twisting, before he leans in for a hard, deep kiss.

She kicks his leg out from under him and lands on top of him, their blades skittering away.

He's already snaking his hands up her back to pull her breast band off. "I'm already liking this better than any other training fight I've ever had."

"Really," she asks breathing hard, as both of his hands slam to the floor, pinned by her Force. "How about now?"

"Shit, Rey!" He can lift his head, but his hands are going exactly nowhere. There's a huge grin on his face, though.

"You like this?"

"A lot. You feel it, don't you?"

She does, flowing between them, hot and ready. It's the emotions of the fight, of fear, and anger at the things that can't be changed, not right now, maybe not ever, the things they can't make better. It's hopelessness and despair, all rolled into a fight, and rolled over again into the only thing that destroys fear, banishes hopelessness, love.

He's tenting his trousers, and she's not just wet with sweat.

And of course, life. The call to life. To pleasure. To the good things they can pull out of this fucking mess of a universe.

"And this?" she asks as she settles on his lap, rocking against him.

He groans up at her. "You know I like that."

She touches his wrist, through the glove. His arm strains a bit but doesn't move. "And this?"

"Yes, I like that, too." He's never spoken about how much he enjoys the idea of her pinning him, but it seems awfully clear she's got the idea, now. He plants his feet and arches up against her, letting her feel how much, the long thick press of him between her thighs.

"Distracting in a good way," she says as she meets grinds down on him.

Now he's breathing hard, as her finger worms under the edge of his glove. "Very good." He arches again, looking to find a rhythm against her.

A long groan. Him? Her? Both. Probably both. The emotions are raw, and the lines between Kylo and Rey are starting to blur, starting to bleed away in color feels and the rush of so _much_ between them.

She stands up fast, pulling off her trousers and yanking down his, feeling pulled toward him, pulled _into_ him… His eternal, luminous… him. The Kylo/Ben/Life that defies name and boundaries, that glows through his skin, that isn't bound by the shell of this body.

He's arching up toward her, pulled to _her._ To the life that inhabits Rey, that makes the shell more than the sum of its parts.

It's not sex. Not just mechanical slippery friction. Or it is, mechanical slippery friction in its ideal state. All of it flows together. Life and love and fear and hope and responsibility and desire to run, and it's _glowing,_ alive, between them and the slip/slide thrust/grunt lick/kiss _glow_ of it.

On one level, he's standing now, Rey's bum in his hands, legs over his arms, her arms around his neck, going as hard and deep and fast as possible, bodies chasing pleasure, chasing surcease from fear.

On another level they're energy, luminous, whirling to and with each other, melding, supporting each other through the fear, and celebrating their own, internal, eternal life.

And after, shuddering and slowly winding back into their own heads, own physical forms, the problems aren't gone, and the fear isn't vanished, but they're in a better place to deal with whatever comes next.

* * *

Jon has things he's supposed to be doing right now. A lot of them. An unending pile. Part of why he's got his own datapad on him at all times, so he can just get to it while he's in this fucking lift for the next at least an hour as he slowly rises the multiple klicks to where the next job is.

But the pad is in his back pocket, and he's not reaching for it. And instead of keying in the floor his office is on, he hits the button for I-Deck. After all, he is supposed to be there later this afternoon. That's on his schedule for today.

Meet with Mum and Ellie, see about the continuing _look_ of the Rens and get them in front of more people in the hopes they can drum up some credits.

That makes him feel flat.

Which is why he's not going to his office.

He tabs a very familiar number into his comm. "Hey, you're on board today, right?"

Poe's voice replies. "Yeah. I am. You looking for company?"

"Very much so. I'm an hour away."

Poe's voice sounds pleased. "I'll be in my flat."

"Good. See you soon." Jon's a little worried about how much better he feels saying that. A lot worried. But it's at least a different worry. One that's in his hands and under his control and he can do something about it. Like telling himself that it's okay for him to genuinely look forward to having lunch with Poe. That this is _normal._ That he's allowed to feel genuine… affection for someone else. That he's not betraying Lane. (Though that one's hard to swallow, and he rubs his wedding band as he thinks it.) Em talked about this when she was getting serious about her new man. How it felt… wrong… like a sin… to really enjoy someone else.

So… normal. This is a thing people do.

As opposed to try and find a way to make eight trillion credits pop up out of the ethers.

* * *

Later, calmed down, and dressed (though in more casual clothing) Kylo and Rey are back in his office, mostly _not_ trying to think about the huge financial black hole hiding just a outside of view. Mostly, they're going over reports.

"Ah, good, you're back," C8 says as he heads in. "I have the report you wanted."

He hands over a chit that Kylo pops into his data pad, and they both read,

Coffee 62,580 C/k

Sirguran Truffles 55,098 C/k

Kettlbrominine Figs 48,987 C/k

Vanilla Orchids 45,999 C/k

Saffron 42,098 C/k

"Credits from dirt?" Kylo asks, staring at the report.

"I expect it's somewhat more involved than that," C8 replies. "But if you go to the next report, I took the liberty of compiling where those plants grow, and the most similar biomes we have inside our own territory. Some of them are actually populated and might be capable of producing plants in the next few years."

Kylo sighs. He looks at Rey. "So… My cousins are spending what they consider a blindingly stupid amount of money on resuscitating dead biomes in an attempt to bring Alderaan back from the dead, and all we've got to do is offer them something they want in order to try and pry some people from them who'll show us how to take a collection of blighted planets that we intentionally destroyed and turn them into farms, preferably ones that grow extravagantly expensive luxury produce."

Rey looks at him with a somewhat amused smile on her face. "That's the plan, I guess. And somewhere along the lines we need to shift recruiting enough to locate enough people who know how to grow things to get those plants into the ground, making money for us."

"And it'd be really nice if I can do it, somehow, without spending any more money on it, and get it up and producing in less than eighteen months." And they've once again sighted the black hole. Or, more precisely, the current projection for when the gray line touches the red. His head lands on the desk, and she rubs his shoulders a bit.

Her hands are soothing, her words not so much, "While at the same time shifting your recruiting policy to limit the number of slaves you've got to pay for to tighten up operating expenses while also not choking the number of people coming in."

Kylo sighs and looks back up, "Which means talking to Poe."

Rey thinks for a moment. "Last I checked, he's on ship today, so…"

He nods, also getting a feel for Poe. "Up on I-Deck, which I keep meaning to go up and visit, but haven't because…"

"Yeah." She understands the territory covered by 'yeah.' "When's your next meeting?"

Kylo checks his pad. "Tomorrow morning at 08:00." They both look at the pile of reports they're supposedly going through, but mostly not. "Feel like exploring I-Deck? Maybe getting dinner on F-Deck after. Let people see us. Go do some more handsome pricing and whatnot?"

She smiles a bit at that. "Sure." Rey takes a moment to think to Poe, _You busy right now?_

 _If it really matters, no, otherwise I'd rather keep doing what I'm doing._

Rey's got the sense that Jon's around Poe and decides they can take the long way up. _How about an hour from now?_

 _An hour from now, I'm pretty much free. Why?_

 _We're heading to I-Deck and have a proposition for you._

She's got the sense of him eyeballing Jon, who must have headed straight up after their meeting. _Interesting. You want my lunch companion to stick around and join our chat?_

 _Likely wouldn't hurt._ She can feel Poe smirking Jon, and the sense of Jon being relieved about something.

 _See you in an hour, then._

* * *

"And there's a solution to your problem," Poe says to Jon, as they finish up lunch.

"Which one of them was talking in your head?" Jon asks.

"Rey, this time, though I assume Kylo's nearby. Apparently, something is up, and they want to talk to me about it," Poe says, pointedly. Jon's been chatting brightly about how things are starting to perk up on the diplomacy floors, construction is speeding up, and he's getting a lot fewer reports about targets not being met, and very pointedly _not_ talking about anything else. And Poe know the smell of evasion when it's waved under his nose. (And, he also didn't miss that Jon's apparently got a new cologne, which he wouldn't mind getting closer to, at all, but that's neither here nor there.)

"Yes, something is _up,_ and I'd prefer to not be dealing with it for the next," he checks his chrono, "twenty-seven minutes, unless you've got something that gets me out of visiting my mum."

"I might. Though I still think I should just go with you."

"First off, we're talking shop, not a social call, and secondly…" He doesn't say, 'You aren't my boyfriend' because… Well, whatever the fuck this is… "My mum's an Imperial from the old days and…"

Poe waves that off. He knows what Jon didn't say. "Yeah, you've mentioned. She didn't shoot me the last time we worked together. Besides, moms like me, and you want someone to take the focus off of you, so…" He sips his drink. They're in his flat on the I-Deck, which is starting to look like a place where someone actually lives. Granted, in this case 'lives' means something along the lines of, spends one out of four nights here, but it's an actual place, that isn't _Micah,_ where he's regularly sleeping, and BB's got a charging port, so… That's home, right?

Who knows, if he's feeling really frisky, he may decide to do something crazy like put a picture up, or maybe get some furniture beyond the dining table they're sitting at? (Well, he does have a bed and a chair in his bedroom, but he's hoping for vastly different circumstances the first time he brings Jon there.)

"So… It sounds like one or both of them is headed this way, and now I've got an excuse to skip out on Mum."

"Yeah. They'll be up in an hour or so."

Jon sighs. "He's a higher priority than she is, but… Shit. They'll talk to you about it, and me sitting here enjoying your company isn't going to make it go away," and he begins to explain what this morning's meeting covered. The short version.

At the end of it, Poe sags a bit, and sighs, and mouths the word _fuck,_ before saying out loud, "I'd hoped I was done with this when the Resistance folded."

"Got some experience living on credit and nerve?"

"Something like that. Scrimping and saving and shorting one bill to pay the others and writing IOUs instead of transferring credits into the pay accounts… It's a shit way to run an organization."

"Yeah. I… Well, I don't actually know, but I can empathize." Jon takes another sip of his drink and eats a bite of his spiced garbanzo stew. "Anyway, part of being up here is to talk shop with Mom in half an hour," (Technically, it's an hour, but it'll take him a good twenty-five minutes to walk to the side of I-Deck his mother is on. He is not at all fussed that Poe didn't decide to move right next door to her.) "is that we're working on getting the two of them out and about more to try and entice people to give us large chunks of credits, and I want to check in and see how we're doing on costuming for them for these events, and since we're getting into range of a wedding date and whatnot, I'd also like to see how that's going."

Poe nods at that. "So… You just… 'Hey Mum, I need Rey and Kylo to look like fashion plates for 'insert name of gig here,' and she does it?"

Jon laughs, and laughs, and laughs at that. He then says, "No," completely flat and deadpan.

Poe lifts a bite of stew to his lips and waits, eyes warm, for Jon to keep talking.

Jon rolls his eyes a bit, but then says, "I'm here. On board. You know, on this ship. Doing Order stuff. So, it's been more than a decade since I've actually had any feelers in the outside world, which means I don't know, not really, not anymore, where the social whirl is or who's in it. She still does. So, she and Ellie do their thing together, with gods alone know what on the lists, and they come up with venues and ideas. Then I go visit, get the updates, and since I 'know them better' I'm the one who goes through the lists to see which ones we can take them to and have it work well."

Poe nods. "Okay, makes sense. So, what's up next?"

"Uh…" Jon rubs his forehead. "Internal interview soon. We're going to start splashing them all over our newies, and the wider galaxy will re-broadcast. So, we're going to need a collection of cute and casual, 'look at how pretty and smart and fun our people are' outfits for that."

"Outfits? Plural? You're going to get them to sit still, in front of cameras, for _multiple_ interviews."

Jon nods.

Poe laughs. "Do they know?"

"Not yet, and I don't need you mentioning it, either. He's easier to manage when he's calm, and he's got more than enough not-calm on the horizon right now, so we do not need him stressing out about this."

"Got ya." He's still chuckling. "How about serious stuff?"

Jon nods, understanding 'serious' to mean, actually brings in credits, as opposed to stuff that potentially brings in credits. "Got Kylo on his own for the first time a bit later. He's 'getting to know' the Kress, because they want to 'feel him out' before finalizing a deal where we take over their internal security with the Rim."

"What's that sort of contract run?"

"I don't remember the net, but gross is on the order of 150 billion for five years."

Poe whistles. They ran the entire Resistance, for ten years, on less than that.

"Kylo also doesn't know that number and likely doesn't need to, so..."

Poe nods. "Keeping them calm. Got it. I saw how Rey reacted to the eight billion contract, so..."

Jon nods back at that. "Then Rey and I'll show up for the dinner later that night, and the final round of contract signing in the morning, assuming they like what they see. Rey's hitting Naboo soon. Ellie and Mum have that in hand. The first of the meet and greet and get to know people galas is the middle of the fifth month. And I know there's at least one that's going to be here, but the details are not in my head right now."

Poe nods at that. "Rumor has it we were hoping to get to Canto at some point to bankroll the… non-Order stuff."

"Last I heard on that one, we were still working on figuring out how to get in and not have everyone immediately twig to what Rey and Kylo are doing."

Poe smiles. "I may have an idea on that. When can you get it onto the calendar?"

"Beginning sixth month, late fifth, probably? How fast do you need it?" He is, after all, aware of the fact that Lirium is getting less functional by the minute.

"Faster the better, but it's not like it's got to happen tomorrow."

Jon nods. "Okay. What's the plan?"

"Chewie took Jacen gambling. And here's the trick. Jacen's watching the cards… and losing. Chewie's winning, because he's got a constant stream of intel in his head, subtle-like. And Jacen, if he works at it, can make people decide to bet more, or stay in longer than they should, play stupid, you know?"

Jon's nodding along getting the idea. "So… Send them in, in full regalia, as themselves, and… Then have a ringer at another table who's going to clean up?"

"That's the idea. Maybe a few ringers."

Jon remembers Kylo's note about him joining in on some of these. "You're dragging me to Canto, aren't you?"

Poe just about sparkles at him. "And you're going to love every minute."

And the kicker is, he probably will. Though thinking more about that… "It's not a bad venue, you know? Assuming we can get them to really play the role. Go, meet people, be pretty. Look cool and like they're having a good time. See who wanders by to chat, and what about. People already go there to make deals in a relaxed sort of place. We can… suggest that we may not have Canto's amenities, but we do have better security and discretion."

"So… a few days? Maybe two days and two nights?"

Jon's nodding.

"Ever heard the phrase two birds with one stone?"

Jon looks curious. "Uh… No. I'm not entirely sure what a bird is. It's slang for a ship, and they lay eggs, but I've never actually seen one."

Poe shakes his head, and then nudges Jon. "City boy," and gets to explaining.

* * *

"So, you've never been up here before?" Rey asks as they head to the elevator on the F-Deck. (Vastly faster to port to the F-Deck, with a do-not-look spell, and then ride the elevator up to I, rather than take the almost hour to go all the way up.)

"I honestly don't think there was anything up here until Jon decided to turn it into a space to stick visitors." That's not true. Before Starkiller, it was likely additional personnel space. But in those days, he was on the _Finalizer_ and had no reason to know who lived where or how on the _Supremacy._

The elevator doors open and… It looks… fairly similar to the residential area of F-Deck they ported to. It doesn't sound similar, though. It's immediately noticeable that there are _a lot_ fewer people up here. There's no tram traffic, and very few people wandering around, none of them in uniform.

Rey's thinking that if they've got about six million people they don't know what to do with, at least some of them might want to start by colonizing the I-Deck. She can feel Kylo recognize that thought and tuck it away to find out what possible pitfalls are hiding in that idea. "And now?" she asks.

"I think I read a report about it a while back. Adjuncts like Jon's mom. I think we've got a few diplomats here. There's maybe an embassy or two. I know this is where we tuck people who come to take advantage of our space, at least for the time being. The reports say we'll move them to XX, YY, and ZZ once they're up and running. Some officers who have their own flagships decided to get flats up here, so they've got a place to stay when they're on board. Probably some of the shop owners. And I think we've still got some people who haven't bothered to leave since the Last Night party."

"I hope you're charging them rent."

Kylo looks around at the empty space. "Me, too."

They get to the first of what, on the F-Deck, would be a market zone, but up here is two shops, three food carts, maybe twenty people, and a lot of empty space.

"Supposedly Poe and I are going to find a place to put a chapel up here at some point."

Kylo's nodding along at that. "Doesn't look like competition'll be too stiff."

They keep heading through, and are once again in another residential zone. "Think the doors are unlocked?" Rey asks.

Kylo shrugs. They can both feel no one lives in the apartment next to them. "Why?"

"Well, maybe it's not the greatest offer ever, but… Maybe there are some trained agronomists who might like a nice, free apartment, and the opportunity to see the galaxy."

That doesn't sound bad to Kylo, at all. He wiggles his fingers. "Want to see if this is the master key to any handprint lock on board?"

"Sure."

He places his palm on the pad, and after a moment the door pulls back.

"I suppose that's good to know," Rey says, as they both peek into the apartment. It's fairly dim, barely illuminated by the light from the hallway. "We're too deep in for window access, aren't we?"

He nods, and feels around, finds the lighting panel and turns them on. "I don't know why I'm surprised that this looks like Jon's place."

Rey inclines her head. If he set these up, the idea that they're similarly arranged isn't bizarre. Likewise if this was here before… well, it probably dates to around the same time Jon's flat got set up. "Walls and stuff moves so you can personalize, right?"

He shrugs. "I'd assume so, but it's not anything I've ever tested. Water and refuse probably stays the same, so it likely can't be reconfigured too radically."

She looks around. "How many of these do you think are up here?"

"It's got to be smaller than F-Deck, and that's configured to hold more than four million officers. Three million flats? Some stupidly huge number, I'd assume. F-Deck is the full sixty by twenty, so up here we're likely at… Fifty-three by seventeen. Maybe a bit more."

Rey's looking around. "F-Deck's not full, is it?"

"No. There are people all the way through it, because we try to house people somewhere near where they work, but I think my current officer corps is something like a million people." He watches the way she's looking at the apartment. "Thoughts?"

"Just that this too looks like a good place to encourage people to settle. How many people in those 'holding camps' would be fairly happy to get a flat up here and start a business? Or on any of the other decks?"

"We'll find out," Kylo replies.

* * *

Jon takes a quick breath before hitting the door chime.

"Come in," his mother's voice, sounding slightly exasperated. She's mentioned that he doesn't have to knock. He's _welcome_ in her home, but… Over his dead body. That's an intimacy he's not comfortable with, not with her, and not here. After all, this isn't the home he grew up in.

His hand does open the door, though, so it's only a moment of pressure and scanning, and then he's in.

"Jon!"

"Hi, Mum. Ellie."

"The Ladies," as he likes to think of them, are 'convening.'

And apparently, for the purpose of this endeavor, he gets to be an 'honorary' lady. He's idly thinking that he needs to start dragging Rey to these things. Being involved in things like wedding planning, and managing your man's wardrobe are traditional wive's duties, so she might as well at least show up on occasion.

"Grab a cuppa and let's get to it," Ellie says, which makes him think that she's already aware of bigger things and wants to get dealing with them.

He does grab a cup and skips the biscuits.

Mirina raises a brow at that. "No sweets?"

"Just had lunch."

She grins at him, having him here in her clutches, she gets to start asking the kind of questions he'd normally skip. "And how is your pilot?"

He doesn't miss the way Ellie's watching and listening, as she's supposedly going through the calendar of possible events.

"Poe's fine."

"I see him around; you know? Looks like he's moved in."

Of course, she does. They live five klicks apart, but she _sees him._ Or he just goes wandering around where she is. They probably chat about the non-existent weather or something like that. He grits his teeth. Next thing he knows, Poe'll probably start sidling up and asking to take Mirina to tea and… doing whatever it is he does so 'Moms like him.' "That would be accurate," he says, voice guarded.

"Moved in for you?" Ellie asks.

"Moved in because being on-board is convenient." He decides not to talk about the fact that 'on-board' for Poe could mean that _Micah_ is on one of the landing docks, but instead he got himself an actual apartment here. Mostly because he doesn't know what he thinks/feels about that. "He's not just here for me; you know? Kylo and Rey are meeting with him, now."

"Of course," Mirina says, sharing a look with Ellie.

Ellie smirks a bit. "C8 tells me that the Master has requested that you join him on at least one out of three of the _fun_ outings. And apparently Master Dameron will be attending them, too."

Jon rolls his eyes. "Kylo thinks I work too hard, and that's a way to force me to take some time off without leaving me cooling my heels, going stir-crazy, at home."

Mirina looks impressed by that.

"Yes, Mum, he's genuinely a friend in addition to my Boss. I'd rather he was a little more concerned on the Boss side of things right now," because work and more work and work after that is… soothing. 'Numb yourself,' that's what Kylo had said, and he wasn't wrong. But Jon's very much not sure he's ready to not be numb. Numb is a hell of a lot better than where he was, and it's much more comfortable than dealing with everything that goes along with _not_ being numb. "But he's trying to be good to me."

Ellie nods at that. "Well, that's actually a good thing, also from a job perspective." She hands over the list. "Options galore. Pick ones that you think would be fun for you. If they go with someone who's genuinely intending to enjoy the venue, that'll keep them more open and approachable."

"And given how they did at the Last Night party, also a bit more relaxed and easy," Mirina replies. She has not forgotten the way Jon was able to move a bit closer, kiss Rey's cheek, and get Kylo to stop looking like he was about to eviscerate anyone who was going to lay a hand on her.

Jon tilts his head, and begins to read, and check things off. That said, he also tries to keep in mind that his idea of _fun_ is likely not the same idea as his two super-sensitive little introverts who he's got to manage through these things.

As he's scanning through, he says, "Tell me about Canto. You think they'd let us play on credit?"

Ellie looks intrigued by that, and Mirina puzzled, though she does say, "They'll let the Master play on credit, and if you let them know which Frakes you are, they'll let you play, too. That said, I'd really appreciate not seeing a multi-million credit hit to my account."

Jon waves that off. "If it happens, it won't be on the books for more than a day or two. And I know you can float that."

"It's not that I can't, it just makes for messy bookkeeping."

"And that'd fuss Shelia. I know." His third youngest sister, the one who handles the Frakes' accounts. She _does not like_ messy accounting, and money bopping around for no good reason is very high on her list of pet peeves.

"And what's got you thinking of Canto, Jon?" Ellie asks.

"Opportunity. A few side projects. As Poe said, two birds with one stone."

The Ladies do not miss that that's _Poe's_ opinion of the situation, or that Jon has it.

"Maji business?" Ellie asks.

"As if you don't already know," Jon replies.

"Believe it or not, I do not, in fact, know _everything._ "

Jon's not sure he believes that, but he's also fairly sure that if they don't know now, they will soon, so lying isn't going to get the job done, not here, not now. "Maji business. Making us look better off than we actually are. Maybe padding out their personal petty cash fund. Stuff like that."

The ladies do not miss the idea that they're looking to pad out the personal petty cash fund with _millions_ of credits. Let alone do it on credit.

"The Master gambles?" Mirina asks, trying to imagine Kylo holding a hand of cards, looking polished and practiced. The image won't form in her head. "He's… not a natural fit for it. Every emotion in his head is on his face."

"I have a feeling he's got some deeper talents than expected on that front," Ellie replies. She continues to think for a moment. "How much can you float, Mirina?"

Mirina tilts her head to the side, bites her lip in the way Jon knows means she's pulling something from memory, and then grabs her personal datapad to check. "I can swing fourteen million without it pinching. Twenty-three if you can guarantee the funds will be back in a day or two."

Ellie nods at that. "Credit," she says to Jon before he can ask. "Won't do for the Master to be seen gambling on credit. That said, if he and his lady are out for a good time as the guests of a friend…"

Jon nods, seeing the angles on that. "Got it." He hands the list of events back to her. "Okay, there's two things a month, now to eleven. I'm leaving twelve free for wedding stuff. We may move up to three or four if it looks like they can take it, but only after we see how the first few rounds go."

"Wise," Ellie replies. "If we do this up correctly, there'll be an increasing amount of entertaining here on the run-up to the wedding, so leaving twelve open makes sense."

"I know they're doing something private and personal before the big wedding, so we're keeping the third week of twelve free, okay? Nothing goes on the schedule that week," Jon replies.

"I can do that," Ellie replies. She makes a note in her own list. "What are you envisioning for the Canto trip?"

"Show up, look swanky, spend at least a night hitting the clubs, just be seen. Second day, lounge, pools, restaurants, maybe take in a show. Tables the second night. Next day, more laying about time. Be visible and approachable. Play the tables more. See who comes by for a chat." Jon replies.

Ellie nods at that. "I've heard worse plans."

"People know he's some sort of Jedi. Or at least used to be. Especially since this is set after the first interview. It'll be… gauche… if he cleans up at the tables," Mirina says.

"We've got that angle covered," Jon says. Apparently, he's going to finally get to meet the infamous Finn, or at least lay eyes on him. If the plan goes right, the two of them will never interact directly. Plus, they're still debating if Jacen'll slap on his Ensign's uniform and go as an adjutant who just happens to have a _very_ good run of luck on his off-time. After all, someone of Jon's rank would usually have a young officer who just runs around doing errands and handling paperwork for him. He sighs. He should have someone who does that. He pulls his pad out, and makes a note for his secretary to go looking for some candidates for someone to do that. He's fairly sure Jacen might be willing to fake it for a few days, but he wouldn't be willing to take that job, not full time.

He looks up, thinking about their _ringers_ and glances to Ellie, then remembers his current rank, and just fires off the next note.

"Moment of hesitation?" Ellie asks.

"Sometimes it does take a moment to realize that I can just order a pleasure yacht for myself, on the Order accounts, and know no one'll hassle me about it."

"Even now," Ellie adds.

His pad chimes, and he sees confirmation of the order. "Even now. If we're going to do this, with a ringer, we need to get the ringer there, in style, so…"

"Ah," Ellie says. She thinks for a moment. "The ringer… That wouldn't happen to be an ex-stormtrooper?"

"He literally tells you everything as soon as he's out of the room, doesn't he?" Jon asks.

"Of course, dear."

"Yes, it's likely said ex-stormtrooper and his wife can be dragooned into playing against the Master, and winning big. I've been told there's a certain amount of natural tension between the two of them, so even with Kylo and Rey's not exactly awesome acting abilities, it should look right."

Ellie smiles at that, and Mirina looks pleased.

"It'll be interesting to see who sidles up to the ex-stormtrooper for a little chat, too."

Jon blinks. That was an angle he hadn't seen. "I… Yes, it will." And now he's also wondering if any of Kinear or Schiff's ex-First Order cleaning crews will show up, too. Probably a good idea to mention that to Poe, just make sure he reminds Finn that there are people out there who go out of their way to take care of people who might make things difficult for the Order.

Ellie smiles. "And how are you and the Master and his lady getting there? Rey's transport?" (It was Jon's idea for how to design the branding on the ship. It was Ellie's plan to make sure that Rey had a lux transport ship with her own marks on it.)

Mirina shakes her head. "Not if they're going as the guests of friends. You can use our ship, if you'd like."

Jon blinks. "Uh… Oh. That'd… probably be nice." The House of Frakes owns a collection of ships. After all, deliveries have to be made, and they have to be made _in style._ It completely wouldn't do to show up with a nine hundred thousand credit dress is some bit of sky trash.

The main yacht, which is designed to be… well, exorbitantly luxurious, because, after all, sometimes weddings are held at venues where an extra dressing room would come in handy. Glorious windswept beaches and cliffs are common enough. Glorious windswept beaches and cliffs that come equipped with super lux hotels and beauty spas are a fewer and further between. So, a place where the bride's party could gather, and, well… party, ahead of time, and get dressed, come out looking amazing, and, of course, there has to be a few staterooms for the Frakes that come with the dress and make sure it fits properly, and staging areas for the people who come with the bride to make sure everything goes off properly, and…

It's a _nice_ ship.

Mirina smirks at that. "Your pilot will like it. I've been told by people who know how to handle a yacht that it's got an awfully sweet ride."

Speaking of things Jon doesn't know what to do with, the idea of Poe, all dressed up to play the tables, at the helm of _Gossamer,_ likely making snarky comments as he handles her through hyperspace, makes his insides feel… wiggly. And he's not sure if that's in a good way, or not.

* * *

"No Jon?" Kylo asks as he and Rey step into Poe's place.

"He's got a date with his Mum, getting all the bits and bobs planned out for you. I figure we'll reconnoiter for dinner, unless one of you is on kid duty?"

Kylo and Rey shake their heads; they cleared today so Rey could focus here instead of at home.

"So… money trouble?"

Kylo sighs looks around, at the table and chairs, and decides that the carpet on the floor is an okay option, and flops down, stretching out. Rey nods at Poe, sitting next to Kylo.

"Thoughts?" she asks. "You and Leia used to do this, right?"

Poe sighs long and loud at that, too, as he also settles on the floor, thinking that maybe, in addition to a picture or something, he might get a sofa. Hell, if this… people over thing is going to happen regularly, he might decide that seeing if he can pull Jon into helping him figure out what the hell to put into an apartment might be a good idea. He's looking around at blank walls, a table with two chairs, and a carpet, and imagining Jon picking things out here… That's an image that makes him feel warm inside.

He's woolgathering, and Kylo and Rey are waiting for him to respond to the question at hand. (Though they also appear to be a bit amused by what must be the very easy to read fantasy at the top of his head.) "I mean… Yeah, but it wasn't what I'd call a good time."

Kylo says, "Yeah, I'd rather skip that, too. And we're going to. I hope. Maybe pray. I don't know. There's the start of a plan. Two plans, both of which I'm going to drop on you, Admiral." He rolls from his back to his side and props up on one elbow.

Poe rolls his eyes. He gets up and pours them the three of them a cup of coffee. Kylo takes his, holds it in his palms, and lets the warmth and scent roll over him. Inhaling deeply.

"Is this the last…" Poe asks, watching the way Kylo's not drinking his cup. He's gotten so used to having some around that he went numb to how much it costs.

"Uncertain. Apparently, I was off by a factor of 600 for what this costs, so… But I've also been told that in the time we've been together, today, the Order has spent more than my lifetime's worth of coffee consumption, so that it's really only a big deal in the fact that I'm now aware of the fact that this is likely a six hundred credit beverage," Kylo says, staring at the cup.

"And that's yet another reason I'm really not an Admiral. The numbers get so big they stop meaning anything, you know?"

Rey's still staring at the cup. It fits between her palms, and the idea of that much… money… in such a tiny space... "I remember you saying it, now. Back… when it was still summer on Lirium… That the jar with the coffee beans in it was worth more than the settlement, but… it didn't sink in."

"And it's sunk, now?"

She looks up at Poe. "It's _sunk._ "

"It's also, maybe, the start of the first set of plans," Kylo sighs, and then takes a sip. And sighs again.

"So…" Poe says. "Plan the first."

Rey takes a sip of her cup. "Plan the first. Stuff like this is expensive because it's hard to produce, or there's a cartel keeping a stranglehold on it, or both. Or so we've been told."

Poe nods at that. "Coffee, specifically, costs more than gold pressed latinum gram for gram because the trees are tetchy little boogers that only like to live in very specific types of places, and don't produce anything worth having for at least twenty years, and if Force forbid, the wrong fungus show up on your planet, all you've got left is firewood."

They both wince a bit at the _twenty years_ bit.

Rey glances to Kylo. "More seeds."

He sighs. "More seeds."

Poe stares at both of them.

Rey shakes her head, and then says, "Planting today doesn't mean food today. Seeds go in the ground, and sit there, and look like nothing's happening."

Poe nods. "And you're thinking… coffee production? That's plan one?"

"Maybe not coffee specifically. Twenty years is a _much_ longer time horizon than I was hoping for," Kylo says. Though, saying it, he's realizing that, really, any plant production he's thinking of is probably at least three years to getting something useful out of it.

"But, we've got planets, and dirt, and people, so… We should be able to make those three things produce valuable plants," Reys says.

Poe smiles. "All right, I like that. And what do you see me doing with this?"

"Seeds," Rey says.

"Well, maybe not coffee, per se, but things that are controlled by cartels. We're going to need people to go in and… liberate… some seeds," Kylo says. He digs around in a pocket, finds the chit with the list of plants. "I'm sure there's more, but this is just the start of a list of plants that go for big money."

Poe tucks the chit aside, as his grin gets even wider. "Oh… Yeah… That's…" His teeth are gleaming, eyes bright, and he's _enjoying_ that idea. "Sounds like you're going to need some… smugglers." That smile just gets wider.

"Yeah," Kylo says.

"And someone who knows where to go to get the stuff, and how to get it out, and… You know, detail work," Rey adds.

Poe looks very pleased with that idea. "Yeah. I may just happen to have a few scoundrels in my contact list who'd enjoy a job like that. Especially, if it paid well."

"For the scale your contacts work on, I can swing the credits," Kylo says.

"And… it's probably better if they don't go in covered in Order branding," Rey adds.

"Yeah. I get that. Not going to go in in the big black ships with the hex on their shoulders."

"Not what I mean, Poe," Rey says. "If… well, plans the second come to fruition, you can't go on plan the first. You can help get it set up, manage it, oversee it, pick the people and targets, but if they see you on it…"

That's something Kylo hadn't thought of, yet. "Oh, right."

Poe's looking curiously at them. Then he catches up. "Fuck!" he mutters it sincerely. Liberating some seeds sounded fully in his wheelhouse and he was planning to enjoy it. "Master Dameron of the Maji, good friend of the Rens, companion to the Grand Marshall _can't_ go along on stuff like that, and keep everyone else in the dark about who's pulling the strings."

Rey nods. "Yeah. So…"

"And plans the second?" Poe says.

"You talked about it earlier. Master Dameron comes along on fun stuff. He sweet talks the powers that be, spreads the word, along with Lady Ren, about this new faith, and how there's a place for everyone in it, and then figures out where to stick churches so we can… spread the good word," Kylo says.

"And preferably spread the good word in places where we're about to _stop_ offering droids to replace slaves," Rey says.

"That's a new wrinkle," Poe replies, thinking. "So… You've got some places where the official Order recruiting may… leave?"

Kylo winces. "That looks bad, doesn't it?"

"It really does," Poe replies. "But…"

"But paying for droids is expensive. Paying for new recruiting stations when people set fire to them because we're no longer paying for droids is expensive. Getting into shooting fights is expensive."

Poe's nodding along as Rey's explaining. "Everything you can possibly think of to cut costs brings up new costs?"

"That's the idea. So…" Kylo says, looking at Poe expectantly.

Poe spends a moment thinking it through. "It's doable." He smirks a bit. "Okay, you want my advice on this, keep the stations you have that pay for slaves where they are. Any new ones, set on worlds that don't practice slavery. And then let me and mine wander into places where slavery is legal. It'll look better."

Kylo and Rey think about that, and then Kylo says, "I'll run it past the bright boys."

Poe rolls his eyes. "Not me, huh?"

"Different sorts of bright," Rey says. "He's got people who figure out what things should cost to get the most good out of them."

Poe nods at that. The New Republic had people like that. The Resistance, didn't. "I was just talking with Jon about the Canto trip. Uh… have you talked to Jacen recently?"

Kylo shakes his head as Rey nods. She looks to Kylo, "I forgot to mention that. Chewie took him gambling."

Kylo sighs a bit at that, not sure if he should be pleased or jealous. He settles for not really thinking about it. "And he tried some of the tricks you're teaching?"

"And amazingly enough, they worked just fine. Anyway, talking with Jon about all the handsome princing you two are supposed to be doing, and that got us to Canto, which, if memory serves is a place filled to the brim with people who don't want to piss you off because you're in the market for the stuff they sell, or people who want you dead are in the market for the stuff they sell. However it works, you're good for business. And they may be the sorts with less than snazzy labor conditions on their own home worlds who'd likely also be amenable to your Lady's pet church opening up a branch or two."

That makes sense to Kylo.

"Anyway, we're hoping to go there in the not wildly distant future, so that's probably a good place to begin on the listening, learning, and doing some recon on where and how to put chapels," Poe says.

Rey nods along, seeing how that might work. "And we look pretty, and talk about balance, and…"

"And lay it on thick with how _valuable_ the message of the Maji is among certain sections of the population. How we're offering a philosophy that teaches that there's a place for everyone, and that…" He ponders for a moment… "And that in order for the universe to exist functionally, that there are highs and lows, and light and dark, and for every nob at the top, there's someone at the bottom."

Rey winces. "We aren't actually going to say that, are we?"

"We're going to imply it very heavily without actually saying it. Nothing in the 'official,' meaning the kind of chapel that's on planet in a wealthy area, will even hint at anything along the lines of the Force being for and of everyone, and that balance isn't just a tool for making the powers that be feel good about themselves."

When Rey started thinking about this new, balanced Force, she ran headfirst into that trap. Balance isn't _good._ In the wrong hands, it's a tool to justify whatever the hell it is you want to do. Package it right, and it would likely be a very soothing balm for people who don't want to examine their consciences too closely. Maybe… at least some sort of surface level of do-goodery has to be on there, something to improve things and make people feel good about themselves, but the real message can stay where it's most needed. "But what we teach in the lower levels…" Rey smiles.

"Will look _very_ different," Poe grins back. "We used to do stuff like this with the Resistance all the time. Smuggle ideas in right under the people who were hunting us down."

"Don't we need… Someone other than us to spread that message?" Rey says.

Poe shakes his head. "Honestly, since we're mostly setting these up as a way to keep eyes on people who are interested in us, and as a way to get people out of bad situations and places… I mean, we'll get them on the 'basics' with instructions that anyone who's really interested in knowing more needs to come join us for 'special tutoring.' If we spin it right, we'll likely have people giving us slaves and servants as a way to supposedly keep ears on us and attempt to gain favor."

Kylo blinks. He takes a moment to parse that, and then says, "We open a chapel of the Maji, and use the people in there as spies. They report back on local conditions and try to get people who want to leave, out. The other powers that be will send their people in, who will spy on us. We'll attempt to get interested people to join us, _here_ , and that's why they'll give us people, so they can get a better idea of what's going on, while we do the same, and… This is like a hall of mirrors."

Poe grins at him. "That's why it's fun."

* * *

"Holy hell, woman! NO!" Jon just about spits his tea across the room as he's looking at the latest of the sketches. "You design dresses that sell for hundreds of thousands of credits, the fact that you can't put together a decent men's suit is embarrassing."

Actually, all things considered, it's likely not a terrible suit. But… even the _sketch_ doesn't bloody fit right. "Mum… Have you ever _looked_ at him?" He's shaking his head. "He's got at least fourteen more centimeters around the shoulders, his waist is narrow, but deeper than you've got on this, and his thighs are bigger around." He's tutting as he uses his pen to shift the proportions on the sketch, and then he looks at it more carefully. "Better. He doesn't look like an off the rack model. We could just _buy_ him clothing if that was the case, and let Rey shine next to him in her custom wear."

Ellie shifts her head a bit. "We can do that anyway." After all, there is a reason why in many cultures men all dress similarly for formal functions, and that's so the ladies will attract all the attention.

"Yes, I know, but she doesn't want to be the center of attention all the time, either," Jon replies.

Mirina purses her lips, but doesn't say anything, other than to update her measurement files. After all, when he was young and designing, this is exactly the kind of critique she used to give him.

Jon keeps flipping through the sketches. Most of them he's nodding at, a few he's putting into the 'think more about' pile, and some are going into the 'only if I want to make his brain literally explode' pile. He stops dead on one of them, closes his eyes in pain, and then says, "I'm perfectly fine with you adding some dark colors into his wardrobe, but lace and ruffles is a complete no go. If I attempt to take him somewhere he's got to wear frilly lace flounces, he'll pout at me."

"A fate worse than death," Ellie replies.

"I'm just saying, if the potential financial reward is under fifty billion credits, there will be no lace."

Ellie sniggers at that.

Mirina deletes a collection of potential fabrics from Kylo's palette.

Jon flips to the next image… He gets his pen out again. "Needs more skin. This is the relaxed, nice-casual interview look, right?"

Mirina nods.

"Which means this should not look like a slightly retooled uniform. I want to see at least his clavicle on any outfit that is informal. And no gloves. In fact, let's make sure the sleeves are rolled up on at least some of these. He's got good forearms, we should see them." He's still looking at the image, but he can feel his mom isn't loving this. Traditionally _she's_ the one who gets to be bitingly critical, so he flips through a few more. "I do like this one, though, Mum." 'This one' is a simplified, retooled, new version of the command blacks, with a slight altering to spruce it up for semi-formal blacks, too. "Good design, clean lines, not too many do-dads. He'll like this."

This seems to be the largest bit of value he adds to these meetings. Basically, he can rest easy knowing his mom will put Rey in something that's attractive, classy, suits her personality and the venue. She's… sketchy… when it comes to Kylo.

He flips to another sketch and almost swallows his tongue. His, first, knee jerk reaction to this is not just that Kylo's brain will explode, but it'll blush once it's done spattering. That said… He bites his lip and reads more about the Gurnel venue. His eyes skip up to who'll be there and why they hope to go. The potential to meet useful people is _high._ It's the one peaceful planet in a system at war, and it's also used as a sort of neutral ground safe haven. They likely wouldn't mind being able to hire some extra defensive military, and the people who are attending this gathering likely want safe places to talk and meet. His hand rubs over his face as he contemplates the sketch of Kylo in a skirtle.

Jon would wear one, himself, no problem. And unlike some of the other outfits, the sketch looks good, because, well, a skirtle is basically a dress, and his mum can do that in her sleep. Even on someone Kylo-shaped. (For that matter, if you were particularly well-off and had a bride who was Kylo-shaped, you'd just about kill yourself to get Mirina Frakes designing the dress, because she'd do your girl up, _right._ )

If he can get Kylo into one… He did wear the kilt, of his own choice. But the kilt wasn't that high… and low… cut. And Jon did just say, 'more skin,' and this is a _lot_ of more skin, so…

"Hand me the sketch of what Rey's wearing for the Gurnel venue." He glances at that, nods, and at the men's wear. "We can do the skirtle. He'll probably be distracted enough by Rey that it won't fuss him too much. Just make sure this is one we can back out of sudden-like if need be." Ellie makes a note of that. The right people will get a rumor of maybe some sort of upset going on that might need the Master, fast, when they get there.

(She's personally betting that Kylo will take one look at a skirtle, get an acute case of modesty poisoning, and _run_ away from that venue, but…They'll see. Jon does genuinely know him better than she does, after all.)

Mirina hands him another set of sketches. Jon's again nodding along at the dress for Rey. "Wedding gear, I take it."

"Formal, elegant, restrained…" Mirina says.

He's nodding along. "I can see this… Maybe not…" It's a white dress, and it looks good on the sketch of Rey, very… Mistress of the Maji, Lady Ren, a queen in her own right, sort of look, but white's just not hitting him right, not for this wedding. "Still not loving her in white for this."

"We can re-do in silver," Mirina replies. "That's our palette right? White, black, silver. And of course, he's going to be in black, so…"

Jon thinks more about that. He flips through the wedding suit sketches, which he doesn't love. He's shaking his head. "This is… Not it." More staring and thinking. "Do her dress in black and silver…" He taps the pad… "Bleed the color. Black into silver… I'll work up a suit for him in white and silver. We'll flip their colors for the night. That's a good wedding sort of vibe."

Mirina's expression could best be categorized as, 'Don't teach Granny to suck eggs,' which Jon not only doesn't understand on a literal level, but also doesn't think applies here. "I'm the one spending the time actually learning and figuring out how the Order and Maji and balance and the two of them work."

He flips to the next one. Yet another attempt at Kylo's wedding wear. For a moment, he's fairly pleased by this. It looks good. Dignified. Flowing robes, a lot of layers, dark colors… This looks… familiar. When he slots the image he's looking at in front of him to his memory of history, he glares up at his mum. "The Chancellor? That's who you're basing these images off of? You figured, what, he wouldn't recognize the look, and I wouldn't fuss?"

Mirina shrugs a bit. "It's elegant, dignified, and looks properly expensive and formal. This is good wedding-wear."

"It's also the exact opposite direction of where he and the Order want to go. You can't dress him up like Palpatine."

"And we won't," Ellie replies. "We've got time on this, so let's table it for later." She pulls out the 'casual interview outfit' sketch. "This one comes up next week. Fixes?"

Jon nods and starts to alter the sketch.

He doesn't look up as he's re-doing the neckline, so he misses Ellie and Mirina smiling at each other. If he had seen it, it just possibly might have occurred to him that his mother does design dresses that cost hundreds of thousands of credits, so that she very likely can make a functional and attractive nice casual outfit that fits properly and looks good on Kylo, and maybe, just maybe part of getting him involved in all of this is about more than making the Master look appropriately turned out.

Maybe.

"How would you feel about doing some interviews, too," Ellie says.

That gets Jon looking up from the sketch. He raises one eyebrow and says, "About… what?"

"Good question," Mirina replies. She doesn't look up from her datapad, and he assumes she's going through her fabric register to see about new upgrades to the wedding outfit palette.

"Recruiting? Options in the Order beyond killing people? Diplomatic service? What we can offer people who wish to be here? Dressing Rey and Kylo. You're young, pretty, smart, speak well, have a lovely posh accent, and my guess is a lot of people would be happy to watch and listen to you talk. So…" Ellie says.

Jon opens and closes his mouth for a moment. "I'll think on it," comes out.

The ladies share another look, and that one he doesn't miss.

"What are you laying the groundwork for?"

Mirina's expression doesn't change, but he suddenly _knows_ what's going on.

He sighs. "Just because Kylo wants to be out in ten years, and he thinks _I_ might be a good next Master doesn't mean _I_ think it's a good plan."

"No one said anything along those lines."

"No one had to. I can see the wheels turning, Mum."

Mirina smiles. "You'll be well-placed for it. Know all the ins and outs. A good, mature age to rule. It's not a bad plan."

Jon sighs. "I didn't say it was a bad plan. I said I didn't necessarily think it was a good one, for me." He does his best _not_ to think about what comes after Kylo. And what, if the longer plans are going to work, he might have to do in the _after Kylo_ space. "Unless things go radically different than I expect them to, in ten years the Order will still need someone at the top who knows his ass from his elbow as a military commander, and that is _not_ me."

"No, it's not," Ellie replies. Her eyes sparkle. "If only you had a dear friend who had an in-depth knowledge of running a military organization from the ground up."

Jon sighs, loudly, at that.

"You are allowed to date again," Mirina says.

"I do date."

"No. You indiscriminately shag anything that takes your fancy. Dating is about finding someone your brain likes as much as your body."

Jon's eyes narrow. "I… It's not indiscriminate, you just haven't figured out the pattern. And… as for… Fu-" he's in his mother's home, not his own, and he can see her getting ready to pounce, "stuff this! You want to talk to me about seeking out a new partner? How about this, I'll have that chat about it with my step-dad once you get around to getting me one, okay?"

"Jon, it's different for women."

Jon rolls his eyes, viciously. "Women like sex, too. I have that on very good authority from some of my other 'dear friends' who, according to you, I'm not dating."

Mirina flashes that look right back at him. "Not, how I meant it, Jon. Finding a man who would agree to an allowance from the House of Frakes, but no legal right to ownership of my business meant that none of the men who struck my fancy ever got invited home for supper, let alone started to talk about being a step-father to you and your sisters." She shakes her head. "Vetting your brothers-in-law to make sure none of them would try to wrestle away control was difficult enough. There was no chance I was going to let some pair of pretty eyes try it on me."

"Ah." He decides that no further comment on his part is necessary.

"You are sweet on the pilot, though, right?"

"Mum…" Long deep sigh. "That's… complicated."

"Is he playing hard to get?" Ellie asks. It's clear from how Ellie asks that she's aware of the fact that Poe is apparent just as easy to 'get' as Jon is, and apparently Clan Kinear has been rather surprised as to how slow the two of them are moving.

Jon blinks at that, and again finds himself wondering if Pat's got a listening device in his rooms or something. "Am I here to talk about my love life or to get the Rens up and ready to show off theirs for the sake of the wider world and getting people to fall in love with The Order?"

"You're an immensely talented lad, Jon, you can do _both_ ," Mirina replies.

Jon sighs again. Then his comm chimes. He grabs for it, quick, and just about purrs with pleasure when he hears Kylo's voice. "Jon. We need you for a consult, now."

"I'm on my way." He leaps up, grabs the sketches he's taking from rough drafts into finished versions, and gets out of there fast.

* * *

Ellie and Mirina look at each other. Ellie smiles a little. "Well, I suppose that one line there is literally all we need to know about how much Kylo cares for your boy, and how sensitive his Force is when it comes to one of his loves in distress."

"It could be a coincidence."

"It's not."

"I know." Mirina tuts a bit as she looks over the list of outings Jon's approved. "What do you know about the pilot?"

Ellie sips her tea. "More than you do, but not that much more. What we saw when we were working with him before the K'Arans is pretty much what's there. Good looking, charming, good in a crunch, competent, capable. Probably not the best long-range planner ever, but coupled with someone who's good at that, he'd be a valuable addition."

"He was an Admiral in the Resistance." It's clear that Mirina doesn't love _resistance_ but Admiral appeals to her.

"And he'd be the first one to point out it was an honorary title. Honestly, if the next Master is Jon, Poe'll be a good sounding board, but he is going to need to find someone who actually knows tactics and organizational design beyond shoot big holes in the problems."

They both know Kylo's got to hire out for that, too, so it's not a problem that can't be overcome. But they also know that the time frame that involves Jon as a possible Master mostly likely doesn't include the people who are doing that for Kylo right now.

* * *

"See, I told you I should have gone along with you," Poe says as the door slides open and Jon heads in. He rolls his eyes and flops his portfolio of sketches down onto the table. "They won't ask how your love life is if I'm sitting right next to you."

Jon sighs, and then pointedly glares at Kylo, who he assumes is the one who told everyone why he wanted a rescue, and then looks at his companions, sitting on the flood, says to Poe, "You need more chairs."

"BB doesn't need one, and this is the first time I've had more than one person here." (There are, in fact, _two_ chairs at his breakfast table. After all, he is currently hoping that one day he'll have someone to sit in it on a regular basis.)

"Hmmm… If only we knew someone with a fully kitted out apartment… Say, maybe close to where the food is…" Rey adds.

"You're hungry?" Kylo asks. Lunch wasn't that long ago.

"I did get a workout today," she shoots back to him. "And it's…" she looks for a chrono, "okay, not nearly as late as I think it is, but still…" Rey gets up, and takes Jon's hands. "Come on, let's get closer to the rest of things," and in a heartbeat, they're in his apartment.

A second later Kylo and Poe are, too.

"Yeah, this is just convenient," Poe says. "I could leave all the rest of the Force goodies if I could just teleport."

Rey shrugs, "In all the reading I've seen, this one is unique to us."

Kylo nods at that, too. "But I'm not adverse to attempting to teach the others."

Rey raises a brow at him.

He shrugs a bit. "If Jacen's really going to be a good pilot, the ability to ditch a ship when you're a second from impact would be _really_ handy."

Poe nods solemnly at that.

"Speaking of your baby Maji," Jon says. "I was thinking about this eventual Canto Bight trip, which is on the calendar the second week of six… The Ladies approve."

That gets a look of surprise from Rey and Kylo, as they, and Jon settle into more comfortable seats in his apartment.

"He got me thinking about it," he gestures to Poe, "And I got talking about it, and… Mum and Ellie had a good wrinkle to the plan, and…"

"And Jacen's involved in this wrinkle?" Kylo looks very confused by that.

"No, but we'll get to that. Okay, first of all, if _The Master and Lady Ren_ show up at any of the high-end spots on Canto, they will absolutely let you stay, and play, on credit. All bills come due eventually, but unlike any bank in the galaxy, _Canto_ will make enough off of just you being seen there that we're worth the credit risk.

"But, as The Ladies pointed out, it wouldn't look good if The Master and Lady Ren are playing on credit."

"Well, I guess, like the coffee, we're not actually talking about real money, not at the rate the Order spends it," Poe says. "And not if you're paying it back, fast."

"True, but not where I'm going with this. The House of Frakes will stake us up to 14 million, and the _Gossamer,_ which is a seriously nice pleasure yacht, so that I can take my friends out for a good time."

Kylo and Rey are both stunned silent on that.

"I'm sure Mum'll make sure that everything you wear there, at least on the main casino floors, Rey, will have our mark on it, and the ship floating around in the bay is free advertising, and again, she likes the idea of us being so deeply entwined with _The Order_ so… It's good for business."

"Your mom'll just float you fourteen million credits for a fun weekend," Poe says, eyes wide. Yes, he grasps the idea that Jon's family grew up rich, but…

"Poe, there's a series of climate-controlled rooms under the flat I grew up in currently holding something like 30 million credits worth of cloth, and _more_ in gems, jewelry, thread of precious medals, stupidly ornate shoes, and on and on. The reason she'll float me fourteen million credits is that's what we can play with, and _lose,_ and it won't pinch too bad. Assuming we can get the money back by the time we're back on ship, we can up it to 26 million."

Everyone around him blinks. Yes, compared to the Order funds, those are tiny specs of currency. But, they're also enormous numbers, but enormous numbers everyone there can actually fathom. And that makes a _lot_ of difference.

So, for another moment, the silence holds. Even Prince Ben didn't grow up in a house like _that._

Then Rey blinks back to the real world. "And Jacen… What's his role in this?"

"Ringers, that's what Poe was talking about. We need people to play who aren't the two of you, but who can win, and if I just happened to have an adjutant who has some off time…"

They think about that, and then Kylo shakes his head. "Bad plan."

"Because…" Jon leads.

Kylo doesn't really want to get into the real reason he thinks it's a bad plan. Mainly that the last thing he wants to do is stick what's likely to be a celebratory and possibly drunk Jacen anywhere near a flirty and likely drunk Jon, let alone with Poe right next to him because that's just going to be a clusterfuck of epic proportions.

He also manages to very quickly leap to a good alternative reason.

"Because our ringers need a way to get to Canto, and if the Ticos are the sort of big money high stakes players they're supposed to be, they'd have a pilot, right?"

That gets a few nods, and Kylo relaxes a little.

"Plus, we're trying to not make it look like the Order is cleaning up at the tables, so some random pilot who gets a nice bonus from the Boss on his night off…" Rey says.

Poe's smiling. "I like that. How's Jacen on moving stuff?"

Kylo wiggles his hand. "He's better with his mind than body, or with the physical things around him, why?"

"I was thinking that getting him on craps or a roulette wheel would be the way to go."

"There's time," Rey says, "We can practice, see how he does."

"Actually, speaking of practice, how are you two with cards?" Poe asks.

* * *

The third time the cards go skittering out of Kylo's grasp as he tries to shuffle them, Poe rolls his eyes and says, "How can you possibly not be able to do this?"

Kylo shrugs and scowls at the cards, sweeping them back up onto the table.

"I'm fairly sure my fish should be able to do this by now," Jon adds, voice not even remotely helpful.

"Well, they've only watched us do it ninety-seven million times," Rey adds.

Kylo shoots her a _you too?_ mock appalled glance, and then puts the cards back in his hands. He can feel part of the issue is that these cards are made for smaller people than him. They're just kind of tiny in his hands and that doesn't make for easy shuffling.

The rest of it though… it's just not happening.

And, that it's not happening is abundantly clear to everyone else at Jon's breakfast table, too.

He hands them over to Rey, who splits the deck, shuffles them twice, bridges them, shuffles them again, and then flips the deal out to the four of them with ease.

"Well, at least one of you looks like Han Solo's kid," Poe says.

That gets a glare from Kylo. They play the hand, and Poe wins it, easily. Yes, half the players know what he's holding, but… well, even Kylo and Rey can't top three sixes if the cards just don't come to them.

Kylo's not really paying attention to the game. He's paying attention to ways to look like he belongs in a casino. Like he's… smooth and steady and… practiced.

As Poe's pulling the chips to himself, Kylo says, "Pass the cards to me again."

"New plan?" Jon asks.

"Yeah. I'm going to have to practice, but…" Poe passes the deck to him. Kylo lays it flat on his palm, hand up and out. He focuses with his Force. He figures cutting the deck without touching it should look good. Then he lifts the top half of the deck, lifts the bottom, and slips the top under it, and then floats it over to Rey to shuffle. "How's that look?"

"Show off," Rey says with a very warm smile as she starts to shuffle. "Here," Normally, she shuffles, and then offers the deck for a cut. She finished shuffling and holds it out. Again, Kylo cuts without touching the cards. And then she shuffles again.

Both Jon and Poe are grinning. Poe's nodding slowly, "Yeah, that'll do."

"How good are you with that?" Jon asks.

Kylo raises an eyebrow. "How do you mean."

"Well, for example, people know you don't shake hands. Maybe you don't touch the cards either. Can you play without having to hold them?"

"I can try."

Poe's grin goes even wider. "Oh, if you can… That'll be the biggest fucking shaft move ever. Swagger on in, hover the cards in front of you. Whip 'em around with the Force. Shit… _Deal._ Oh, that'd be fucking awesome. We've been wondering what to do about you being a Force user in a casino. Don't even try to play it down. Play it up, and then… Spin a line about how it's like counting cards. Everyone at a table in Canto can do that, so they'll grasp the basic idea."

"And we keep it vague about you using the Force?" Kylo half asks Rey.

"Probably. I normally keep that sort of vague. I'm good with rumors and whispers. I don't usually confirm or deny, and if asked…" she's thinking.

"You're my luck," Kylo replies. "My Uncle Lando used to say that there were only two things a man needed in life, a good cape, and a little luck."

"Did he?" Jon asks.

"Not really, but he did used to say that all the skills in the galaxy were worthless if you didn't have enough luck, so… I mean, these are the kinds of people who knew, or at least knew of, Lando Calrissian, right?"

Jon inclines his head. "It's likely at least a third of the people there own, run, or work for corporations that have contracts with one branch of Calrissian Corp or another."

"Good."

Jon gets up, heads over to his drawing table, and starts to sketch, fast.

"Jon?" Poe asks.

"Just making a quick visual note. Master 'Luck' Ren, might need a bit of a cape with his outfit."

Kylo raises an eyebrow, but Jon's focused on the drawing board.

He's eyeing it, hard. "Maybe not. We'll see." He heads back to the table.

* * *

Dinner.

The four of them, together, out on the F-Deck, getting a meal. That's the plan, at least. They're walking through the market section closest to his apartment, in search of, hopefully tasty, sustenance.

Jon can feel that this is still something of a novelty for Kylo and Rey. They just don't… do stuff like this. Not regularly.

He's keeping a pace or two behind and to the left. Trying to watch how they move, how they do… this… without making it flamingly obvious that that's what he's up to.

Poe winks at him, so it's fairly clear the jig is up, but…

This is probably useful to know. And to see.

There are… things he can work with here. Kylo moves like he owns the ship. Long strides eating up the hallway fast. Granted, for all practical purposes, he _does_ own the ship, but… It's good to see it translates. Rey's got a similar focus to her stride. There's nothing shy or nervous about how she's moving through the press of bodies in the crowded hallway.

(Granted, people _move_ for Kylo. Even the ones who haven't, on any conscious level, recognized that this is _The Master_ walking through them, get the fuck out of his way as he comes through.)

Most of the people around them do not seem to recognize who is moving through them. Jon knows that part of that is the casual clothing, hair down, and not being where people expect them to be. That's just… basic human nature. But it's also a sign that they haven't done a good enough job of getting the idea… ideal… of Kylo and Rey out there.

He's in the middle of his capitol ship, on the floor with his officers, during the dinner rush, and most of the people around them aren't even doing a double take as they head past.

But the ones who do recognize… They're… interested. And not… too much… afraid. At least, the sort of gut churning terror Jon felt the first few times he got summoned to meet with Supreme Leader Ren is not clear on the face of most of the people who recognize him. (A few of them startle at the sight of him, but… Given that most of the people on this deck were assembled on the main floor when Kylo decapitated a trainer in front of them… Yeah… That's probably a normal, rational response.)

Poe stops walking and points out a cart. "Okay, that one's calling my name." He takes three steps, tosses his jacket over the back of a chair at an empty table. "Meet back here with food. Any of you want me to grab a kabob for you?" Rey nods, and a moment later, Poe's in the queue.

Jon idles for a bit, watching how people react to Kylo heading for a noodle shop, and Rey moving toward a pulled chicken sandwich cart. Rey, on her own, doesn't attract too much attention. Not here, not now, not without makeup and 'formal' Lady Ren wear.

She's just another officer looking to fill her belly.

Jon smirks a bit when the man behind her in the line tries to hit on her. He's got a big smile, and is reaching to touch her shoulder, and she cuts him _dead_ with a look. He doesn't know how much Force she used, or what exactly it felt like, but the man went _gray_ and backed away slowly, apologizing.

Jon's almost wishing he could see what would have happened if Kylo'd been near enough to get involved, but… The guy probably isn't much past a Captain, and having him wet himself in terror in a public place probably isn't an awesome plan.

Kylo's trying to wait in line, pretending to also just be another officer, and failing. At least one of the others waiting figured out who he is, spread the word, and now the entire line of them look like they're about to go sprinting away. He's glaring at one of them who's trying to bow his way out of the line so the Master can get to his food, faster.

Jon makes a mental note to explain that, should there ever be a line in any of the fancy places they go, that their job is to act like it's not really there and expect to be served immediately. He hopes that Kylo and Rey can pull off Prince and Lady Ren… The way they hold themselves, the way they walk… It'll help.

He's just got to figure out how to make the two of them act like they know they're the most important people in the galaxy whenever they're away from Order territory. It's one thing to acknowledge the value of his own people. That… looks and feels good, Jon thinks. Probably.

Assuming they do this often enough that people get used to them being out and about. He makes a mental note to tell—

 _Just think it. I'll get it._ Kylo's thoughts in his head.

 _Are you really watching my thoughts that closely?_

 _When someone is staring at the back of my head, focused intently on me, it's difficult to ignore that. So…_

 _At least one meal, every other day. Up here. Too many of them can't visually recognize you, and a lot of the ones who do are skittish about you._

 _Noted. Other advice?_

 _Not right this second._

He sees Kylo nod and decides to go fetch his own dinner.

* * *

This is just… nice.

Dinner with his… family… Kylo supposes. Or his loves. Or… however it is this works out. Dinner with people he genuinely enjoys, followed by going back to Jon's place to talk, and plan, and just… be with each other.

He remembers that about when he and Rey began, how that was something of a surprise to him. Just how… satisfying… it was to sit with her and eat, and talk about what they'd been up to, or be quiet with one another.

Right now, dinner is done. And he doesn't have much to add to the conversation. Rey and Poe are talking more about how the eventual church of the Maji works, and he's certainly listening, though on one level he's just relaxing and hearing voices. Because this is… just… _nice._

He's on the sofa with Rey, and she's stretched out, head in his lap, on her side, talking to Poe. And Poe's in one of the chairs, adding his own ideas, both of them bouncing them around, getting a better feel for how all of this works.

Jon's behind them, at his drawing board, and he adds a bit here, or a bit there, but mostly he's quiet, save for the sound of his pencil sketching away.

It's a soothing sound.

All of this is.

Kylo's not exactly proud of this, but he just possibly drops off a bit. Maybe not asleep, per se, but drifty… Not sure if he's here or there or where.

No, he's here. In this room, safe and comfortable and surrounded by people he's feeling very warmly about.

But he's also young, and scared, in the _Falcon,_ seeing the starts speeding past, and…

"You'll like it there, Ben. It's a farm," his mother had said. "Luke's got plants and animals and it'll be good. You'll get to learn so many things."

He was _finally_ on the _Falcon._ Finally getting to fly on it. All of the excuses for why not were finally done, and he was _flying._

And he didn't care at all because they were taking him away.

When he got there, Luke pretty much let him have his sulk. He mostly stayed in his room, (because that was before they built the individual cottages they'd each build, later) and didn't talk much, or do much, or really, anything.

He had a _very_ good sulk. Champion level sulk. No one at home _ever_ let him spend a full day and a half in his room, sulking.

But, eventually, even lost, sulky, unhappy, eight-year-old Ben ventured out of his room, because, well, even he could only sulk for so long.

And… It was a farm.

And… There were plants, and critters, and M'Gll was already there, and back then she was half a head taller than he was, and she liked showing off how good she was with the plants and critters and…

And for a little while, maybe… He thinks… It's hard because the memories, especially the early ones feel… drifty… That was the word Rey said his uncle had used to describe himself. The early memories feel drifty.

He can remember a few bits of corn on his palm, and holding his hand out, and one of the chickens coming closer to him and… The memory splits, there's one where the chicken pecks the corn from his palm, and lets him pet her, and he's… happy… enough. Maybe he laughed. He thinks the pecking startled him because it tickled. There's another one where the chicken is skittish, and doesn't want to get too close, but he's got food, so it comes closer, and pecks him hard, and it hurts, so he slaps it, and it squawks and pecks him again and again, making his hand bleed, so he hits it hard, too hard, and it doesn't squawk any more.

In one memory, M'Gll is smiling at him, holding the chicken, stroking her head, showing him how to pet her. In another she's scowling at him, yelling at him for killing her pet.

Luke's in the first memory, keeping watch on them as he gathers eggs. He's not in the second one. Kylo's never wondered why about that, but he's starting to, now. Especially when they were young, and there were just the two, and then three of them, Luke was pretty much always around. But he's not in a lot of the bad memories.

Later memories are clear. By his late teens, he didn't get jobs that involved working with the live animals, or any plants they didn't want to kill. But, as Luke said, a functioning farm needed people who could keep weeds out of places they didn't need to go, and someone who could put down sick animals easily, or take care of any of the creatures they intended to eat.

"It's not a farm if things on it don't die, Ben. Someone's got to be good at ushering them in," and that would have been Luke and M'Gll. They'd be out at all times of the night and day when spring came, and with it the babies. "And taking them out." He gave Ben's shoulder a squeeze. That was his job, taking care of things that needed to die. "Everything that lives consumes other things that live. It's part of the balance. So, someone's got to be able to end life, and end it kindly and with compassion."

And he supposes that's true enough. Most animals feared him, but when they got too sick, or chewed up by a predator, or it was just the end, they didn't fuss when he came to visit. 'Clean and kind Ben. One fast stroke, no fear, and no regrets. They'll feel it off of you if you're skittish. We all die, and if we're lucky, our deaths feed the lives of something else...'

He also supposes the idea that he's going to go out of his way to get farms up and working, growing extremely expensive things he's not supposed to be able to…

"Shit."

"Kylo?" Rey says. It's clear from her voice that she'd been awfully clear he was napping, and he can feel Jon and Poe also surprised that he's suddenly rejoined the conversation.

He rubs his eyes. "Not… That wasn't a comment on what you were talking about." Because napping or not, at this point he's got no idea what they were talking about.

"Well…" Poe says. "Since you decided to rejoin us with your great insight…"

He rolls his eyes a little. "I've turned into both of my parents and Luke. I'm a ruler, seriously contemplating getting into a major agricultural business, that I'll seed by having people go and steal, and then smuggle, plants to me. And on top of that, we're going to gamble to earn our money, and cheat at it. All I need is a piece of junk Corellian freighter and a brown robe, and I'm all set."

Rey laughs at that.

Jon takes a sip of his drink, and they hear the skritch of his pen on the pad stop. "Don't you dare get a brown robe. I just vetoed my Mum doing that, and if you go wandering about in one, I'll have a million years of I-told-you-sos."

"I look awful in brown," Kylo says.

"Not if someone who knows how colors works picks it for you," Jon replies, and they hear the skritching start up again.


	57. Lifedays

5/4/2

Traditionally, the Lifeday celebration is had a few weeks after the birth of the child. That's the one where the big party happens. The Lifedays that follow are smaller, private ceremonies just for the family.

But, with one thing and another, when Paige Tico was a little sprog only a few weeks old, they didn't do it. Too tired, too… everything.

Or maybe, it was just because now is better than then was.

But now, Paige is a year old, and Chewie can feel the tradition shifting, and the sense that this will become a hallmark of the Maji.

On the first anniversary of the lifeday, there will be a celebration, and a promise.

* * *

He stands behind Finn and Rose, who are holding Paige. Rey is next to his right side, Poe on his left… _Kylo's_ several steps behind Rey, his hand in hers. Still… outside… ish, though he adds his voice, in as close to perfect as a human can get, Shariwook. Jacen is near, because he qualifies as an adult these days (though Chewie rolls his eyes at that, eighteen is a seedling. Granted, all of these babies in front of him are barely saplings by his count.)

But this is serious, the adults of the community, all of them, gather together to promise that they will invest themselves, their time, their talents to helping to successfully raise the new seedling, and bring it to fruition as a full, mighty oak of their home forest.

Something like that. He's leading the prayer, and most of the kids don't get the language, but they understand the intent.

They're swearing to the newest member of their clan, that they will put their lives on the line for this new life.

And that matters.

* * *

One hundred and thirty-seven years ago, Chewie stood at the first life day celebration that really mattered to him. He was standing next to his wife, and she was holding their first child.

He did it again five years later, and again ten years after that, and he had hoped to do it again, but the war came and the slavers with it and…

And they made their promises, and they planted the tree, and…

And he lost them. (And the trees fucking died in the war.)

He found his wife again, eventually, but…

They looked. They looked so fucking hard, but… They never found their babies.

And they tried… Between deals and smuggling and… Every port he and Han landed in, every group of stolen wookies, they tried, but the trail wasn't just cold, it was dead.

They never found his babies. And his wife never forgave him what happened. It wasn't his fault, not really, but… He never really forgave himself, either.

And it was easier to fly around with Han and just stop home every now and again to give his lady a pile of credits (They were married after all, and it was his job to provide and protect, even if he was shit at it. Even if he'd already failed in that so horribly that they lost each other, their home, and their children. Even if every time she looked at him, all he could feel was her rage at his failure… Even…) than to face her anger and pain and the marks on her body from her years of slavery.

The marks on his family of his failure to protect them.

And the silent rooms in their home where his children should have been.

* * *

Jacen wasn't exactly wrong about Han when he said Han was Chewie's pet. but he wasn't exactly right, either. Chewie found a person he could be close to, who needed him, who he could protect, and… He understands how, from the outside, that could sort of look like a beloved pet. But in the privacy of his own mind, Chewie tended to think of Han more like one of his sons. (His oldest son was just getting to the knows-everything-about-everything phase the last time he saw him, and Han reminded him of him a lot.)

And Han never blamed him for anything. And Han saved his life. And Han was… easy… to get along with.

And he helped to fill the hole where those empty voices lived.

And on top of it, they just clicked. He just _liked_ Han.

His… body… liked his wife just fine. He got one whiff of her and just _knew_ she was the one to make babies with; that their children would be strong and tall and perfect, (And Force, they were!) but personality-wise… It probably wasn't the worst idea he ever had to set a lot of space between them. But that's not uncommon for wookies. They don't mate for friendship. They have friends for friendship. They mate to make good babies.

Which is part of why human sexual relationships are generally weird to Chewie. It just usually seems like they're going about it the wrong way with the wrong priorities.

And it took a good ten conversations before he understood that humans could make babies accidentally, without intending to do it. (That's how many times Lando had to explain _why_ Han and Leia were surprised that Ben was along for the ride, and Chewie's still a little shaky on that, but… Well, apparently Lando and Finn also ended up with, 'Oh, look, somehow doing the only thing that makes babies made a baby, I am shocked' situations. He shakes his head thinking of that. Humans are stupid sometimes.) That struck him as amazingly stupid design on the part of the Maker. But that's between him and his God.

* * *

The fourth time Chewie did this, he stood slightly behind Han, as he and Leia held Ben, and he made his promises to his fourth baby, the first of the human ones. The ones that wailed in a tiny, high-pitched tone, and fit in the palms of his hands, and had to be wrapped up tight in clothing and blankets to protect their soft, hairless skin.

He wonders idly if the tree they planted behind the house in Chandrilla for Ben is still there. The last time he saw it, it was a twisty thing, big, gnarly branches that went all over the place. It looked healthy enough, but it seemed like it was having a hard time finding the sunlight.

* * *

The fifth time he did it, he held Han and Leia, as they held a small crystal, a memorial for a girl who never fully formed, who didn't grow big enough to take a breath, for for that matter, to make much of a bump under Leia's dress. He offered his promises to a spirit beyond them and hopes for a better go around the next time.

They buried the crystal beside Ben's tree.

And then, as best he knows, they never spoke of it again.

But they felt it. Less than six months later, he and Han were done with trying to be respectable, and honestly, spending more time out and about, and less time with Leia, and the sadness she wasn't willing to allow herself, or the sadness she didn't want them to feel near Ben, because you can't really explain sadness to a toddler, not when they're wailing away, and Ben…

He never much liked Leia's idea of staying away from Ben when they were sad, but… Every time Han came home Ben just burst into tears, and… Mourning is hard enough in your own head, but having to try and deal with the toddler who just… can't understand and can't, and for that matter, shouldn't have to, control his own emotions…

They were better on their own.

* * *

The sixth time they did this, the only tree they could find was a tiny, sad little thing in a _pot_ of all sacrileges. (It was barely as tall as Chewie… But they couldn't get anything taller than that into the _Falcon._ )

But, at least it was a tree, not some sort of ornamental shrub. (He glares at the small, bushy thing that Rose claims is a _tree._ Finn looked all over to find one of the bloody things, and spent way too damn much on it, but… In Rose's culture, itty, bitty trees that humans keep as pets in pretty little pots, so they can trim them into weird shapes, and then hand them down to their kids because they live hundreds of years are a big deal. There are a lot of things in this universe that Chewie thinks of as weird, pet trees, that should grow high and wide and tall, made tiny, is probably at the top of the list.) Cloud City wasn't exactly swimming in trees, so he and Han dug one up from their home outside of Hanna City, and brought it with them. Can't properly welcome a baby without a tree, so they were damn well bringing a tree, and that was that.

(He mentally sighs at the complete lack of trees here, today. In the celebrations at home, you'd plant a tree for your child, and your friends and family would also bring trees, add to the forest, extend the territory their clan would control for the next generation. But the only other person here who's even vaguely familiar with how lifedays work was ten days old for his own, never knew about the sibling they didn't name, and didn't attend Orlac's, because he was 'settling in with Luke' so he can't exactly blame Ben for not remembering that part of what the other family does is bring trees, too. Chewie glances out the window at the howling snow. Granted, any other trees would die pretty damn fast out there… When they get to Achc-To. They'll plant there.)

* * *

The final part of the ceremony, each adult takes the baby in their hands/arms, and makes them a promise, sometimes out loud, sometimes silently. The promise may be to the child, but the nature of it, and the upkeep, is between the promiser and his/her god/s.

Among the Maji, silent promises seem to be the norm.

So, he watches Paige, staring at the adults, eyes bright, and a little confused, as each one holds her close. Rey presses her forehead to Paige's, and thinks… something.

And then he watches the first of his hairless babies hold the latest of them, and bow his head to hers, offering… Something. Whatever it is, Paige appears to approve. At least, she's grinning as she grabs Ben's ear. Then she grins more as Ben… Chewie has to wipe his eyes. He's on the verge of crying at this, and he hates that, but…

Ben… found… made… He'd have to have made it, or got it made, or… There's no way it's the original one. The original one went with Ben to Luke's and… It was still there when they went looking for clues as to what happened and where Ben went. (It was hidden in the back of Ben's trunk. After all, Jedi weren't allowed attachments, and a stuffed toy from babyhood probably counted as an _attachment._ )

Chewie threw it out when he got back to the _Falcon_ after Han died.

Han hadn't liked that, and Chewie told him he could go fuck his dead ass the fuck back off, he was not flying around with the pet stuffed animal of the man who bloody well killed him.

And that was that.

It's a blue and yellow stuffed tookka.

He's got Paige in one arm, still mentally talking to her, as she gnaws on the top fin of the tookka. Which is exactly the point of a toy like that. Something for a small person to hug and chew on.

He didn't know Ben even remembered it was a thing, but… Shit, he mentally whimpers a bit, and Kylo glances up at him, fast, looking like he just got caught doing something wrong. Chewie nods at him. It's okay, just… touching. When Leia was pregnant with Ben she made it for him. Because she had one as a small child. Breha had made it for her. And Breha had one her mother made for her, and on back.

He liked those memories, when the war was still smoldering, and they had important things to talk about, and he and Han were still useful, and there would be quiet moments in the _Falcon,_ and the five of them could sit around and shoot the shit, and Leia would work on the tookka.

He clears that from his mind. Too much past, not enough now.

Here, now, Poe's finished his promises and is handing Paige over to Jacen who follows Kylo with another silent promise, and then return Paige to her mother.

The lifedays for his natural children, this part of the celebration could take hours. There were hundreds of adults, each of whom would make their promise.

This one took minutes.

But… It's a start. Finn's mentioned that Paige's little brother or sister is cooking away, likely because most of the kids were able to feel… him? her? within a few hours of Rose catching. There's no point to trying to keep a pregnancy quiet in this community. Half of them can feel it without being told, and then they promptly turned around and told the other half.

This time next year… The year after… They'll be on Achc-To by then, probably on an island with real trees, and there'll be a life day for the youngest Tico, and if baby Ren's lifeday is more than three years off, he'll be shocked.

Time will pass, and they'll gain adults. Poe's not really talking about his boy; he's still keeping that guarded, but Chewie's fairly sure he'll be bringing him home eventually. The older kids'll get out and about and start bringing people home, too.

Humans grow fast, live fast. Assuming Achc-To becomes a home, he'll likely get to see this baby hold her niece or nephew or child, and offer up her promises.

And maybe he'll be here for that nephew's child.

Possibly one more generation after that.

Probably not the one after that.

The holy ones say that a wookie in good standing, who's upheld the rights and his duties, gets four hundreds and a ten. That's the life of a good wookie. He figures he's in okay…ish standing and will likely see 380. But that's almost a hundred and thirty more years.

Plenty of time to plant seeds and watch them grow.

* * *

Han always, unreservedly, _liked_ booze. He'd drink lighter fluid if it had enough alcohol in it, because it made him feel good.

For Chewie… well, first hour or so always felt good, and then he'd hit what Han would call the _sensitive_ stage. (Possibly because wookies shouldn't be drinking alcohol made for humans. This does not happen when he drinks Grragkkah from home. Granted, the one time Han tried it, it knocked him flat on his ass for two days, so he doesn't bring it to human parties.) And by this part in the party he's well into the _sensitive_ phase.

He's… thoughtful, and quiet, and well, as much as a 'walking carpet' can be, sort of just blending into the back of the room, sipping his drink, and watching.

Mostly watching Ben, who is either very studiously ignoring him, or here in a room with close to thirty people, most of whom are Force sensitive, there are enough other minds around him that he's not laser focused on Chewie. Which Chewie likes. Back in the day, if he turned his attention toward Ben when he was supposed to be doing something else, he noticed in a heartbeat.

His first baby, human one, somehow, when he wasn't looking, got old enough that he's holding his newest baby. He blinks a little, thinking… the man… kid… is barely 33…34… (When the fuck was the first Concordance Day?) that's not even adolescent by wookie standards. The idea that he's not just an adult already, but the kind of adult who is holding Chewie's current baby (and woe betide anyone who tries to suggest that Paige Tico is _not_ Chewie's baby), standing next to his mate, (Speaking of when the fuck things? Ben got married. Ben got… well enough to get married. Ben got… Kylo-ed and… He blinks, making that line of thought turn off.) talking with her, and from the looks of it, desperately hoping for one of his own, soon, is staggering.

He doesn't see Han, but he can feel him. _When the fuck did we get so old?_ he thinks.

The Han in his head laughs at that. That was their joke. Because Han got old, and Chewie… well… didn't. Forty-five years for him is just… not that much time.

But it was two-thirds of Han's life.

* * *

Ben really was a tiny little thing.

Okay, yes, really grasping that felt stupid, babies are, by definition, tiny, little things, but… Ben was _little._

(Though Leia, who was perhaps on several more painkillers than were good for her mental filters, said something like, 'He's only little because you didn't push him out your twat. He's bloody enormous.' Chewie decided not to comment on that, though his wife had shared a few similar sentiments when he was cooing at how tiny his first son was, too.)

Leia hadn't wanted him in the room, which he agreed with. Han absolutely wanted him to stay nearby because if something was going to go pear-shaped, and the particular pear-shaped in question was a horde of pissed off Imperials, he wanted his best friend, his cruchalak, his _Chewie_ there with the bowcaster protecting his family. (And if things went pear-shaped in any other direction, he _needed_ Chewie there, so he didn't completely fall apart.)

(Chewie got the sense from the nurse that she didn't generally deliver babies in situations where the Dad, and his best friends, were both there and armed, with armed guards around the building, and the uncle was doing periodic fly overs just to make sure the sky above stayed clear. But it was Concordance Day, the first one, the signing was going on, and a LOT of people WERE NOT HAPPY ABOUT IT.) (Later, weeks later, they'd find out about the foiled bombing plot for the signing, and the snipers they caught on the parade route, and the collection of non-foiled bombings in other Rebellion, now New Republic, strongholds. Fortunately, Han and Leia's home didn't happen to be one of them. Mon Motha went home to ash and cinders, and Admiral Akbar ended up having to dodge laser bolts. For all the parties that went off smoothly, a lot didn't.)

He came… well, the way most babies do. There was a lot of yelling, Leia did not sound like she was having a good time, at all, and the nurses kept wandering in and out to check on her, and every now and again Han would wander out because they'd send him out to go get something absolutely no one in there needed, other than the fact that every few hours _he_ needed a few minutes to get out and sag between Chewie and Lando and _not be cool at all._

His mate was hurting, his child was taking his sweet time, because Ben was just dawdling about in there, and there was bugger all he could do about either of those things besides just stand around and be nearby and not freak out, so…

It was clear the nurses had not just delivered babies in the past, but also handled a few anxious mates, too. Every few hours they made sure Han had something to do that did not involve having to be in the room, and they told him to his face to take at least ten minutes to do it.

So, he'd head out, give them an update, and though it wasn't something Chewie did a lot, he'd pull Han close, give him a long hug (after all, if a Wookie is hugging you, you're not going anywhere) and make him just stand there and be calm.

It helped.

Eventually, there was less yelling. Lando worried about that, but Chewie waved it off. If your woman is in the part where she's pushing hard, she doesn't have the breath to yell about it, so by his understanding Leia getting quieter meant that she was focused on more important things, and then eventually things got really quiet, and by then Chewie was holding Lando's hand, (who at that point was swearing he was _never_ going to have children) and then the small cry that newborns make, the almost cat-cry squeak of it, chirped through the room, and Chewie roared in satisfaction.

An hour after that, the nurses left.

And two hours after that, Han came to the door, looking exultant and exhausted, holding the tiniest baby Chewie had ever seen (also the first human one) and waved them in.

And then he handed Ben over to Chewie.

He was asleep, and he fit in Chewie's hands, and he had a shock of black hair that no one had expected, and ears that looked like scanner dishes, and his parents were utterly besotted with him.

He didn't make much noise. He did snuggle his face in against Chewie's chest, rubbing up against him, sleepy and content for a little while, until he woke up and offered a very startled squawk when he got a mouthful of hair instead of breast. That squawk morphed into a cry, _fast._

Chewie handed a tiny, wailing banshee, (because three-hours-old, Ben didn't have gears between asleep and full-on scream) to his mother, while Lando called him a baby hog because he hadn't gotten any snuggles.

And he and Lando headed out because, well… privacy and all, and also Ben had the exact right cry register to just rip the ever-living eardrums out of a person, and they hadn't gotten around to telling Luke that Ben was here, so that needed to get done, and…

The nurse chuckled a little about the two of them more or less sprinting out, and did say that a baby's cry is designed to be as painful as possible for the people listening to it, so they'd get off their asses and fix whatever the problem was, but… once he got settled in, he'd be fine.

Ben cried a lot. And he was _difficult_ to settle.

And… no one seemed to know what to do to fix the problem. Days went on, and he wasn't sick, and he was a fussy eater, but that's fairly common, and, okay, he wasn't a great sleeper, but that's common, too…

And…

Chewie sighs. _And…_ covered a lot of those days and nights.

* * *

It's the sixth or seventh drink when it occurs to him that well, he does have his two babies here, and… Ben's last lifeday was… shit… he doesn't know. They don't use the New Republic calendar any longer, at least not in the sorts of places he tends to work, so he doesn't know when the hell Concordance Day is anymore. Plus, it's not like he can look outside and go, 'Oh, it's spring, so it's got to be soon.'

It was spring in Hanna City when Ben was born. What it is in Hanna City now, Chewie's got no idea. He hasn't been back there in at least two decades.

Part of him is thinking of sidling over to _Kylo_ and just asking when the hell his lifeday is. Part of him wonders how that'd go. He'd probably get that soft, hurt look and then chew on his lip and act like he's about to cry and that just _kills_ Chewie.

When he was little, when he was Ben, one thing he and Han were never sure about was if Ben got spanked too often, or not enough. Not literally spanked. Leia was _emphatic_ about that. No one, for any reason, was going to hit her son. That's just… not how it was done on Alderaan. Chewie sort of rolled his eyes at that, because sometimes kids need a smack to keep them in line, but… He was _Uncle_ Chewie, even if, as he pointed out, several times, he was the one who'd actually raised some kids before, and…

Yeah, that was probably a shitty position to put Han in, but… A lot of the time, to Chewie, it looked like Leia was _doing it wrong._ Or… at least… not the way he'd have done it. And, it'd have been one thing if it worked. If Ben got _better._ But he didn't, so Chewie, loudly, asked questions that didn't help, and made Han think things he likely didn't need to be thinking, but…

Ben was wild in a way that went with not enough discipline, and hurt in a way that went with too much, and… They just didn't _know._

Chewie sighs a bit, remembering Kylo responding to him talking about he and Han trying to go after him. These days, it's abundantly clear the answer was got spanked too often. Chewie mentally, and sub-vocally growls at that. He still doesn't know if he should have pushed harder to try and get more control over how they raised Ben, or given in easier and let Leia have more lead over what was going on.

The demon was in Ben's head… What the fuck could have helped with that? Taking him on as a pilot and praying he didn't blow the ship when he got in a fury? Maybe? Or maybe that was a recipe for all three of them dead.

He sees Poe heading across the room with a drink. Poe's got to still know the Rebel calendar. He lurches up and heads toward him.

The party is rolling along, and the kids are providing a decent amount of noise, so…

It's true that Chewie can't exactly ask a _subtle_ question, especially not in a small space if there aren't a lot of people there, but… There are a lot of people here, and some of them are at least tipsy, so…

He sidles over the Poe, which would work better if he weren't a third of a meter plus taller than everyone else here. Wookies do not, as a rule, sidle, if they aren't surrounded by other wookies. But no one's paying attention to him.

 _You know what day it is by the Republic calendar?_

Poe's got to pause for a moment to think. He's a lot better with shariwook than he used to be, but he's still not what anyone would call fluent. The fact that this is an out of the blue question with no real context isn't helping.

Usually Poe talks to Finn and Finn talks to Chewie and it works.

Poe blinks and shakes his head. "Sorry. Uh, let me…"

Chewie holds up a hand, meaning stay quiet, because he's just as likely to pick Rey as Finn for someone to translate. And since he's not entirely sure what he's doing with this, he's not about to dump it on Rey. And since he doesn't know what he's doing with this, _and_ there's no answer to that question that won't annoy Finn, he doesn't need to be the one translating, either. Instead, he looks over at Jacen, focuses on him, and thinks at him _Come here._

Jacen looks pretty surprised, but he does disengage from the rest of the teens and wander over.

"What's up?"

Chewie explains.

Jacen laughs at that. "Shit, if you're gonna get him a present, I'm in, too." Then he turns to Poe. "He wants to know if you know what day it is by the Republic calendar. He's trying to figure out when the hell _Ben's_ birthday is or was."

"Oh, uh…" He thinks a bit, and does a little math, and, "Ujleth 7, 39 ABY. We before or after it?"

 _After._ Even Poe speaks shariwook well enough to understand that.

"Next year, then?" Jacen asks, looking very amused.

Chewie's watching his first baby bounce his current baby around. _Maybe._ He does look at Jacen, and then thinks to him. _Next time we go for a fly, bring him along._

Jacen raises a brow. _Really?_

Chewie nods.

 _If he says no?_

 _Then come alone. I don't think he'll say no._

Jacen looks over to Kylo, who's with Rey, and Ostrae, who is explaining, in a lot of detail, the desserts she made.

 _He'd like it if you invite him yourself._

Chewie nods. _Maybe next time._

Poe stares at both of them, and it's clear he wants to butt in, but he decides not to. Families are complicated, and this doesn't need him in the middle of it.

* * *

Thirty-four years ago. On a warm spring morning. In front of a moderately sized group. Bigger than the one here today, significantly smaller than the crowd that might have gathered if Han and Leia had decided they wanted publicity for this, Chewbacca took a tiny little boy from his parents. He held the infant to his chest for a moment, letting him feel his heartbeat, and the soft grrs of him starting to speak, and then shifted him, so he could look him in the face, as he promised to him, to his Gods, to his parents, to the ghosts of his line, and the children this child would eventually sire.

To the past, to the future.

To _life._

He held Ben Bacca Solo in his hands, and told him that he was his child, too. That flesh of his flesh he may not have been, but love of his love, he was. That he would always have a home with his Uncle Chewie. That he would protect him, and cherish him, and raise him up right, and that from that moment until he drew his last breath, they were family.

Ben gurgled a bit at that, but didn't cry. And for a tiny person with a visual focal length of less than a meter, he seemed to do an okay job of locating Chewie's face, and looking into his eyes. (Or so it seemed. Those little blue-black eyes fixed on his, and he stared up at Chewie, intent in a way that only Ben was ever intent.)

He's looking at Chewie now, too. That same intensity it still there, though he's confused, now. Even in this crowd he's apparently picked out that Chewie's feeling very intently toward him, right now. He looks worried. Thirty-four years later, and Chewie still knows that look.

He grumbles to himself. Part of him wants to just head over, slap a hand on his shoulder, and tell him it's fine.

But… It's not fine, is it?

It never was fine.

They tried. They all fucking tried, but… It never was fine.

He stands up to head out, and once out in the snow whirling around him, he waits. A moment later, bundled from head to toes, eyes barely peeking out from layers of black cloth, Ben is there, looking at him.

"Did you…" It's too windy. Even two meters apart, he can't hear what Ben's saying. Chewie knows he's talking, but it's whipped away.

Doesn't matter, this probably isn't a time for talking. He grabs Ben, and gently tugs the cowl away from his face, so they'll have skin to fur touch, and then pulls him close, so his face is pressed to Chewie's chest, and then he holds him.

Ben's frozen. Dead still. Chewie's not even sure if he's breathing.

Chewie strokes his hair. And he doesn't try to say it, though he knows that some of the rumble of his voice is there as he thinks _Do you remember?_

Chewie remembers. He held baby Ben this way. Held child Ben, and adolescent Ben, and once young adult Ben who'd been in such a flaming snit, he just grabbed the kid to calm him down, but after that… After that, he didn't let himself get within arm's reach. After that, he'd been learning to fight for years, and he was quick and wary and…

After that, he'd been, literally, untouchable because he wouldn't allow himself to be touched.

He's a lot taller now than Chewie remembers, and a lot thicker, certainly smells better than angry, hurting, rageful, hopeless teen Ben did, but… It still _feels_ very similar. This is still one of _his_ babies. The one that's named after him.

And he's shocked into perfect stillness by the embrace.

Finally, after too long, there's a tiny _yes_ in Chewie's mind, and the feel of arms slipping around his back.

Chewie nods, his face against the top of Ben's head. And… he doesn't know what this is, probably not forgiveness, not yet, but… Maybe a place where things like that can happen. Maybe it's just… moving on. Putting the future over the past.

Or maybe it's just… Something that doesn't need a word or a label.

A lot of what he and Han had didn't fit into tidy categories and neat labels, so why would this be any different?


	58. Supposed

5/8/2

Kinear comes into Kylo's office with a few pages of actual paper in his hand. Kylo's eyes narrow at it. "You looking to sweeten me up?"

Kinear raises an eyebrow at that. "Kylo?"

Kylo nods to the paper. "Paper." He can see that's completely whirled past Kinear, and he has no idea what Kylo's on about. Kylo smirks. "So, you don't know everything about me." He glances at one of the seats near him, and the cup of tea, the way Kinear likes it, waiting for him.

Kinear sets the papers in front of Kylo and sits down. "Well, that's part of giving you these. I didn't want them in the system, so Ellie found some paper, and I dug up a pen, and wrote them down."

Kylo scans the pages and knows he's going to have to give them to Rey to read. Kinear's handwriting is horrible. He can, however, feel what they are from Kinear. "The interview questions."

Kylo hadn't exactly been keen on the idea of 'an interview' let alone 'many interviews' but Jon patiently explained how this would be a way for a very large number of people to feel like they were getting to know him and Rey, without (and this was the perk) either of them having to personally go out and meet the tens of millions of people who would eventually watch these things. Put that way, he's still not keen about sitting in front of a camera talking about himself for an hour, but it seems better than the alternative.

Kinear sips his tea. He notices Kylo's got tea in his mug, too, but doesn't say anything about it. "Obviously, we're setting this up to be as easy and pleasant as possible for you and Rey, which means not jumping out of nowhere with questions you don't want to talk about. So, these are the things people want to know about you. This way, you have time to figure out what and how you want to answer them, and if there are any you don't want to touch, just cross them out, and Ms. Holaran won't ask you them. If there are any you want to add, just write them down. If you're okay with the idea of a question, but want to tailor it, same deal, just shift it around."

Kylo's nodding, staring beyond the paper, not really seeing it. "Who's Holaran again?"

"The most popular newsreader on our channels."

Kylo ponders the idea of a newsreader. "Does she just… read reports our people write up for her?"

It's clear that Kinear is pondering the fact that Kylo does not, apparently _watch_ any of the newsies the Order broadcasts. He's thinking about if that's a good thing or not, and not immediately seeing a solution, so he decides to punt it to later, and answers Kylo's question with, "Yes. She's very pretty, but in an intelligent sort of way, has an excellent voice, does a good job of telling stories, and actually is a rather good interviewer. Since we control the news that gets out, she doesn't do her own research, except for interviews."

"And she doesn't find that boring?" Kylo's not sure he can fathom just reading other people's words all day every day and not going bonkers.

It's clear that Kinear seems to think he's missing the point of this. "You could ask her that."

Kylo nods and rubs his lips together. He spends a few moments staring at the script, seeing words and phrases start to sort themselves out as he begins to decipher Kinear's scrawl. Then he sighs. He doesn't hate the questions, but he'd rather not be spending an hour, even a very highly scripted hour, talking about himself.

"Second thoughts?" Kinear asks.

"Constantly."

"Are they yours or Rey's?"

"I'm fairly certain these are mine, though she'd certainly understand why I have them."

Kinear nods. "Okay. Ellie'd kick me to get me to shut up, but… Remember you and Rey do not have to do this. We think it will make things easier, especially in the long run, but that doesn't mean it's right or something you should do. It just means that this is one possible route you can take."

Kylo glances at the gray line. It's up again today, but it would be, no new income has come in, but a lot of people have. He closes his eyes for a moment, thinks _three years,_ and nods. Everyone who likes them better, the more valuable to the galaxy they become, the easier everything gets. "That's… good actually. Knowing I can tell it all to fuck off." Even if he shouldn't, just the option feels good. He rests his hand on the questions, and then says, quietly, "My second thoughts. Twenty-nine years of never being good enough, of people wanting me to be someone else. Ten years of no one wanting to know what was under the mask. Most of my life people wanted the mask, or a mask, trying to shove them onto my face, and now… Everyone wants to know what's under there. What if they don't like it?"

Kinear knows that's the single most vulnerable thing Kylo's ever allowed himself with someone who isn't Rey.

He rests a hand on Kylo's shoulder. Then he scoots closer to him, and sighs. "This is a mask, too, Kylo. Just like Rey's title. Just, hopefully, one you build yourself and to your liking. A… prettier one than your black one. One designed to make people love, and not fear." He takes a breath and sorts his thoughts. "If we succeed at this, we'll end up spreading across the galaxy, hundreds of trillions of people, billions of ships. It's too much for any one person, Kylo. Too much for _every_ one person. No GodKing, no Emperor, no _one_ can do this. We're building an ideal, and heroes, myths for them to cling to, to build… some sort of common culture around… and one of them may, to your liking, look like you.

"But like I told your love, keep yourself for yourself. Keep The Master as your shield, or mask, or however you like to think of it. This," he lays his hand on the questions, "is about giving all of them, the billions and trillions of them, something to look at and romanticize and adore." He lays his hand on Kylo's chest. "And that's you. Under the masks. That's for you, and Rey, your children and your intimate loves." He sighs a little at this. "Generally, those of us who have a nemesis, he or she, too, will know you, who you really are, where you live, metaphorically if not literally, but the rest of the galaxy out there… They're too busy with their own personal lives and their own masks, and their own futures and pasts."

Kylo nods. He looks over at Kinear, "Who are you, Pat?"

Pat thinks about that for a long minute, and Kylo can feel him thinking about what the Kinear family could, or would, have done had Kylo been born into their midst, before saying, "The grandfather you deserved."

Kylo snorts a bit at that. Though he also imagines how growing up in a place where the family, no matter what, always came first. "Don't suppose you had a few wild months back in… Corelia, in say…" Kylo just gives up on translating the date. He learned it on the New Republic system, so that's how he says it, "late 33 BBY?"

Kinear smirks at him. "My wilding days predate that by a bit and were on Coruscant. You don't know your father's people, do you?"

"No. He didn't, either. An Empire official gave him the surname Solo when he signed up, because he didn't have parents." That's not quite true. There was a mother, and a few memories of her. Sick, poor, tired, and then gone. She had black hair. Han told Kylo that. He'd gotten the black hair from his grandmother. And there was a father, or at least conversations about him. He'd been a freighter pilot, at least that what Han's mother had said. But she died, or left, or… something, when Han was still young enough to just know her as Mama. And after that, the only name he had was Han.

"Too much family on the one side, and not enough on the other."

"Something like that."

Kinear stares at Kylo. "I met Vader a few times. Once when he was still Anakin. Granted, I did my best to be permanently on the opposite side of the galaxy from him, a long life expectancy and getting close to Vader didn't go hand in hand, but Tatooine was under my control, so…"

Kylo thinks about that, and about the mask that's sitting in the back of his closet, and the saber he hasn't worn in months. He wonders how many days in his life Vader put his saber down. Wonders if even Anakin had many days where he walked unarmed. "People keep telling me they expect to see more of him in me. I guess I did, too."

"It's the shape of you. Though," he smirks a bit, "You've actually got the shape. On him, the height and width were mostly his life support suit. Back when he was a man, he was built more like Jon than you."

"I noticed." Comments like that always make Kinear curious and uncomfortable. Kylo chooses not to expound, let the man have at least a few mysteries. "He told me I resembled Padme."

Kinear looks seriously at Kylo, really seeking out the bone structures shaped through time and the vagaries of genetic drift. "Around the eyes, some. And the coloring, some. Her hair was brown, not black, though. I think you've got the same color eyes. But mostly, you're just you."

"Did you know Bail?"

"Again, I'd seen him. Ellie likely knew him well enough to nod. She was on Coruscant more than I was, and when I was there, I tended to be home." He shrugs a bit, long dead secrets… "He wasn't my department, but…"

"There were no departments you didn't have at least a feeler in," Kylo says.

"Exactly. Didn't want a blind spot to jump up and grab me. The Emperor's security forces knew he was involved in the Rebellion, and for the most part let it go. He was… useful. Actually, so was the Rebellion. Better to keep your enemies small, where you can see them, and fussing with each other. I think the Secret Security department was actually running three of the different Rebellion cells. So, that kept your grandfather's group, the Alliance to Restore the Republic, squabbling with splinter cells who used tactics he didn't like."

Kylo sighs. "And let me guess, those tactics made the Rebellion look bad, and gave the Empire innocent victims to blast all over the media."

Kinear tilts his head. "There were, also, genuine terror groups in the Rebellion, too. We didn't run _all_ of them."

Kylo raises a brow.

Kinear nods, slowly, and adds, "Many a leader has found it useful to have an enemy, one that poses an existential threat, and if the universe won't conveniently turn one up, sometimes you have to make one. Love is good. But if you don't have the temperament for it, fear and hate will work just as well, if not better."

Kylo fiddles with his cup. He sips it, winces a bit, and doesn't know why he put tea in there. He doesn't actually like it, and it's not doing what coffee should. He glances at the gray line again, and takes another sip. "I don't know if that makes me feel better or not." He thinks for a moment. "The Death Star? The one Luke blew? Did the Rebellion have... Erso?"

Kinear shrugs. "To this day no one knows what Crennick and Erso were doing. His daughter… Erso's, was with the Rebellion for about nine minutes before she died, but… Before it blew, every report about the man said he was brilliant and lived for the Empire."

"How many of those reports were written by Crennick?"

Kinear smiles at that. "You're learning. Always make sure your intel comes from multiple sources, and preferably those sources don't know each other. Crennick was paranoid that if anyone else got access to Erso something would fall apart, so they didn't, which means we only got reports from him."

"Does that mean I should be listening to you less?"

"Realistically, yes. And you should be running anything I offer you by at least Poe, and likely a few others as you find them." Kinear's thinking of Leia, but he doesn't know how that works, so he doesn't say it. "Whoever comes after me likely won't have the same soft spots I do."

Kylo raises a brow at that.

Kinear waves it away. He doesn't feel a need to expound on that. He does pause, and think, and then says, "Ultimately, and I don't know if he'd go along with it, but if you want to know what I'd do with Poe, I'd send him back to the Resistance and use him to make sure we actually control it."

That steals Kylo's breath. "I…"

"Wouldn't even think of it, and if you had, you'd never mention it to him. And I don't know him well enough to know if it's worth trying. But, this is part of what I mean by working on training you and Jon up. You've got the makings of proper devious bastards; we've just got to get you there."

"And Poe?"

Kinear smirks at that. "Already is one. Just got to figure out how much of a bastard he's willing to be. My guess is, he's already aware of what he could be doing for you and has chosen not to."

"Do we… have ears in the Resistance?"

"Some. A few useful idiots, and a few more intentional spies. The different branches all put together number fewer than five thousand people, so there's not really room for too many of them."

"How about the New Republic?"

Kinear gives him a long look after that question. "You've got a look in your eye that scares me."

"Potential long-term planning. Beyond your time horizon," Kylo tries to brush the idea aside, but part of him _really_ wants to talk about it, too.

Kinear seems to understand that. Or he just can't stand not knowing. "Then you bloody well better run it past me when I'm still around to comment on it, and have enough wits to make sense, then."

"We talked about it a little bit. Trying to make peace with the New Republic."

" _Long_ shot. At least, if you want to keep your head attached, and I'm assuming you would."

"I would."

"Good. That's the bloody tragedy of you Skywalkers. You burn so damn bright, but you burn out fast. Let's see if we can keep you going past fifty, okay?"

Kylo smirks at that. "Well… That's… Part of the idea. I'm… really hard to kill, you know?"

It's clear on Kinear's face he doesn't like anywhere this conversation might go. "You're still fucking mortal, Kylo."

"I know. But… Force sensitives… We don't leave corpses. Luke burnt Vader's support suit, not him. Obi Wan just left clothing behind, same with my Mom, same with Yoda. I won't leave a corpse behind. One moment I'll be there, and the next I won't, and… If I time it right…"

Kinear exhales long and slow. Kylo feels the first level, which is a spark of fear. The old coot does genuinely like him, and doesn't want to see him come to harm. But he banishes it for the second level, for the tactical planner to take over and see what they could do with it. "Well… That's…a thing."

"A thing that could happen. The sort of thing that'd… We'd need to get the peace offer in before the New Republic orders the attack, right?"

Kinear nods. "Always better to play from strength. And offering before they manage to get a vote up for an attack makes it look like you actually want a workable peace, and aren't just trying to save your skin."

"That's the idea. Are they... a real threat?"

Kinear blows out a long breath. "Now, no. Hux killed off something like 95% of their military in one strike. But, again, enemies. Now the New Republic has an enemy, one that's still alive, something to unite behind. When your Mum was trying to get it to go against Snoke, it was wallowing in the usual issues, the struggle between central command, or decentralized alliances, and where the military power goes, and if individual worlds could get a better deal by playing both sides of the issue.

"That's done now.

"And, while the military is ruined, they are rebuilding, and they have _vastly_ more people and resources to pull from than we do. Just like for us, building weapons takes time. Training fighters takes time. Unlike us, if they decide to set up conscription, they've got literally hundreds of trillions of people to pull from. We do not. If they decide to start strip mining planets for resources, they have millions of them to pick from. We do not."

"So, if they decide to play by the First Order, or the Empire's rules, they can crush us, easily. Just by sheer numbers."

"Exactly. So, yes, if we can get a peace play in, before, they can take advantage of that. And if they feel... secure enough to stick to an actual decentralized Republic-"

"Big if?" Kylo asks.

"Palpatine came to power by making people feel week, threatened, and insecure. Hux literally murdered tens of billions of people in one fell swoop. He didn't make them feel insecure. He showed them they were."

Kylo sighs. "Love, huh?"

Kinear tilts his head. "The more likable you and Rey are, the more peaceful the Order is, the better for the galaxy we are, the more you defang the people who want to kill anything wearing a hexagon. But, they're still going to have to get the Republic to vote to go to war." He sips his head. "And the more ties we can build with other New Republic worlds, the harder it'd be for them to get it through a vote… The more ears we've got…" Kylo can see him going through the permutations. "You've got New Alderaan coming to you in ten days… Let me…"

Kylo waits to see where Kinear's thoughts are going.

"Alderaan is peaceful. Alderaan, cousins of the Order. Hell…" He thinks… "Their second senator is your literal cousin. Alderaan, has a permanent vote in the New Republic, and it's near veto power… When Alderaan says _no,_ people listen. It's… We've got to find something other than that fucking ship that doesn't exist that they want, and we need to be seen to give it to them… We'll… keep working on that."

Kylo nods. "So… do we have ears in the New Republic?"

"Not as many as I'd like us to have. That's part of the problem, they're… significantly… pickier about who gets to join, now."

"Potential allies?"

Kinear thinks. "Again, the obvious one is Alderaan. Depending on what you do with Naboo, that's a potential angle to work with. We've got a non-aggression pact with the Ygrines, and they've got a seat."

"How about the Calrissian Corporation?"

"Your… Aunt?"

Kylo nods. "I think. Though I was more thinking that maybe I'd see about seeking out my cousin. He's… likely to be more… understanding of my current situation than my aunt is."

"Isn't he… also in exile? He's… running an art school?"

"Something like that." Though given what's in Rey's library, Kylo's fairly sure that 'art school' is a convenient cover for what Orlac really does.

"Probably not a bad idea to reach out, except his art school is politically neutral and might not want anything to do with you, and, of course, it's his mom and her nieces and nephews that are actually in the Republic."

"I'm thinking of trying to get near the Republic, not in it. I just… want to know what's going on. Not get in the middle of it."

"Wise."

Kylo looks at the papers in front of him. "And in the meantime…"

"Exactly." Kinear taps the page. "Your mask. Young, attractive, personable… Real, enough. Go be likable and pretty and make them want to join us. Fill our ships and planets with people who want to be near the romance. Sell them the dream, Kylo. If we become valuable enough, end up with enough citizens, we may be able to sell a peace treaty without having to fake your death to do it."

Kylo sighs long and hard at that. He's looking at his desk where his saber lives. Then he floats it to himself, just to hold it. "Sometimes, I think the saber'd be easier."

"Certainly, in the short term," Kinear says. He's looking at Kylo, carefully. "Amidala… To an extent, part of why she was picked for Queen is that the Naboon like the idea of young, innocent, and pretty leaders."

"And part of it is that young, innocent, pretty people are easy to steer?"

"Well, the Trade Federation was certainly expecting that to be true. Palpatine did, too."

Kylo remembered that part from reading up on Padme. "They were wrong."

Kinear nods. "Moments like this, I see more of her in you. But again, you're still yourself." He fiddles in one of his pockets, and pulls out his personal datapad. A moment of keying codes in, and then an image pops up. Kylo recognizes Pat and Ellie, sitting among of wide swath of people. "Clan Kinear. That's us, the kids, the grandkids, and the great-grandkids. Got two more tiny ones since this was taken. One is a great-grandkid, the other is the first great-great-grandkid. And they're all their own people. Even the little, drool-y ones. Some of them have my hair," he's looking at the picture, and doesn't look away from it as he says, "Don't scoff. I had a full head of hair once upon a time, and it wasn't always gray… or Ellie's eyes, but… None of them are clones of us. Even if they were clones, they aren't _us._ Can't be. Didn't live our lives, survive our trials, or anything like that."

Kylo stares at it. "There's got to be… fifty people in this picture."

Pat nods. "Well, a good marriage on Coruscant was designed to merge family lines, enrich them, and then keep that line going. And then the Empire was all about making new Imperials to spread across the galaxy, and, well," Pat smirks a bit, "we really liked making them, too, you know?"

Kylo grins at that. "I certainly hope to find out."

Kinear grins back at him. "Usually, this is a wedding night chat, but in that you've been married for more than a year at this point, I'm probably a bit late, but… Sex is fun. Sex with a woman you adore, to make a baby with her, that's…" he beaming, "beyond _fun._ "

"Like I said, I certainly hope to find out."

"You will. It's silly, but the only other thing that feels like it is a fight for your life. Where you really don't know if you're going to make it out or not. And that moment, where you know you're alive, where you know you've made it." He's watching Kylo, and Kylo nods, he's been in that moment, and remembers it, "It feels like that."

"The last time I had that kind of fight, Rey was with me."

"Look at how not shocked I am by that." Kinear's face is dead. Then he breaks into a smile.

"How old is that picture," Kylo asks.

"Three years. We try to get all of us together every five."

Kylo nods at that, too. "It's a good tradition."

"Come to the next one. You and Rey and baby. I've adopted three sons-in-law, two daughters-in-law, and a slew of grandkid-in-laws. We've got room for three more."

"Would your kids be… alarmed by that? An outsider among them?"

"We've welcomed a lot of friends of the family over the years. Three more won't make anyone blink. And… if you and Rey come, rather than the Master and Mistress, you'll find a warm welcome. They're all their own people, but… there are some family traits that seem to have bred true, a certain talent for discretion and fact finding among them."

"You're going to bring me home to your entire spy circle aren't you?"

Kinear looks pleased. "I'm not going to comment on that, beyond this: some jobs are best kept in the family. And some jobs need a big family to do." He smiles again, and stands up. "Okay, I know the rest of your day is busy. Read those questions, and figure out what you want to tell Ms. Holoran."

"I will." Kylo's quiet for a moment after that, and then asks, "Do you have a picture of you and Ellie when you were my age?"

Kinear smiles at that, and fiddles with his datapad. "We're a bit older… Well, I am… Ellie's your age." He turns the pad to Kylo. "Like I said, once upon a time, I had hair, and Ellie's wasn't white, and… We weren't born old."

Kylo stares at the picture of the two of them, looking happy and relaxed. "I don't recognize the uniform."

"I was still with the Coruscant police at that point. That's before the Old Republic fell." He thinks about it. "Connor took it. I'd been off with the Clones, loaned from the Coruscant Police Force to the Army of the Republic, training them in urban warfare scenarios. That wasn't part of their tactical package. Probably should have been a hint things were going to get bad, but… I wasn't thinking that far ahead. I was home, for a bit, and he'd been wanting a camera—"

"Connor is…"

"Oh. Our oldest boy. He was about ten when he took this. You can's see from this angle, but Ellie was cooking our Keith at that point, he was about four months along. He took another one of all of us together, but…" He turns the pad back toward him. "That one didn't make it through one move or another. I've had to bug out a few times with the stuff that was just on my back, and that one wasn't."

Kylo nods. "I really need to get a camera."

Kinear smiles at that, tucking his datapad back into the pocket of his coat. "Presents are common at weddings."

"So, I've been told."

* * *

Rey sees the sheets of paper, off to Kylo's side as he sits at their table, and she hovers at his back for a moment, watching what he's doing. Namely staring at the paper, squinting at it, running his eyes over a line again and again, and then typing answers to the questions on the sheets, before asking, "Are we writing a script?"

Kylo shakes his head. She feels his relief wash over him, a flush of _thank the Force you're here now,_ as he pushes the papers to her. "I… not for me at least. I just find it easier if I write it down. That way I can plan my thoughts out, make sure I've got them organized, and then go from there. Both of the speeches I've given, I strayed off what I wrote, but I needed to write it down first, so I could stray into something useful." He smiles at her. "And I need you to read these bloody things if I'm going to do more than one per ten minutes. Kinear…" he sighs. "It's stupid. I _know_ he's old, but I don't think of him as old, but…" he nudges the paper toward her.

She looks at a lot of very shaky, jittery handwriting.

Kylo nods at her. "That's someone who learned how to write, but doesn't have the fine motor control to do it well any longer."

Rey thinks about that. She also _knows_ the Kinears are old, but again, she doesn't really think of them as old. But… those are some awfully shaky letters. Hers look tidier than that, and she still doesn't have them all mastered. She sits next to him, and says, "Okay. So… Let's see these questions."

They're fairly standard, normal, average get-to-know-you interview questions. Once Rey's got them deciphered. And, it turns out there are some very basic things they don't in fact know about each other, like for example, "You have a middle name?" Rey asks, reading over Kylo's shoulder as he types out his answer.

He looks at Ben Bacca Solo, and shrugs a bit. "I mean. I _never_ use it. My parents didn't either. I think I've heard it spoken maybe four times."

"Bacca… Like, Chewie?"

He nods. "Yeah. Ben was my mom's hope, and Bacca, Chewie, was my dad's so… Ben Bacca Solo."

Rey looks really pleased by that. She strokes his hand, and says, "You ever… uh… think about names?"

He goes very still and stares at her, wide-eyed. "You mean… for… our kids?"

"Yeah. Finn and Rose and the kids were talking about it this evening. Possible names for Baby Tico Two, and… Well, Ben Bacca…"

He bites his lip, but gently, she doesn't like seeing him hurt himself, and he quietly says, "Yeah… Sometimes. Maybe."

She raises a brow.

He looks away, not sure why he finds this so squirmy, but… He likes the idea of talking about it, and it's terrifying at the same time. Naming something like this. It's… making things more _real._

"I think about… uh… Han… or Hannah…" His eyes feel hot and wet. He's pretty sure he's not crying. Probably.

Rey's got a very soft look on her face. "I like that." There's a moment, a heartbeat of an image, maybe sparked by the idea of the name, maybe a touch of Force, but there's the sensation of a baby, a girl, how or why they know it's a girl doesn't matter, it just is. Dark black hair, fine and sticking out in twenty directions, and sleepy blue black eyes that will one day shift to hazel, tiny fingers wrapped tight around one of Kylo's big ones, as she rests her face against her Mama's chest.

One day.

Kylo chews his lip a bit, and then says, "I guess that answers the 'do you have kids question.'"

Rey squeezes his hand, and nods. "So, let's see what's next… Favorite foods… Do people really want to know what our favorite foods are?"

Kylo shrugs. It seems silly to him, but… It certainly wouldn't be the first time something seemed silly to him.

As they play with different ideas, him answering some of them, her taking others, something that isn't exactly a script, but a… version… of who they, or who The Master and Mistress, are starts to form.

Toward the end of it, Kylo takes Rey's hands in his, stretching her fingers, and rubbing his thumb deeply into her palms.

"That's the most typing you've ever done in one day, isn't it?"

She nods. He knows she's been, along with the children, learning how to actually _read._ Or, in her case, write. She's slower than he is, but she would be. She hasn't been doing this since she was three.

He flips her palms over and kisses each one, and then flips her hand again, kissing the backs of her fingers. "Can I say I'm proud of you for learning it, without it sounding condescending?"

"It's not condescending… It's just… Go me! I've mastered a child's skill."

He shrugs a bit, and kisses her pinkie finger. "Last I checked, I was still routinely having temper tantrums at 29; sometimes you don't get all the steps in the order everyone else says you're supposed to."

She smiles a bit at that. And he lowers her hand to his lap, rubbing it further. He works over her palm and into her wrist, rubbing his thumb into the muscles, digging in deep and steady between the bones of her forearms.

They both go still.

His thumb is pressing into a tight bit, and it feels really good. A tight bit that he's correctly determined needs to be rubbed. A tight bit that's several centimeters above the part that was actively hurting, but is definitely involved in why it's hurting. That's when it hits, he's giving her a massage, to make sore muscles feel better. It's not complicated healing, but it is _healing._ It's him using his body, his feel for her, his Force, and his sense for how things are supposed to flow to find the tight bit and rub on it until her hand feels better.

If anyone had suggested he'd be even marginally competent at something like this last year, he'd have laughed. Five years ago, he'd have hit that person so hard, they likely wouldn't have gotten back up again.

"With each new skill we get closer to the people we were supposed to be?"

He shrugs. "With each new skill we become the people we are?"

"I like that." She sighs again as he stretches her fingers. "I think supposed is a word the Maji should banish."

"Do or do not, there is no try? That was Yoda's great perspective on the issue, at least according to Luke." Kylo's voice does not sound approving at that idea.

"I'm not sure about that. But I'm getting sure that 'supposed' clouds things up. Gets us wrapped up in ideas and futures and pasts that didn't or maybe couldn't happen. We're probably better off with whatever is, rather than what was 'supposed' to be."

"She says to the 'supposed to be' scion of the New Jedi, or Darth Vader, or child of the New Republic, or…"

"Exactly." She leans up to give him a quick kiss on the lips. "Meanwhile… I think trying is important."

"Well, as Luke tells the story, he was being kind of whiny and self-defeating, so it might not have been a general lesson so much as a bit aimed directly at Luke and only in that particular situation."

"Ah."

Kylo thinks about that, and about the Yoda stories. "Most of Luke's Yoda stories seem to fit into that category. I was never entirely sure if Luke was telling them to us to teach us the lessons Yoda offered him, or to remind us that he wasn't born knowing everything."

"Both?"

"Could have been." He kisses her palm again. "Better?"

"Yeah. I never want to type anything again, but…"

"Tell me about it when we get around to some of that mythical free time and I start teaching you how to actually _write._ "

"As long as you're willing to rub the cramps out after," she says it with a smile in her eyes and voice, and that's the moment where he really _gets_ what he was doing.

He looks at her hands in his, and kisses her hand again. "Fuck supposed to."

"Indeed." She looks at the questions. They're basically done. "And fuck me, too?"

He stands up, lifting her in his arms, and says, "Any day, any time, and anywhere, love."


	59. The Interview

A/N: If there was ever a chapter where the illustrated version was a good idea, this is one of them. The pictures really add to this. Search Keryl Raist Public/Private, and google will send you where you need to go.

* * *

5/10/2

Bright and early, or it would be if they were anywhere with an actual sun. As it is, it's early, but exactly the same, unchanging light that Kylo and Rey's room always has.

Jon's not exactly fluttering around their room, but he is laying things out, and directing the droids. "Okay, stylish but casual."

Kylo doesn't swat at the droid in front of him that's doing… something… to his face. "I better still have my scar and moles when this is done."

"It's not putting that much makeup on you," Jon replies. "Just enough to even out your skin tone and make you look a little better rested."

Kylo rolls his eyes, and shares a look at Rey. He doesn't want to admit that maybe he's a tad nervous about this and didn't sleep all that well. Apparently, though, his skin, or at least the dark circles under his eyes, are traitors and telling the story loud and clear.

Rey's not saying much at all, she's sitting quietly, as the droid plays with her hair, fluffing it up a bit.

"You two okay?" Jon asks once the outfits are laid out.

Rey rolls her eyes a bit. "Feel jittery. Don't much like it."

"That's normal," Jon replies. "We're going to start off getting some pictures of the two of you together. Just…"

Kylo perks up a bit at that. Rey smiles a little.

"You like that idea?" Jon asks.

"I was thinking that I'd like to have some images… Something… real, about this life," Kylo says. "Would you be in any of them?"

"No," Jon says flatly. "These'll be for public consumption. Not private. And… uh… you'll see. These won't be… real."

"Yes, but I run this ship. I can ask for some private images, correct?"

"You certainly can. But… Or you can just get a camera and take them yourself, later," Jon says. "It's… more fun when you do them yourself."

Rey and Kylo share a look, and both decide to back off on getting Jon in the professional pictures.

* * *

It's _bright._

Like, stupidly bright.

They're in the not-a-throne-room, which more and more these days is beginning to look like a functional courtyard, with things like plants and fountains, reflecting pools, and a view of the galaxy spinning out around them. They're standing, and then sitting, and standing again, with more lights around them than Kylo knew existed, and other people are flashing more lights at them, and moving the lights around, and suddenly why Jon didn't want to be involved in _this_ is making a hell of a lot more sense.

He glances over to Jon, who's hovering at the perimeter of lights, keeping an eye on things. Jon grins at him.

There are people who keep... circling, around them, calling out instructions, shining _more_ lights on them. "Okay, Master, just… let's get you to turn just a bit more… Lady Ren, look up just a tad, and… Okay, smile!"

This is _impossible_. The smiles feel etched on and appallingly fake. And after every series of shots, the photographer wanders off to look at things, and then mutters about things neither of them wants to focus on, and then comes back and says something like, "That was great, how about we try…"

If Rey understands what they're looking for (and it's likely she doesn't) they somehow want some sort of image of the two of them, looking pretty, and adoringly, at each other, while their faces are easy to see. This has not worked, because it's not physically possible for two people to look adoringly into each other's eyes _while_ looking at a fucking camera.

After a series of shots, where she feels like her neck is going to collapse because, in general, she doesn't have to look up at Kylo like this. Generally, if she's trying to look him in the eye, she's either on top of him, and how tall she is doesn't matter, or she's far enough away from him she doesn't have to crank her neck up so much.

She must growl at the photographer when he suggests another pose of her looking up, because next thing she knows there's a stool, and she's standing on it, and suddenly she's a lot closer to Kylo's height, and that works better.

Maybe they get a good picture or two like that. It feels like there should have been at least one good one. But then the photographer wants her back to his chest, and both of them looking at the camera, and at this point Rey doesn't think she could muster a real smile if her life depended on it.

She feels Kylo think: _It doesn't._

Jon, hovering in the background, watching, and occasionally adding comments as he looks at the images behind the photographer's shoulder calls time after an hour. He shepherds them off to a quiet, and significantly dimmer section of the courtyard. "So, how was that?"

Kylo glares daggers at him, and Rey spends a moment with her eyes closed, wondering if the greeny-purple after images of the flashes are ever going to fade.

"Yep. Exactly, how I thought it would be." Jon sounds very amused, and smug. "On the upside, some of the pictures are good."

"Lovely," Rey says. "We did that for _some?_ "

"That's how professional photography works. At some of the weddings I used to work, there would be literal _days_ of photography to make sure that _everything_ had _perfect_ pictures. It's normal to take thousands of pictures to get three good ones." Jon nods to the small table next to them. And the food and drinks. "Eat, sip something, relax for a bit."

They almost flop onto the sofa, but a look from Jon makes it clear that there are people here, so no flopping. So they sit, nicely, down, and get drinks. One sip in, Rey can feel that the drink is very mildly alcoholic. Just enough that she can almost feel a little layer of everything smoothing out.

Kylo takes a much bigger gulp than she does. He closes his eyes and waits for the booze to hit. It does, and he can feel some of the muscle tension start to leave.

"You think we'll ever enjoy this?" he asks Rey.

She rests her head on his shoulder. "And will we still be us if we do?"

He kisses her neck, nuzzles her bare shoulder. "I didn't say it before, but I do like this on you."

She smiles a bit. It's a pretty outfit, a pinky-purple shirt and tan trousers, and the sleeves, which leave her shoulders bare but her arms covered, does hearken back to a look she used to wear. "Thanks."

He's got on his 'new,' vaguely nice, casual-ish stuff. Not only is it not entirely black, the cuffs and collar have a dark green and blue pattern on them, but the collar doesn't close. There's a little v of visible skin on his neck and the top of his chest. She touches the little bit of exposed skin. "This is nice, too."

"Okay, both of you are looking a little recovered," Jon says, coming back. He's got… Kylo blinks, surprised. That is a camera in his hands. "I was thinking that you didn't want anyone to ever take another picture of you again, but…" He hands the camera to Kylo. "Here. Budge over a bit."

They're on a sofa, so Kylo budges, making room for Jon.

"Rey, get on his lap, we can't pull it back too far for this to work, so we've got to get in close." Then he's sitting right next to Kylo, hip to hip, and Rey's on his lap.

He gestures for the camera back, and Kylo hands it over. Jon holds it at arm's length, pointed toward them, and flips the view finder so they can see the image.

"Okay, just… be you for a minute." No one's really smiling. Except Jon. No huge grins. But the expressions are soft, and real, pleased, and a moment later, Jon's got the camera back in his hand, hitting a few buttons, and then deleting. "Okay, it'll be on your personal data pad, and mine, and nowhere else. Let me go give this back."

Kylo takes his pad in hand, opens it, finds the image, and looks at it with Rey.

It's the three of them, together, looking pretty happy.

And just having that makes him feel so gloriously content.

Rey's just staring, eyes soft, and… "Are you crying?" he asks.

"I'm really trying not to," she says blinking, looking at it. She looks up at him. And he smiles at her. And then gives her a soft kiss as they both hold the first image of the two of them, together, with their dear friend.

The first image of their family.

* * *

"I'm here today with Master of the Order, Kylo Ren and his lady, Mistress of the Maji, Rey. Or, as the rest of you know them, the two, most talked about, least known about, people in the galaxy. They've agreed to sit down with me today, and ease that second condition a bit."

Holoran is, exactly as Kinear said, pretty in an intelligent sort of way. (Which at the time Kylo had no understanding of, but he does now.) She's warm, friendly, and would be really good at putting both of them at ease and getting them to talk except both Kylo and Rey can feel that being warm and friendly and putting people at ease is her job.

There's no real affection there. This doesn't feel like sitting down with Jon, or Unthar and Amilie… This is a professional doing her job, which for the moment is them, and that's… off-putting.

But they're here, in the courtyard, on a comfortable sofa, sitting across from Holoran. There are three cameras pointed at them, and recording gear all over the place, and Kylo's not sure who planned this detail, but there are cups of what is obviously coffee waiting for sipping, and…

It's a show. And they're the stars.

"So, let's start at the beginning," Holoran says, with a warm smile. She doesn't have a script or any sort of notes, so, apparently, she memorized everything they're going to talk about. "Master Ren, I understand that's not your actual birth name."

She's bright and eager, looking like anything he's going to say is the most fascinating thing _ever_ , and she's waiting patiently for him to respond, as everything he's ever had to say about himself goes skittering directly out of his brain, and his skin goes two sizes too small, and they're all staring, and… And he can feel he's squeezing and releasing his knee over and over, and he wants to get up and bounce around. Well, no, he wants to get up and leave, but…

Rey takes his hand, and as he hears _I'm fairly sure this is nervous_ in his head, a flood of her own calm hits him.

He makes himself take a slow breath. _Why aren't you jittering?_

 _Because this question is yours. You can help me calm down in a minute when we get to mine._

He doesn't nod. He does give her hand another squeeze, takes another slow breath, and then says, "No. It's not. I was born Ben Bacca Organa-Solo."

"That's a name all right."

He smirks a bit. Then stops when he realizes he's supposed to say more, but hasn't, prompting Holoran to say, "But you left that name behind…"

He nods. "Yeah. Uh… My mother was born the day the Rebellion began. Literally. And I was born the day it supposedly ended. The first Concordance Day. So, she says I was named for hope. Ben, for General Obi Wan Kenobi, who came to her, and the Rebellion's, rescue when they most needed it. Her last hope. Bacca is a short form of my dad's best friend's name. Kenobi may have saved the Rebellion, but," and for this, Kylo produces Chewie's actual name in accented, but passable Shariwook, "saved my Dad over and over. Those two were _hope_ to them."

"But you didn't keep that name, obviously."

Kylo nods again. "Yeah. Uh… The thing about hope, is it's an ideal. And…" he chews his lip a little, and Rey gives him another little squeeze. "I'm a person, not an ideal. And people… don't live up to ideals. I mean, they can't. Ideals are something to strive for, not obtain. So, all Ben Organa-Solo ever did was disappoint people who wanted him to be… something he couldn't be."

"And Kylo Ren is a person?"

"Certainly, trying to be." He can feel that Jon, and a few of the camera people really like that answer. That feels… good.

Holoran turns her attention to Rey, and she does feel a stab of nervous go flowing through her, and the sensation of Kylo's thumb stroking the back of her hand gently. He doesn't have a lot of calm to offer, but she can feel he's trying.

"Now, Lady… Mistress… Rey? He's got too much name, and… It certainly seems like you're a bit light on them."

Rey smiles, or tries; it comes off okay. "Well, Kylo has family going back to… as far back as people have kept track of things like that. I don't. My earliest memories are of my parents leaving. I believe they called me Rey, and when people asked me my name, that's what I've told them.

"I don't, actually, know my birth name. I've looked myself up in the register, but the people who abandoned me, also didn't register my finger marks or retinas.

"But Rey is what I've been calling myself for as long as I remember, so Rey is who I am."

"You basically named yourself," Holoran says.

"I guess. I have memories of being called Rey, but… Birthname, nickname, pet name… I don't know."

That catches Holoran's attention. "How about pet names, what do you call each other?"

Kylo and Rey freeze, because that was _not_ on the script. Holoran smiles pleasantly, and says, "You've got final control over the edit. I'll throw things in as they seem to be needed; you'll answer or not as you see fit. When the editors are done with it, everything will flow."

They look away from her, to each other, and then Kylo smirks a little and says, "She's been known to call me 'smartass' on occasion."

Rey bursts out a laugh, and looks down, hiding her face. When she stops chuckling, she looks up and says, "Not that often. I normally call him Kylo, sometimes Love or Opal."

For the first time, Holoran seems genuinely interested in them as people. "Opal. That's got to be a story…"

"It is, but—" She looks to Kylo, and he shrugs. If it's too much, they'll cut it out. So, Rey continues. "When the Jedi monopolized the understanding of the Force, they broke it into light and dark. And to a degree, that's a useful way to think about things. The light side is calm, passive, stable, nurturing and cherishing. The dark side is active, vibrant, destructive, and volatile. If you put both together, you've got someone stable enough to provide a good foundation for things, and destructive enough to see the problems with the current situations and how to change them and put new things into place. So… Opals, black opals, are dark, but they're also flecked through with sparks of color and light." She squeezes his hand again. "My opal."

Holoran smiles at that, a real smile, and then looks to Kylo, waiting for him to add his own pet names.

"I'm less creative. I call her Rey, or Love."

"But her title is Mistress Rey of the Maji. So, I guess where we go next is, what's a, or the, Maji? Right now, there are rumors going around ranging from The Maji being a school to, it's where you live now, to some sort of new Jedi-type, Church-of-the-Force religion."

This one is easier to answer, likely because it's on the list, just a lot further down it, and Rey takes it. "It's not where I live. As for the rest, yes? The Maji is… a reaction, I guess. It's a look at the world around us, and specifically the spiritual and Force-based understandings and actions of the galaxy around us, and trying to come up with something that works, better, than what we've currently got.

"It's stripping away centuries, millennia of, 'We've always done it this way,' or 'It's right because it's old' and really _looking_ at how things work and trying to figure out how they work better.

"There aren't a lot of good things about being orphaned out in the middle of nowhere and left to your own devices, but one of them-"

"The only one," Kylo adds, voice dark. The camera doesn't miss he's still angry that happened to Rey, or the way he snugs just a bit tighter against her as she talks about her early life.

"Is that I'm not mired in many traditions. The… thing… that 'raised' me, didn't exactly spare a single moment on any bit of education not involved in finding him better junk so he could make more money off of my labor. Which means I'm coming to a lot of these ideas with fresh eyes.

"It's… difficult to see the issues with something you were always told was right. It's even harder yet when you've been told something is right, and all the people telling you it's right have a lot invested in it being right.

"I…" she shrugs a bit… "Well, no one ever placed any hopes in me," though Kylo squeezes her hand as she says that, "so there's no one for me to disappoint. I didn't have years and years of being told there was only one right way to do something. No one went out of their way to make me believe that if I did it the 'wrong' way, everything would fall apart and all of my loves would be consumed by unending evil."

"Add in a brilliant mind, and a fearless soul," Kylo says, much less nervous talking about Rey.

She smiles a little and doesn't directly respond to that. "Anyway, that's the kind of background that lets you actually examine sacred things, and see if they're sacred because they work, or if they're sacred because they're old. A lot of 'sacred' things… Well, they're just _old._ A thousand of generations did it a certain way, and maybe for the first three our four it was a real improvement over what they'd been doing before, but eventually it got so entrenched no one bothered to see that there had to have been a reason for doing it that way in the first place, and was that reason good, and could we do better?"

"The Maji are iconoclasts?"

Rey blinks, it's clear she doesn't know that word, and the interviewer stops. "Okay, we'll cut that." She pauses, the camera men do their thing, and then she says, "So, the Maji are tradition breakers?"

"Sometimes. In some ways. Again, just because something's old doesn't mean it's good. But it doesn't mean it isn't, either. Sometimes, something gets old because it's genuinely useful. So, we're not breaking with traditions just to be new. We're… just really looking at why people do things the way they do, and then deciding if that's useful, and valuable, for everyone, now."

"So, you're the Mistress of a church?" Holoran leads.

"Maybe?" Rey shrugs. She's still not sure what exactly makes a church a church. "Or a moral philosophy. Or maybe it's just a club with an unusually intense set of ideas about how people belong in the universe." Rey smiles a little. "It's a work in progress."

Kylo adds, "It's a faith. These are the things we believe about out place in the galaxy, and how to, hopefully, make ourselves, and our worlds, better for ourselves, and those around us."

Rey smiles at that, too. "As you can see, _one of us_ was trained in religious philosophy, and it wasn't me."

"Though she's been doing a _lot_ of reading and studying over the last few years."

"And you've also been going out and doing diplomacy work for the Order. How are you liking that?" Holoran asks Rey.

Rey shrugs. "It's useful. I've been meeting people I've liked and seen things I could have never dreamed of, and some parts of it are really enjoyable, and some parts are really intense, and some are just exhausting. But… what jobs don't work that way?"

Holoran looks amused by that answer. "The diplomacy outreach, going to places and seeing people, inviting them here to use our space to talk and seek accord, markets, an eventual senate, all of that is new. Is this… mostly your idea, Mistress? Part of being the light one?"

Rey smiles a little, and looks to Kylo, who smirks a bit back, and both of them look at the interviewer.

Kylo licks his lips. "Idea isn't necessarily the right way to think of it. Hers or mine. There are things we both want the Order to be able to do, and when we sat down with my advisers to talk through how to do them, both of us, together, and on our own, doing diplomacy-type-things, seemed like one of the easier ways to get the Order where we wanted it to go."

Rey tries to add a bit more, "After Snoke was gone, it was very easy to see what we didn't want to do and where we didn't want to go, but knowing where to avoid isn't a map to get you where you need to go. It's just a way to make it easier to get there."

"But, as for… ideas… and who comes up with what… I… am much more light than he is, so for me staying in one place is _much_ easier. So, most of the changes, most of the tearing down the old and building up the new, that's his."

Kylo takes over. "Giving me the stability to be able to see what new could be, the hope that it's not going to all spiral into disaster… Anyone who's paying attention knows I've got galaxy class skills at breaking things and tearing them down. Nurturing isn't my strong suit, seeing the optimistic version of things, also not one of my natural skills, and that's part of where she comes in.

"Neither of us ever expected to be… well… Here. Running something this big. But, when it comes to new ideas, well, I was at least raised with some ideas of what a functional government looks like, so I have a little bit of an easier time coming up with concrete ideas for where to go next," Kylo says. They're well afield of the questions on the paper, but this feels… good, so he's okay with going on.

"Ben Organa-Solo wasn't supposed to be a politician? Didn't train to follow in his mother and grandmother's footsteps?" Holoran asks.

Kylo winces. He did open this up. "On more levels than you can possibly imagine. And… I suppose it's true that we're literally in the business of politics, but I _really_ don't like to think of myself as one."

"How do you think of it?" Holoran asks.

"You mentioned my mother and grandmother, but when I think about what we're trying to do, and how, I think of my uncle."

"Luke Skywalker?"

"Force, NO!" Rey adds.

"My 'uncle' Lando Calrissian. My Dad's other best friend. Head of the Calrissian Corp, Governor of Cloud City, first Senator of Cloud City. He had a military, and probably a hundred million people living with or working for him, and he did it without conquering anything. No one died because the Calrissian Corp bombed a planet from atmo to get it to behave. Cloud City grew because he made it a place people wanted to live."

"And he looked great in a cape, and _someone_ really likes a good cape." Rey says with a little smile.

Kylo shrugs a bit at that, too. His formal blacks include a cape, but he's not wearing them now.

"Everyone likes a good cape," Holoran adds with a smile. "So… you want to run this as a business?"

"To a degree. I want to have the biggest, most-open, freeport in the galaxy. I want anything that's Order territory to be a place where people can come to live and work and find the lives they want. I want us to use this huge military machine I grabbed from Snoke for defense and security, rather than oppression and conquest."

"He wants to re-write the rules of the game by playing it differently than those who came before," Rey says.

"Yeah. My mother was all about the New Republic… And, to a degree…" There's a sardonic set to his face as he says the next bit, "From a certain point of view, that was great. Representation for planets and systems, let people have some say in their governance, treaties for trade and travel, but… The New Republic didn't care about individual people. If whoever was in charge of your planet decided to join up, you were bound by those laws, and if they didn't, you became an outlier.

"I don't care about planets beyond the level of what they can do for people. I care about people. If you want to be part of the Order, we're easy to find. If you don't, leave us alone, and we'll leave you alone."

"So, you want to create the first entirely voluntary political entity in the galaxy?" Holoran asks.

Kylo and Rey look at each other and shrug.

"I don't know if we're the first, but that's the idea. Come and help build something great, and if we're ever moving in a direction you don't approve of, leave. We'll live or die by how many people we can convince to join and work with us," Rey says.

"That's one of hers." Kylo says. "Back… when this was starting, when it was just the two of us, she told me that I'd do what I'd do, and she'd abide or not as she could, and… That's a good template. We don't try to force each other into a mold more to the liking of the other one, but we value each other, so we shift ourselves. This… The Order, will do that on a larger scale. We'll be who we are, and attract people who want to be with us, and if enough of them don't, then we'll shift or fall apart. But the thing that will keep us going and strong is the ability to attract people to us, so we've got to be something that people want."

"The Order has to offer value, beyond the idea of join or die, that's a core of where we're going," Rey says.

Holoran looks… her face is approving... under the smile… Kylo gets the sense that she doesn't buy this idea. Or that it's a fairy story, nice on the surface, but not able to work.

 _Find out what she did under the First Order._ Rey thinks to him.

He mentally nods at her.

Holoran appears to be a little uncomfortable at how they're watching her so, she says, "We're well off the script. Want to get back to it?"

"Sure," Rey says.

Holoran nods. "Rumor has it you wear a child's toy around your neck, Master Ren. What's the story behind that?"

And suddenly the neckline of this shirt, which does allow, if he's in the right position, the edge of the Maji pendent to show, is clear.

Kylo smiles a little at that. "I keep forgetting that that's what it was." He glances to Rey. "She gave it to me."

"As a token of affection? A junjan disk? There's got to be a story there," Holoran says.

"There is. I… didn't know it was a toy at first either, but…" She gestures, and Kylo slips it over his head, giving it to her. "A dear friend of mine found this, and thought that it might be a good symbol of what I'm trying to do with the Force. Or what the Force is, and I'm trying to teach people about it. You can see it, black and white sides swirling into each other, gray in the center. Perfectly balanced in itself and between the two. So that became the symbol of the Maji." And she hands the token over.

Holoran looks at it, holds it out so the camera can see it, and then hands it back to Kylo who slips it back over his head and tucks it under his shirt.

"And, for a while, I was the one wearing it. But… I guess like all couples there was a time when we were still learning each other, hadn't yet made the leap. And then there was a time where we had, and when the leap was made, I gave it to him."

"And for a while we shared it. I'd wear it, she would, we'd pass it between us. But we kept… maybe changing isn't the right word, but evolving our ideas of where we were going, and how it would work, and when it became clear that we were going to be in each other's worlds, fully…" He gently touches Rey's pendent. "I had this made for her. It's the Order Hex with the Maji spiral. The Order of the Maji. I suppose, over time, we'll see more and more of us moving around the Order with this mark, but for now it's pretty rare."

"And that's when he started wearing the Maji spiral full-time." Rey says. "He basically is The Order, at least for now, so he doesn't need any additional Order branding."

"Or maybe I just like having the touch of balance against my skin at all times. Helps me keep centered a bit better."

"It's… marriage jewelry?" Holoran asks, "A mark of a promise? We understand you're getting married soon…"

"That's not exactly accurate," Rey says. "On a few levels." She holds up her hand, showing the shiny black band. "We do wear marriage bands. That's… our own private promises to each other."

Kylo continues, "We are married, and have been for a while. We're having a wedding in the not too far future, though, and hope to invite a lot of the galaxy to celebrate with us."

Rey expands on the idea, "We've talked a little about the Maji, and though it's a new faith, and thus shifting about, I think one thing that will be true is that we marry first, and have weddings later. We understand a marriage isn't something that just happens all at once. It's not the sort of thing where you can look at a point and say, married/not married. For example, we weren't married the first time I slipped that pendent over his head. We were moving in that direction, but not there, not then. But we weren't just Rey and Kylo then, either. The foundations for The Rens were being built, and strengthened, when I slipped that token over his head.

"To our way of thinking, a marriage is… a gradual building of a relationship and commitment, and the wedding is held after that commitment and relationship is solid, as a way to celebrate it."

Kylo's nodding along. "It's a public declaration of a private commitment, and as such, has to be held long after said commitment is made."

She's holding his hand, "And, unlike many faiths, we don't believe that a wedding, or any ceremony, can make that commitment. It's the people, not the ceremony, that makes a marriage. But, suffice it to say, the commitment is well and truly made, and at this point, all that's left is the party."

Kylo smiles at that.

"So, given you are married, I guess you can answer this, Mistress, what's Master Ren like as a husband?"

Rey sort of blinks at that one. It's just not… on any level, how she thinks about that. "Uh… Good?"

Kylo raises a brow at her.

She rolls her eyes and leans into him a bit. "I love you, too, but… I don't know. I don't have any other husbands to compare him with. How do you mean 'like as a husband?'"

Holoran's looking at him as she says, "Well, he's got a reputation for being volatile, easy to anger, and intense…That's your… dark stuff, right? Is he like that at home?"

Rey blinks again. "Uh… I mean… yes, all of that can be and is dark stuff, but… At home… No." Rey's smiling softly. "Well, okay, yes. He's intense, but in a way I like. And volatile and angry are things, because who doesn't have at least some things in life that makes them angry? But it's anger at the wider world, that we share, and help each other cope with, not anger aimed at me. At home, for us... gentle… understanding… Part of that is we're just well-suited to each other, but he understands me in a way no one else ever has or does."

Holoran looks surprised by that.

"Passionate, affectionate… Uh…" She looks to Kylo, not sure how much to reveal.

"Tall," Kylo says with a solemn nod. "Little known fact. I'm rather tall for a human."

His face is dead on serious, and it's not until Rey laughs and gives him a little shove that Holoran figures out that he's joking. "Smartass, huh?" she says.

"He's funny, or can be, and that's part of why I call him smartass sometimes," Rey replies. She's smiling as she says, "He's mine. That's what he's like as a husband, mine."

"And…" They both feel the split second of decision in Holoran's mind. She's not sure if she should, but if it works, it'll go well, and… "Kylo, same question." Her using his first name wouldn't have even been noticed by either of them if she hadn't been mentally concerned about it.

"What am I like as a husband?"

"You really are working the smartass angle, aren't you?"

"I've been told to stay with what I know," and he tries a smile to go with that. He looks at Rey, a soft smile on his face, and his thumb caresses over the back of her hand. He looks down for a moment, trying to put the billion thoughts into words. He knows Rey can feel where he's going, and his complete lack of any way to sum that up that's even remotely cool, let alone entertaining. He shakes his head in a little 'no' gesture.

"No words for Rey as a wife?"

"Thousands of them, all good, but that's for me and her and quiet whispers in the dark. Not here."

That also gets a smile.

Apparently, they've done such a good job of putting Holoran at ease that she decides to go _way_ off script. "They say you're a Jedi. Luke Skywalker's nephew and all. Is that true?"

She feels Kylo freeze at that, and glances to the camera, knowing what the problem is, before saying to him, "If it's a bad question, don't worry about it. Trust me, if you don't like it, it's _not_ going to get out."

"Oh," Kylo says. He's not having a hard time imagining what happens to newsreaders who let the wrong information slip out. Especially newsreaders who worked under Snoke. Were there newsreaders under Snoke? There had to be, right? Hux probably personally vetted them and made sure they only recorded him from the right angles…

Rey's nodding, and that jerks Kylo's attention back to here and now. Then she says, "The Jedi are gone. Luke Skywalker was the last one of them."

Kylo nods as well. "I am not a Jedi. That said, I am, to the best of my knowledge, the only living person formally trained as one."

"Okay. Did you leave or were you kicked out?" Holoran gestures to Rey. "I don't know much about the Jedi, no one does, not anymore, but passionate, attached, romantic, and dark all sound like they weren't part of the code."

Kylo smirks a bit at that, and inclines his head in agreement. "I left. I trained as a Jedi from the age of eight to twenty, obtained the rank of Master, and spent the next three years working with Luke Skywalker and Tash M'Gll of the New Jedi."

"Does that mean you can do magic?" Holloran looks genuinely interested in that.

Kylo smiles a little at that, rolls his eyes a little, too. "I have more aptitude and skill with Force manipulation than most people. And, yes, from the outside, it does look like magic. From the inside… It's just… feeling the currents and using them."

"What can you do?" Holoran asks.

He shrugs a bit. "Some tricks. I can float things, which comes in handy significantly less often than you'd think." Though he does hover his coffee cup to his hand, and then take a sip, and hovers it back to it's tray. Holoran and three of the camera people are _deeply_ impressed by that. "I have a general sense of anything moving around me. That makes me hard to sneak up on. The stories from the battle of Qualee Prime are true, I can stop blaster bolts if I'm paying attention, and I'm _extremely_ good with a lightsaber. I have a general feel for the emotions and motivations of the things around me. All of which mean you really don't want to fight me."

"You can't actually read minds?" she asks.

He half shrugs. "I used to think I could, then I met someone who actually could, and let's just say, compared to him, no, I can't. It's more like I'm paying very close attention and am exceptionally good at reading body language. I can usually feel when people lie to me, because usually they're nervous about lying, especially to me, but, for example, I don't always, or often, know exactly what the lie is."

 _Speaking of lying,_ Rey says in his head.

 _I don't think I need to be caught on holo saying, 'Yes, I can read your thoughts like they're written on your forehead if I concentrate.'_

He feels her mentally smirk at that.

"But being a Jedi isn't what gave you those powers?" Holoran says. "It's been so long since there have really been Jedi, many people are curious, and if you're all that's left…"

Kylo nods. "No. I don't have whatever powers I have because I was a Jedi. Though my skill with those powers is sharper and more refined than they would have been if I hadn't been trained as a Jedi. The Jedi existed as a way to deal with power." He pauses, fiddles with his fingers and Rey's for a moment, and then says, "Let me back up. The Force grants some people, for no reason any of us can tell, immense power. _Stupidly_ large amounts of it. More power than anyone really should have. So, the Jedi came up with a way to deal with that power. To control it and use it constructively. They hoped.

"I don't think they came up with a particularly good way to deal with it, but that's between me and my ghosts."

"And between me and the Maji and the future," Rey says, and Kylo squeezes her hand.

"The basic level remains. Some people will gather power. Some people will then use that power in ways that hurt everyone else. And, to the extent that the Jedi existed to try and teach people with more power than normal how to use it in a constructive way, that was a good thing.

"The difference between the Jedi and the Maji is not just in how to use one's feelings and motivations to corral their power, it's that the Maji understands that Force sensitives aren't the be all and end all of power."

Rey takes over. "The Maji exists of and for anyone. You don't have to be Force sensitive to join, and unlike the Church of the Force, there are no Maji Knights with their special skills. We're all Maji, equal before the Force. Some of us have flashier talents than others, but that's true of non-Force sensitives, too. We treat Force sensitivity like any other natural talent. Some people are smarter. Some are stronger. Some are more dexterous. These are natural talents that can be honed; Force sensitivity is just another one of those talents."

Kylo rubs his lips together. "If… The most dangerous man I ever met, and I'm not ashamed to say this, one of the few men I've ever feared, was not Force sensitive. Some of you likely remember Armitage Hux. I don't know if they still show the video of his speech before he blew up the Hosnian System. But, suffice it to say, he, personally did more to mark the galaxy than any other man I've ever met, including Snoke, including Luke Skywalker, or Leia Organa, or… anyone." Kylo's getting fidgety as he talks about this, his foot bouncing up and down, jiggling his leg.

The interviewer nods, and Rey takes Kylo's hand in both of hers. His foot starts to slow down, but the bounce doesn't stop.

"Hux had less Force talent than some rocks I've met in my day. In addition to having no Force talent, he actively derided it, too."

"Interesting position to take working with you and for Snoke," Holoran says.

Kylo gestures with the hand Rey isn't holding. "He knew it was real. But he didn't fear it, wasn't mystified by it, and considered it something of a crutch. Probably because he knew, without the Force, Snoke would have died a long time ago, and I would have, too, but he, just on his own, with his wits and his tools, had gotten to where he was."

"The pride of the self-made man among the princelings," Rey says.

Kylo's never thought about it that way, but that's _exactly_ right. And likely explained a _lot_ of the chips on Hux's shoulders.

"And he was the most dangerous man you ever met?" Holoran leads.

"I'd be very interested in seeing the logic of someone who disagrees with that statement," Rey adds.

Just before Kylo says, "Yes. The only reason anyone could even consider that a controversial statement is we've still got this bizarre idea floating around about the _power of the Force._ " He hovers the coffee cup again. "Yes, that looks impressive, and yes, there are situations where it's useful, but this is not, on any level, similar to being able to design a weapon that can obliterate an entire system." He lowers the cup. "Hux was the one who ordered the strike on the Hosnian system. Not just ordered it, but it was his idea, too. Snoke approved, but it was Hux's baby. So was Starkiller. He didn't design all the ins and outs, but he is the one who put together the larger design, worked out how to make everything work together, poured through the research, found the holes in Erso's designs for the Death Star, located the engineers who could take his ideas, and Erso's, and their own, and put it together into StarKiller.

"Tens of billions of people all died in an instant because of Hux, but because he wasn't Force sensitive, the Jedi wouldn't have considered him much of a threat. Wouldn't have even bothered with him until it was too late. There's the story about Darth Vader telling the Engineers of the Death Star that it paled in comparison to the _Power of the Force_ , and it's true, Luke Skywalker, the Force, luck, and a good pilot at his back took out the Death Star, but not before they blew Alderaan out of the skies.

"History remembers Vader and the Emperor, but outside of certain circles, Galen Erso is forgotten. History will likely remember Snoke and I, and eventually Hux will fade to the ethers, too. But Galen and Hux killed more people, faster, than any of us ever dreamed of, or could. I'm likely the most powerful Force user alive right now, and on my own, really concentrating, I've won a twelve on one fight. I absolutely do not have the skills to build a Starkiller. I had the imagination to see that a battering ram canon on a ship could be an impressive weapon, but I can't design either of those things on my own. I could pilot one, but even if you gave me all the parts and the specs, I couldn't put it together." Kylo stops to arrange his thoughts more. "The Jedi spent so much time on magic and the Force and the power of the light and the dark, that they forgot the power of technology. Forgot how many people died because of sharp engineers and sharper minds." He shakes his head a bit. "That's one of the reasons I'm not a Jedi any longer. Too much focus on the Force, not enough focus on the real, here and now issues of this galaxy."

Rey adds, "That's one of the reasons the Maji is what it is. _Everyone_ matters to us, everyone has a reason, a purpose. That's reflected in how the Order works, too. There's no such thing as a meaningless life."

"Are you Force sensitive?" Holoran asks Rey.

"Every living thing is part of the Force. It flows with and through and around us. We feed it and it feeds us. Anyone who can hear this interview has some level of Force skill, though like Kylo said about Hux, for some people it's a very low level. For me, I have more Force sensitivity than the average person. It's given me an unusual aptitude for languages. I can read almost anything that's ever been printed, which actually does come in handy quite often. I'm good with plants and animals and children. Two of our friends have a little girl, our niece. She's not quite talking yet, so I can hold her and get a sense for what's going on, same with plants and animals. That comes in handy quite a bit."

"I'd have given my left arm to know why my daughter was fussing all the time."

Rey smiles at that, thinking of Paige fussing yesterday. "If she's anything like our niece, the correct answer is, 'I'm just in a bad mood and sharing it.'"

Holoran sighs. "That makes a lot of sense."

"Yeah, apparently, sometimes, babies are just grumpy."

Holoran laughs. Then says, "So, you two have a niece?"

"Yes," Rey says with a smile.

Kylo's smiling at the idea, too. "Yeah. I mean… The core Maji are mostly children, or young teens, so we actually spend quite a bit of time with kids."

"And he especially enjoys the little ones who just know him as Kylo."

He shrugs. "I especially enjoy spending time with people who aren't afraid of me. And the little ones aren't. They mostly just know me as the big guy who teaches lightsaber, and will let them climb me like a training gym."

Holoran is just _staring_ at him. "You let… a herd of children climb all over you?"

"Not all that often, but yes. Especially if they're doing well on their lessons, they like to 'rough house' a bit after, and I'm game for that. Anyone who can 'break through my defenses' gets bragging rights, and they seem to enjoy that."

Holoran's chuckling. "Off record, people are going to _love_ that story. You really play with little kids?"

"Does five-to-ten-years-old count as little?" Kylo asks.

"Yeah, it does."

"Then, yes, about twice a week. I work with the older ones one on one, at least once a week, and there's less rough housing and more form and focus work." He looks to Holoran, "A Jedi Master is someone who has both gained enough knowledge to control him/herself and their Force, _and_ a teacher. M'Gll and I primarily obtained the rank of Master because we were able to teach the younger New Jedi. According to Luke, back in the day, the rank of Master meant you were on the high council or something like that, but there's no council any longer. So, Master meant that you'd gained enough skill to pass on what you knew and teach it to others."

"And that's the title that matters to you?"

"Yes."

"And Mistress of the Maji?"

"Normally, I prefer going by Rey. But, I've been told that it's important to have a title, and so… It matches his. And I am a teacher. Though a lot of the time I feel more like a student. So… Why not?"

"Lady Ren?"

"I'm not going to object to people calling me that, but… My power, my place, it's my own, not his reflected. The Force balances, light and dark swirling into and supporting each other, merging into a single, harmonious gray. So, yes, privately, personally, my name is Rey Ren. Politically, I prefer Mistress Rey."

She feels the surge of pride from Kylo at that answer.

"The children you've been seen with on the Supremacy they're… some of the Maji, aren't they?" Rey nods at that. "Do you have any children of your own?"

"Not yet," Rey replies.

"Yet, meaning you hope to have them at some point."

"We hope to have them at some point. Though… Growing up with famous parents isn't necessarily fun or easy, so… That's something both of us think about," Kylo responds.

"And you know all about that, don't you?"

"Maybe not _all._ My parents did their best to keep me away from fame. I knew my mother was important, but that's about all I knew of that. Probably because my father wanted nothing to do with the New Republic or Royal Alderaan, at least, on the political level. He supported it, fought for the Rebellion… A lot of people forget about him, because my mother was _Princess, Senator, General Leia Organa,_ and he didn't want to be in the Senate or the Army. He was happy going back to private life. But, if both of them had been in the political sphere, they likely would have had a more difficult time keeping me out of it."

"Did they keep you out of it for your sake or theirs?"

Kylo shakes his head. "We're not doing that one." He looks at Holoran, really seeing her. "You're bored just doing interviews, aren't you?"

"I thought you didn't read minds."

He smirks a bit at that.

Rey says, "You don't have to read minds to see it. You got comfortable with us and wanted to make it clear you've done your research and are interested in seeing how far you can push this."

"I am bored. I'm here to be a pretty mouthpiece." She shrugs a bit. "I could do more."

"Keep your questions for us in line, and I'll see about setting you up to do more," Kylo says.

That has her attention. "What kind of more?"

"Pretty people who ask good questions are useful. Even we know that. The only question is where can you be most useful," Rey says.

"Do you like parties?" Kylo asks.

"I don't hate them."

"How about traveling?" Rey says.

"I have small children, so I prefer to be home most nights."

"Well, we're supposed to host these things, too, and Jon wants us to have polished, pretty people to go to parties and _talk_ to people."

She looks pleased at that idea. "People, especially powerful ones who are in it for the power, generally enjoy having pretty people fawn at them, listen to their every word, and ask them about themselves."

Both Kylo and Rey can see how that'd be useful. Then they understand how it might apply to _them._

Kylo shoots her a _look._ Holoran shrugs.

"Shall we get back to this?" Kylo asks.

Holoran shrugs again. "Do you want to? I've got more than an hour of material. We can cut this into a wholesome get-to-know-the-Rens conversation that people will gobble up and then beg us for more."

"Sounds good," Rey says.

"Or we could actually talk about some real things, like where you're taking the Order, and what your role in it is Rey, and get into those questions you left off the list and all the other dark and niggly bits and actually get something _real_ out there."

Kylo and Rey glance at each other, and then her.

"Real is for your loves. This is for the public," Kylo replies.

"That said, there will be a time, closer to the elections, when we'll want to talk about what the Order is and what it means and why we built it, and where we want it to go. And when we get there, we'll talk," Rey adds.

Holoran smirks, slightly. "You're better at this than I expected."

"We hear that a lot," Kylo replies.

"Can I give you some advice?"

"Certainly," Rey replies.

"If you keep being better at this than people expect, soon, they'll begin to expect you to be good at it. The only way to keep being underestimated is to, at least occasionally, live down to the image. Now, I don't know if you prefer to be underestimated or not, but… keep it in mind."

Kylo nods, and Rey says, "We will."

"Good. So, more questions, or are we done?"

Kylo checks the chronometer. There's still another hour booked for this, and he _really_ wouldn't mind doing something else with that time. "I'm done. Rey?"

"Me, too."

"Okay. My team will edit this, put it together, send it to your people, they'll sign off on it, and in a few days this'll be live, and you'll likely have people hawking Maji pendents all across the galaxy. Or at least someone trying to get a contract to make them exclusively."

Kylo and Rey sort of blink at each other at that. He shrugs. She nods.

Holoran nods back at them, and begins to pack up her things.

* * *

A day later, Ellie and Mirina are watching the 'final' cut.

"Better than expected," Mirina says.

Ellie's nodding, watching critically. "Next time, make sure we've got explicit instructions for the camera men to avoid shooting him below the chest. Everything he's feeling is in his hands."

They've done their best to cut out how often Kylo's either got a death grip on his own leg, is jittering with his hands, or Rey's holding them to calm him down.

"Better in his hands than on his face. He almost looks comfortable in some of those questions," Mirina replies.

Ellie's nodding at that. "They're both better on real questions than on fluff."

"She's genuinely good at this," Mirina says as she watches another of Rey's sections.

"It's a good smile. It feels real and warm. Makes you happy to see it," Ellie replies.

"If she wants to spread the Maji, this is her fastest way to do it. Get more broadcasts out about what it is she's doing and why and how. Maybe… at least one a month…"

Ellie likes the idea of that. "That's good. Try to get a real talk with the two of them at least once a month, too. I think he'll get better at this the more he does it."

"Probably."

* * *

5/13/2 Get To Know The Rens goes live. It plays on every Order channel, at least once a day, for the next week.

By 5/14/2 every single swirl junjan token sells out. And though the manufacturer sets up a rush run to make thousands more, he'll never be able to keep them in stock without back orders again.

By 5/15/2 hundreds of letters have come for Lady Ren, wanting to know more about her balanced Force. By 6/15/2 there will be tens of thousands of them.

And, though the formal uniform of the Order does not allow for visible jewelry, by 5/30/2, around the C-D-E-and-F decks some of those little swirly jungan tokens start to appear on necklaces, or pinned to collars or cuffs, or tucked into the band of the uniform cap. Some worn openly, some hidden under shirts. As best Kylo and Rey can make out, at this point they seem to be mostly worn as… good luck tokens, or… maybe a way to show extra devotion to the Order, but…

As Rey sits at their kitchen table, looking at a data pad _filled_ with letters… From scads of people who want to know... everything... about her and the Maji and the Force and balance, and...

The Maji starts to grow.


	60. New Alderaan: Hosting

5/15/2

This time, they're waiting for the ship to land and the hatch to open.

Rey is standing next to Kylo, both of them in their new, fancy Handsome Prince and his Lady wear, with Jon on Kylo's left, and Ellie on Rey's right, watching the flagship of the Queen of New Alderaan, the _Aldera_ hover gently into its place.

Threepio stands slightly behind Rey, and she can feel a wave of satisfaction off of him. Apparently, this… all of this (though right now, _all of this_ is a busy landing bay) took a lot of conversation and meetings and thinking and…

There's an image in Threepio's mind. It's a thousand lines of troops in perfect armor: white, and black and red, on a different landing bay, though one built of black metal and white accents, like this one, waiting to honor a visiting dignitary. The Emperor. Maybe Lord Vader. It's a common image, blasted over newsies galaxy-wide.

And it's exactly _not_ what's happening here.

There are men in Order uniforms all over this bay, but they're in the soft gray and blue and black cloth uniforms that Order people who are not in combat now wear. No one in easy view has their face covered by masks. No one is protected by layers of plexiplast armor.

The First Order may have looked like the Empire slightly dusted off and retooled, but the Order isn't, and won't be, that.

There are times that Rey's glad not to be the power behind the diplomatic wing of the Order, because fussing over which landing bay to use, and how to dress it up to send exactly the correct message to everyone landing on it seems exhausting.

Especially, since, as she looks around, they're all kind of big, and black and gray, and this one is bustling with traffic, but it doesn't seem much different from any other landing bay on the _Supremacy._ For all she knows, this could be the one that she landed in when she shipped herself to Kylo.

 _It's not._ He thinks to her. He knows exactly where they were when he stood, alone in a crowd, waiting for a tiny escape pod to land. "Why did we fuss about this, again?" Kylo asks out loud, willing to voice the thought she wasn't.

"Because, Master, our human logistical situation is not nearly as convenient as New Alderaan's. We could have had them land one floor up from your courtyard and office, but that would have meant an extremely long trip, in a lift, to get to their apartments."

Kylo nods at that. They're about half an hour from his office, and a good ten minutes of that is tracking across the ship. Being closer would be convenient for him, but, like when Rey visited New Alderaan, they'll accompany the New Alderaan delegation to their own rooms, and an hour in a lift, staring at not much of anything, doesn't seem like an ideal way to accomplish that. He knows that part of formal dinners is the fact that _food_ provides at least something neutral and easy to talk about. The black and white walls of a lift… Not so much.

That said, as best he can figure, they're at least a twenty minute lift ride away from the delegation's rooms, so… Better, but not amazing.

"So, we're here specifically, because?" Kylo asks.

It's clear to Rey that he's fairly sure why they're here, but it's something to talk about, something that doesn't involve starting to feel nervous as they just stand there, waiting for the hatch to open. She takes his hand in hers, and gives it a little squeeze.

"We are here, sir, because this particular landing bay is in full use and offers a… view… of what we can provide to those who might want it." Threepio sounds very satisfied by that.

This particular landing bay is not one of their military bays. This one is a transport and logistical bay. Food, people, things… Some of the literally millions of tons of freight that go through this ship per week come in and out of here. And they're going to spend at least ten minutes walking through it, seeing ship after ship after ship after ship… The _Supremacy_ may not be beautiful on any functional level, but it's an economic powerhouse, (even if it is bleeding credits.) and most people want to be near, or working with, the powerhouse.

He wonders if maybe one of the things they could do _for_ New Alderaan is with some sort of exclusive contract for food production. He and his go through hundreds of tons of it per hour, and New Alderaan grows it, so that might be something they'd like… Assuming the credits don't bounce…

"Likewise, the lack of visible armed guards around you will… not exactly broadcast ideas of peace, but it's still a good idea to show off that you are a leader who will, at least in an area he controls, walk through a public space with your face bare and unarmed."

It occurs to Kylo that that may be a rare thing. Even in one's own capitol, it's common for important people to have security. Hell, his mom had Poe trailing around all the time, so… That's the sort of thing that could be impressive, he supposes.

 _Another layer of Ellie's 'Don't fuck with Master Ren,'_ Rey thinks to him.

He smiles a bit at that. The number of rulers who can bring his level of skill to a fight are likely extremely few and far between.

"Just like we brought guards with us, they will, too, right?" Rey says.

"I'm sure they will have an entourage very similarly staffed to the one we brought," Threepio replies. "Possibly larger because they're bringing the Queen, Lord Organa, who recently added Ambassador to the Order to his list of titles, The Viceroy, Queen Heloise's father, and General Bail Antillies, Colonel Jefferie's counterpart in the legal department. That said, they will not miss the fact that we are currently not ensconced in 'entourage.'"

There's something important there, and it takes Rey a moment to find it. "When the Queen greeted us, there were almost fifty people with her. How many were security?"

If he could smile, Threepio would. "Exactly, Lady Ren." He looks at their truncated group. "This is a power move. In peaceful, serene New Alderaan, the leader must keep body guards near, though hidden among her servants. Here, in the cold, harsh Order, our leaders are secure enough to walk alone. It's… fitting, I think."

Kylo approves of that. He offers Threepio a genuine smile, which seems to confuse the droid.

Then Rey catches something she missed earlier. "The Viceroy is coming?"

Threepio tuts. "Apparently, Helene decided it was… unfitting… for the Queen to leave Alderaan on her own."

"Does this… scramble our plans?" Rey asks.

Threepio doesn't smile. He can't. He feels pleased, though there's a sort of testing to this, as well, "I'm sure you and Master Ren will come up with some way to ease the Queen away from the Viceroy when the time comes."

 _Well, that's not ominous,_ Kylo thinks to her.

 _Not at all,_ she replies, squeezing his hand.

* * *

Heloise Talmaalsh, Queen of Alderaan, waits in her ship. She looks calm and collected. Granted, she's so practiced at that look, that she'd likely look calm and collected if she were being dissected alive as a science experiment.

The hatch to her ship opens, and she gets the first whiff of the Order as the mechanically refreshed atmo on board rushes into her own ship.

The acrid tang of mechanical work, fuel, lubricating oil, exhaust, burnt… something… Under and through it, a faint organic smell of people. At least something lives here. From her current position, all she can see is metal floors, and metal ships, and metal walls, and her men marching out to flank her line of descent.

Once her men are out, she nods to her father, to Helene, and to Samanth, before standing and strolling out.

It's… enormous.

She felt that way about the _Supremacy_ as a whole, too _._ It was bigger than any ship has any right to be. And in the privacy of her own mind, she's willing to admit it was actually scary to when one moment they were queued up with all the other ships, sky clear, and the next they were in full dark because the _Supremacy_ had just appeared from nowhere. Then they pulled up closer and closer to the landing bay, seeing everything around them vanish in a sheer cliff of black metal.

And somehow, in here, on just one floor, it's bigger yet. This one floor may be bigger, in terms of square kilometers, than their capitol city is. And it's just the _one_ floor. The report she was able to find on the _Supremacy_ said there are fifty-three levels, though not all of them are the full sixty by twenty kilometers.

Samanth nudges her, and says, voice quiet, "I felt the same way." The population of the Order is only about a third again that of New Alderaan, though it's growing significantly faster, but the bulk of it is here, on this one ship, all around them, right now.

It's staggering.

But the Queen of New Alderaan is not allowed to be staggered. She takes her father's hand, slaps the smile on her face, and heads down the ramp.

* * *

Kylo rarely wonders what outsiders think of his ship. Mostly because… well, that would involve being interested in things he's generally just _not._

But he's getting a headfull of it right now.

The only person of the New Alderaan delegation who thinks quietly is Heloise, and if he focused less on the Viceroy or Samanth, he'd have no trouble getting the ideas off the top of her head.

But the Viceroy is thinking… shifty things. She's watching Threepio, subtly, cataloging everything he's done here today, understanding his message, more clearly than Kylo is, and on several more levels than he'd thought of them.

For example, Kylo understood that not landing the New Alderaan delegation on a military bay was about showing off economic power. And it is. It's also about making sure that should Helene have a little chat with some less peaceful players, or some that aren't too friendly to the Order, that she can't _accidentally_ chat about what she saw.

The only details she can let slip are ones about how _strong_ the Order is. About how much comes into it. She can talk about supplies and people, and things all streaming into the Order. She can make them look more powerful than they are.

Deeper level. The real power players that are left in the galaxy know that economic power lasts longer and ripples further than military power. Take down the Order, and everyone who does business with it will be _annoyed_ at the loss of those credit streams. As long as they keep paying, instead of taking, everyone they pay has a reason to keep them in the game.

Likewise, none of her navigators can talk about how they found the _Supremacy._ The Alderaan delegation, and a collection of other ships, all met at an assigned spot, one they were given when they took off, and the _Supremacy_ came to them. Late. It came to them about ten minutes after it was supposed to.

The Viceroy, Helene, glances to the view of the sky outside the landing bay. Stars are streaking past in hyperspeed again.

She knows they took that time to make sure no one but the ships that were supposed to arrive showed up. And they arranged it so that they'd spend only a few moments sitting still, on-loading, before slipping into hyperspeed again.

Helene may not be a great tactician, but it's clear that the _Supremacy_ learned from Holdo, and it does not, if it can be avoided, sit still.

None of that had occurred to Kylo. He hadn't even given any thought to how they on-load goods and people, and do it in such a way that no one else attempts to drive a ship through them, but… Probably the 'bright boys' came up with a plan.

Another level hits Kylo as he's watching the Viceroy stare at his capitol ship. There are a lot of landing bays on the _Supremacy_ and… He doesn't look around to make it clear, but he does let his senses expand. They generally aren't this full… Threepio's shifted all traffic to the places that the New Alderaan delegation can _see._ The Order, right now, looks like it goes through a _lot_ more people and goods than it does.

He wonders if that's one of his Mom's tricks. If she used to make the Rebellion look bigger and better stocked than it was to impress people into joining it…

He'll ask Poe about it, eventually.

* * *

There's so much to see, all at once. And a Queen can't just gawp. (Though she remembers Rey taking a few moments to just stare at all the different plants. She's feeling a _lot_ of sympathy for that. And a pang of homesickness. Nothing grows here, and she feels alien in a world of recycled atmo, metal, and plexiplast.)

And in the center of a small group, stands the Rens. Rey is holding Kylo's hand, and both of them are looking… composed. Heloise knows that look. The one she also slams on her face to make sure her thoughts don't become visible to the casual observer.

When Samanth came back from his first visit, and the two of them got a few minutes to stroll from the palace to his father's home for Solonift, he'd talked about how there may have been some potential there. How, maybe… If Ren was serious about people joining him, and if he meant it about killing the past, and if they were lucky, and played it right, they might find an ally of similar temperament and plans.

Maybe.

Trying to find much about him, beyond what was in the official briefings once it became clear that Rey would be visiting, was difficult. It's not that there wasn't information available, it was that locating it, and getting to consume it, without being seen to do so, took planning. (Fortunately, Heloise is a very good friend with her chamber maid. And _she_ didn't ask any questions when Heloise requested anything she could find about the Rens smuggled into her bath, sandwiched among the towels.)

But even that was… sketchy. A few bits of flimsy. Some tabloid lies. Mostly images of the man(?) in the mask. A _lot_ of in-depth coverage of the Qualee fight. That at least involved an image of him not wearing the mask. (And an image of him cutting that general's head off… She could have lived without seeing that.)

Most of the information about the Rens touched on how they've effected things.

Qualee to start off with. There was a _lot_ of coverage of that. In the bit more than six months since that attack, the system has been 'rebuilding' under the Order's 'protection.' That... seems to be going about as well as could be expected. A _lot_ of the locals are not fond of the Order, but compared to the reception they'd have gotten if they hadn't evacced as much of the civilian population as they could, this is... a wildly successful occupation. Between the propaganda offensive ("Look to your left, look to your right, which person near you is here because the Order gave them a lift? When your life was on the line, did the Oligarchs rescue you? When your life was on the line, did the Oligarchs call off the attacks on Order recruiting stations? When it was your life in their hands, did they value it?") and the 'bounty' for 'insurrectionists' (ten thousand credits for anyone with information that leads to an insurrectionist, twenty-five for a conviction.) they're not loved, not by any means, but they aren't hated, either.

And, in one move, by using his own ships to pull civilians out, Master Ren redefined the idea of 'just warfare.' People are still talking about the ramifications of that.

Long's system, meanwhile, has been dumping prisoners and poor people on the Order, and is kindly disposed toward them, because their crime rates are down, as are the expenses involved in dealing with criminals. That rippling out, too. There's no official treaty between the Order and Long, not yet, but her backers are watching, and if they do decide for a formal non-aggression treaty… Things could get… interesting.

The Gidi system has been debating, loudly, about seeing if they can block the Order from recruiting there. Apparently, Ren took a liking to local textiles (she read it three times, and still doesn't quite understand, and looking at him right now, he's certainly not draped in luxurious silks, though Rey's dress is made of good material…) and decided _that_ was worth sticking a fifty-three recruiting stations in that system, and their labor market is getting _tight_ as their currency is tanking. People on Gidi are less happy to work on-planet, for local credits, when a bit of a trip gets a job that pays in standard credits that buy a _whole lot_ more. So, the leaders of Gidi are faced with the dual prospects of economic collapse, or fighting both the Order _and_ a significant chunk of their own population who are very much enjoying the benefits of family members who are sending home wages that are in standard credits.

The deep space pilot's guild does _not_ like the Order. They pay better than guild rates and are sucking up pilots en masse, same for skilled navigators and mechanics. Anyone who knows anything about keeping ships moving has a job, a good one, if they want it. All they have to do is _move._

The economic fallout of the Raclan bank is still causing chaos. The last report she read indicated that the legal battles over who owed what and whom what would be over just about the time the galaxy burnt out. By paying his droid manufacturers in Raclan stock, Ren made sure one of the most powerful tech blocks had an _extremely_ vested interest in making sure that, at least on the books, the Raclan Bank stayed 'open.'

And, in a report that she had to piece together and read between the lines, apparently, with the Order's open transport and legal sales of pretty much everything, they've tanked the market for several of the more lucrative goods the big organized crime families run, and they may be thinking about working with each other to try and get those lanes closed. (At least, she's got to assume that if the Hutts are seeking election to the New Republic as the representatives from Tatooine, they're looking to find a way to get the spice market hot again.)

And, of course the New Republic. They don't, officially, have much to say about the Order. They don't talk about it. They don't debate it. But there are arrest warrants for basically anyone in an Order uniform. They haven't set a bounty for anyone much below the rank of General, likely because they don't want to pick a fight with the Order, not yet, but it's clear they want to send a message that the Order is their enemy.

But what she couldn't find was much about Rey or Kylo. Especially not as… people.

Until a few days ago, when the interview went live.

She's seen it four times, and a few things became abundantly clear. (To the point where her Aunt was begging her to cancel this meeting.) The most important of them is that there is no possible way that any sort of attempted marriage pact charade is going to last past this first meeting.

He's going to 'turn her down,' and unless they can come up with something else, there won't be another reason to 'meet in private.'

The other thing that's clear is that Kylo Ren sitting down watched on a hand held data pad is a _much_ different concept than Kylo Ren in person.

Holy Force! He's _huge._ He made that joke about being tall, but… Shit… She's wearing heals and the top of her head comes to his shoulder. Maybe. Possibly his jaw if she stands up straight. Then she notices that he's not standing up straight. He's got just a little hunch to his shoulders, likely making it easier to hold Rey's hand. Holy FORCE!

Rey unhands her man, crosses the last few steps to them, takes Heloise's hands, kisses her cheeks, and then leads her and her father to Kylo.

"Queen Heloise Talmaash of New Alderaan, Queen Father Tayron Talmaash, meet my husband, Master Kylo Ren of the Order."

Kylo doesn't shake hands. That was something she had been able to find. (Apparently, he tried once and broke a man's hand, so now he doesn't.) So, she doesn't extend a hand to him. He does bow to her. Or, it feels like a bow, but he basically just inclined his head. He looks… stern… imposing. He's a literal wall of a man, and… shit… Her eyes go wide. Mindreader. That was in the reports, too.

He smiles a little, face softening, and then offers his hands, takes hers, and gently squeezes them. "My queen."

Helene is a few steps behind, and she _leaps_ on that. It may be rude to ask straight out, especially before a formal introduction, but the opportunity is ripe. If Ren will formally subject himself to New Alderaan… That could be _very_ interesting. "Is she?"

Rey smiles to Helene, and turns to Kylo, her hand on his back, gesturing to Helene, as Heloise and her father step back. "Kylo, this is Helene Talmaash, Viceroy of New Alderaan."

Kylo nods to her, and does not offer his hands. She's looking up at him, expectantly, a little challenge in her gaze.

He watches her for a moment, before saying, "It is my understanding that the biological or adopted child of any citizen of Old Alderaan is a citizen of New Alderaan. I believe I qualify." He raises a brow, a silent moment to allow Helene the option of challenging that, in public, with everyone listening.

She chooses not to.

Kylo turns his attention to Samanth, and greets him. "Cousin."

Samanth nods. "Solo."

"Ren," Kylo replies.

"Of course." Samanth replies, a faint smile on his lips. "Certainly not Organa."

Kylo almost chuckles at that. "Certainly not. Your father sent gifts home with Rey. I know we sent a thank you note." (Because he signed the bloody thing, but Threepio wrote it.) "But I did want to say, in person, that I appreciated the gift intensely. Those were… memories I'd not thought of for a long time."

"That'll make him happy. He'll talk your ear off about how food is your history, all wrapped up in warmth and calories."

"He's certainly right about that," Kylo replies.

Rey loops a hand around Heloise's arm, and one around Samanth's leading them from the landing bay. "We have some goodies for you to take home, this time. Kylo and Ostrae have been…"

Kylo rolls his eyes a bit. It's a dismissive gesture. "Not making anything nearly as good as your father does. Still, Rey was thinking he'd like the idea of a few Maji working on trying to recreate some Alderaan favorites."

Samanth smiles genuinely at that. "Oh, he will. What did you try?"

And with that, the group of them begins Threepio's carefully scripted amble through the QQ deck, toward the lift that will take the New Alderaan delegation to their collection of rooms on the I-Deck.

* * *

It's a _long_ lift ride. Made longer by the fact that there was no possible way that Queen Heloise and Ambassador Organa would be allowed to ride, on their own, up with the Rens. A few "servants" had to attend. And, of course, there was no possible way the Viceroy was going to allow her Queen a moment alone with the Rens, too.

And meaningless small talk isn't exactly either Kylo or Rey's strong suit.

But they're the _hosts_ so it's _their_ job to make their guests feel comfortable.

Rey finally thinks of something. She turns to Samanth. "Unfortunately, we don't have anything as much fun as those little scooters you showed me."

He chuckles a bit. "I'd imagine they'd make for _exciting,_ by which I mean dangerous and terrifying, transport on a ship like this."

"Does everyone just walk everywhere?" Helene asks.

"To a degree. There are trams to aid in getting people around each floor. And express lifts, we're on one right now," Kylo says, "but for the most part, people walk."

"We also try to make sure that people are housed somewhere near where they're stationed. Cuts down on time spent moving around," Rey adds.

"Are we anywhere near your home?" Tayron asks.

"When we get to your rooms," Rey replies, "we'll be 36 decks above our quarters and Kylo's office. And…" she thinks a moment. "Five?"

Kylo nods. "Five halls aft, three sections starboard. Call it an hour's trip."

"So, the palace is closer to Resilience than we are to your offices?" Samanth asks Rey.

"Yes. Part of that is just the _Supremacy_ is sixty klicks wingtip to wingtip. And part of that is that what will eventually be the formal diplomacy wing is still under construction," Rey replies.

"Your capitol doesn't have a place for… political working?" Helene sounds flabbergasted by that idea.

"My predecessor, who had this monstrosity designed to his liking, didn't feel the need for politics. He never saw a problem he didn't want to solve with a gun," Kylo says.

"You don't like the _Supremacy_?" Heloise asks, sounding surprised. Granted, she grew up in her palace, and hasn't ever really thought about if she _likes_ it.

"Like is probably the wrong way to understand it. It's not particularly good for what I want to do and where I want to go. But, it is functional. It does well enough, and honestly, I don't much like wasting things, so… Here we are," Kylo replies.

"That said, there are plans to scale down some, and make a capitol that's traversable by people seeking to work with each other," Rey adds.

"And what do you hope to do, Master Ren?" Helene asks.

"Many things," he says with a smile. "For the time being, I'll be satisfied with cleaning up the mess I took over when I removed Snoke. That alone will take me to the first set of elections, and likely well beyond. My guess is that it will be my successors who get to actually chart a course for what to do once we've got ourselves together and functional."

More quiet. Kylo's amused to feel Helene thinking, _That poor child actually thinks he's the hero in this story._ And she's seeing an image of a young Leia as she thinks it.

Heloise is quite intrigued by the idea that Kylo really will step down. That's… not how politics works on Alderaan. Once you gain power, you certainly don't give it up, not in her world.

Tayron's looking from Kylo to Rey, but he's seeing Bail and Breha, and he's wondering if these two in front of him will be as shattering for his homeworld as Bail and Breha were, on a metaphorical, but not literal, level. He's also not sure if that's a good thing, or bad thing.

And Samanth's worried that New Alderaan won't have anything to offer Ren. That they won't be willing to help, because there'll be nothing in it for them.

There's not much either of them can do about Helene, Heloise, or Tayron's issues, but they can touch on Samanth's.

"Rey told me that you've got an extremely intensive agronomy program at work on New Alderaan," Kylo says.

Heloise nods, not getting this leap, but Samanth shifts his attention to Kylo, eyes bright and eager.

"Yes, Master, we do. I can't imagine, on a ship like this, that you'd have much need of agronomy, though."

Kylo smiles at that. "You'd be amazed. We have several floors that produce some of our basic foodstuffs here, though that's not what I was thinking about in regards to agronomy. Part of cleaning up my predecessor's mess. The First Order was stupid and shortsighted in its resource gathering, and as a result, we have thousands of planets that have been ruined. Stripped to their cores, or left in ecological shambles. People who know how, or at least can put together decent plans for how to try to get those planets back to something like alive, would be quite valuable."

"Not much you can do with stripped to the core. Not unless you've got a spare planet's worth of resources," Tayron says, thinking about this as a problem to solve. "How about somewhat less damaged?"

"We have about two thousand planets currently deemed habitable but in need of help, and an additional 18,000 with at least some people on them that need serious work," Rey says. "So, one thing we were hoping to talk with you about was seeking out some expert guidance on how to make things grow."

"What sorts of things?" Tayron asks. "I'm probably getting too deep into the details, but… Agronomy isn't a one size fits anything process. Each hectare can require its own plans and those plans can take years to implement. Entire planets would…" He blinks. "Well, Master Ren, you certainly aren't thinking small."

"No, we're not," Rey replies. "When did you get New Alderaan?"

"It's been thirty years," Heloise replies.

"And in that time we've…" Tayron starts. "Well, first of all, the planet could support pretty much everything we wanted to put on it, we just had to tailor the landscape to our plants. In many cases engineering the plants was the bigger challenge, and the landscape just required slight modifications of acidity levels, planting more nitrogen fixing plants, things like that."

"We didn't attempt to turn the deserts into cornfields," Helene adds. "Nor should anyone else attempt that. That's just asking for heartbreak."

"Well, unless that desert used to be a cornfield. Sometimes you can turn a desert back, but if it always was one, it's a bad idea to change it. I'm sure you've got locals who will be able to help with that," Tayron says. He's very excited by the idea of this. "What about local cultural preservation? Is that something you've given any thought to?"

Rey and Kylo share a glance. Kylo answers, "Honestly, no. Is that… something we should think about?"

And that's the end of quiet for the remaining trip up. All four of the Alderaanians are eager to talk about their attempts at preserving what's left of the original culture on New Alderaan.

* * *

Kylo almost wishes he could be jaded about that. That he could settle back, and be cynical about how much easier it is to be passionate about preserving a dead culture. One that can't infringe on the living one, but…

The only thing all four Alderaanians with him are passionate about is the need to make sure the people who lived on their planet before them aren't destroyed by an uncaring present.

Alderaan, in the form of humans, survived. The people who lived on what used to be Glenlivia IV, didn't. The Empire exterminated them.

And this, keeping as much of what they left behind, is the only justice, or solace, they can offer the dead.

So, they are.

* * *

Once the New Alderaan delegation is settled in their rooms, and Kylo and Rey and Jon are in the lift again (Threepio is staying nearby on I-Deck to make sure they're properly settled) Kylo says, "Go well?"

Jon nods. "I think so."

"You didn't say much," Rey adds. (Then she realizes that he didn't ride up in the lift with them. He was with Colonel Jefferies and the part of the New Alderaan delegation that actually writes treaties and contracts.)

He waves that off. (He didn't actually say much in his lift, but that's neither here nor there.) "I'm just here to stand tall, look official, and be pretty. Threepio already set this out. We'll see if any of the entourage decides I'm a good backdoor channel. Someone in the next few days will likely come by for a chat, and for that to happen, I've got to be lurking about, chatable."

"The Grand Marshall in charge of the entire diplomacy department for the Order is a _backdoor_ channel?" Rey asks.

"There's a reason why Threepio didn't have you introduce me by rank. Unless they know how to read an Order uniform-"

"And you put one on," Kylo adds. Jon's in formal grays that match Kylo's new formal blacks, but they don't have a clearly visible rank signifier on them. Not the way, say, Kinear's command blacks, do.

"And I put one on. They should assume that I'm some sort of personal entourage, like the Queen's father. I'm assuming Threepio has a few of our people who will go find him over the course of the next day or two for a chat, as well."

Rey and Kylo just sort of think about that, and don't have a comment to go with it.

"What's next?" Rey asks.

"So, last time, you had a bit of rest and get ready time, followed by the formal dinner of vastly too many courses," Jon says. "We're going to kick that around a bit. We've got a chunk of F-Deck set aside for the eating part, so we can talk with quiet. But Threepio will bring them to it, and take some time strolling around, getting a feel for the market. Once they get to us, the food will be a collection of popular nibbles. They gave you a highlights of Alderaan meal. Threepio's set up something similar for the Order."

Rey thinks about that.

Kylo purses his lips, also thinking. "So… They gave Rey hours of deep Alderaan history and culture, and we're…"

"Going to show off that we're a melting pot. We'll have things from all over the galaxy that have ended up in our ships. Maybe, compared to some place like Alderaan, we don't have culture, but—"

Rey gets the idea a bit before Jon finishes the sentence, "We have a new culture. This is part of our open, tolerance stuff, right?"

"Exactly."

"How many courses are we sitting through?" Rey asks. The fourteen they did in Alderaan just about killed her.

"Eight. And they'll be small. We could do more, but the private meeting with the Queen is after dinner, so we didn't want to load you down with too much food," Jon says.

"Eight courses isn't too much?" Kylo asks.

"You'll see. I promise that if you don't ask for seconds, you'll still be in a good place to offer drinks and a dessert when you get to the part of the meeting in your private rooms."

Rey smirks at that. "Sounds sinister." She leans against Kylo. "Luring a sweet, innocent queen to our _private rooms._ "

Jon and Kylo laugh at that.

Kylo rolls his eyes viciously. "At least, that seems to be the way the Viceroy is framing it. You'd think I've got a reputation as a prime seducer of young women with the way she's hovering close."

"Wait," Rey says, looking startled. "You don't?"

Jon thinks that's so funny he about doubles over. When he stops laughing, he says, "Yes, it was abundantly clear from the way you were undressing Rey with your eyes that you're about to swoop on in and defile that sweet, innocent, young queen."

Kylo smirks, and says, voice wicked and flirty, "Well, Heloise claims to be looking for a marriage pact… And it'd be with both of us, right? That could include, _private room_ type activities." _And undressing you with more than my eyes,_ he thinks to Rey.

Rey elbows him in the side, shaking her head, mock scolding, and he kisses her.

When Kylo breaks the kiss, Jon is leaning against the wall of the lift, looking smug. "So, this marriage pact, we going to get hair pulling and name calling as you two fight for Kylo's hand?"

"Yes, I shall defend my place and my man by tugging on hair. Let's skip the saber or hand to hand combat, and just slap uselessly at each other like the characters in that holonovella Rose and Savarah like."

Jon sniggers at that. "I should have known that. So, drama for the sake of the onlookers?"

"No," Rey says.

"The goal is to finish dinner, invite them to the courtyard, get the Queen and Samanth on their own, maybe you and Threepio will lure the rest of the group to the I-Deck, and then we'll actually talk about what we're going to do."

"Good," Jon says. "And… official lies to cover what you're actually going to do?"

"We'll think of something, together," Rey says.

"Conspiracy theory, first lesson, make sure all the conspirators are on the same page," Kylo says.

"Where did you learn that?" Jon asks.

Kylo sighs and rolls his eyes with a slight snort. "One day, when we've got three hours to kill, I'll tell you the glorious story of Luke Skywalker and the most stupid fucking rescue plan in the history of stupid fucking rescue plans. Or, as my Dad liked to call it, 'The Day I Learned the Force Was Real, Because Without It There Was No Way That Could Have Worked.'"

Jon looks amused by that. "May I take it that not all the conspirators were on the same plan on that one?"

"Yeah, more than a few of them didn't know all, or most, of the details," Kylo replies.

"At least, with the way Chewie tells it," Rey says, "part of the problem was Luke kept getting flashes of things changing, so he kept changing the plan to go with it, and sometimes some members, like say Lando, or Chewie himself, didn't get the new version until _after_ Luke had started going along with it."

Jon winces.

* * *

As Threepio leads the New Alderaan delegation through the F-Deck to their supper, Heloise feels… many things. First of all, overwhelmed. There's just _so much_ here, and it's completely unlike anything New Alderaan has to offer.

Yes, they have… she'd call it a shopping center, but there are four of them in Resiliance and none of them are this big or busy.

And, of course, in Resiliance, they're open to the sky, which obviously isn't going to happen here.

And there are plants. Granted, there are planters here, and there are things growing in them, but they're very obviously decorations, and not the main focus of what's going on. They're… something that's been added for visual appeal, not something intrinsic to the space.

But like open sky, that's likely just a normal aspect of the landscape… shipscape… whatever.

She can tell from the way Helene and her father are holding themselves that this is not making them comfortable. Her dad just doesn't like close in spaces, and while this isn't exactly close in, it is a ship, so…

Aunt Helene though… It's hard to tell, the set of her face is neutral. So neutral it's got to be hiding something, and when she's hiding that thoroughly, it's not because she's pleased. No one minds seeing a smile, and she's _not_ smiling.

Samanth, of course, is enchanted. He loves cities, and compared to anywhere on world, this is a metropolis.

Her eyes flit back to Helene. Threepio is telling them about how anyone who wishes to can join the Order, and they're currently in the process of streamlining the system for coming here to open a business. There doesn't appear to be copious space to open a business here, but on their own floor, where things are much more sparsely settled, there's a lot of space.

He's going on about tolerance and how people may not always get along, but they all generally like credits, and money smooths over a lot of tensions.

Helene flinches. It's minute. If Heloise hadn't been looking for it, she wouldn't have seen it. Threepio… Tolerance. He was talking about tolerance, about how alloys are stronger than base metals, and how a civilization cannot truly claim to be civilized if it believes that everyone and thing must match its own mores. Trade. He's talking about how trade builds tolerance. People might not love each other, but they do love money, and the prosperity that money buys, and that'll generally get them to put the guns down and start talking…

"Though, I'm sure you'll find the Master has moved far from his Alderaanian roots, you'll see the core philosophies in action here. A civilization can be judged by the welcome it gives to any sentient not of it," he says as they walk further through the F-Deck, past a collection of... Order members. That's likely the best way to categorize them. They're a collection of shapes and sizes and species and… The main thing they've got in common appears to be a uniform and a desire to have some supper.

Threepio keeps going on in his precise and elegant tones.

It's an Alderaanian civics lesson. Actually, it's lesson one, day one. They're all trained in that from babyhood. Before Alderaan became civilized it was covered in tribes and families and clans at war with each other, trying to dominate each other through might or culture. But that stopped. With the last peace. With trade and enforced peace came tolerance and understanding. With an explicit promise that any culture was worthy. Their mountain folk, and desert dwellers, and sailors, and the people of the ice lands and the ones of the jungles were all Alderaan, all valuable, all sentients of their own dignity. Color, creed, family, faith, none of it mattered, they were all Alderaan.

Heloise hears it and it's so incontrovertible she wouldn't have even taken notice if she hadn't seen Helene flinch, so…

Threepio's telling Helene something, pushing something at her, and… There's context here, and she knows it's the sort of thing that's relevant to people who were around for Old Alderaan, because it looks like her father has the subtext of whatever conversation is going on, too.

But she and Samanth _don't._

* * *

It's a few more meters of walking when she thinks she's got it. Maybe. Most of the people on the F-Deck are humans. Not all of them, but probably a good three quarters are. There are a decent number of droids, too, but the organics are mostly human.

And like humans everywhere, they come in all shapes and colors and are off doing human things, talking, eating, a few are spooning, some are reading or studying… Buying things, selling things, taking a break, playing games, going to their jobs… People being people.

And so are the non-humans.

Helene blinks. So are the non-humans. Non humans aren't banned from New Alderaan. Just like Non-Alderaanians aren't banned, either. It's just… Really difficult for them to come and integrate. The spouse of any Alderaanian is given automatic citizenship, no matter who or what or where. And there's no law saying anyone of Alderaan has to marry another human. So a few other species creep in one or two at a time. Likewise, anyone with at least one natural or adopted Alderaanian grandparent has automatic citizenship, and there's no law saying they can only adopt humans. But that's basically the only way for someone who wasn't born of or on Alderaan to become an Alderaanian.

She gets it further. Alderaan made a conscious decision that anyone, anywhere on the planet was Alderaan. They'd have their own unique cultures, but one language, one currency, one set of base values, multiple religions, multiple regions, but also all with the same core values…

Everyone on Alderaan became Alderaan, and it happened so long ago, and so slowly, that by the time anyone she knows was alive, it was second nature. 'We're all Alderaan. We tolerate everyone…' Because everyone had become Alderaan.

And everyone here is _not_ Alderaan.

And Threepio… a _droid…_ A _servant_ for so long, barely considered more than an ambulatory computer, even though he's obviously sentient, is rubbing Heloise's face in it. He's parroting back core Alderaanian values, and showing how far they went. And how far they _didn't._

 _General_ Threepio. Threepio's message is growing louder in her head, "You tolerate everyone, as long as they behave and look exactly like you do…"

He's practically gesturing about, shouting, _This is what real tolerance looks like._

And Helene is _not_ happy with that message.

* * *

She gets it more a little further down. It's a smell, and she didn't recognize it. Not at first. Again, though, there's another tiny, minuscule wince from Heloise.

She looks around and sees a cart. The cart the smell is coming from. There is a man handing over sticks with little brown chunks on them. The sticks are wrapped in paper, and people eat the chunks off. They seem to really like them, and the line for the sticks is probably fifteen people long.

Meat. She's smelling cooked meat.

She's hearing the sizzle, smelling the steam, and… it's got to be scent. There's nothing in her mouth, so she can't taste it, but…

She can.

And there's not a single place on Alderaan where you can buy meat. Granted, any given person on Alderaan may or may not be vegetarian. It's not like it's mandatory, or that eating meat is illegal. She knows that in rural or wild areas people hunt and fish, or breed stock to keep enough protein and fat in their diets, but…

Alderaan, and its culture, its _Alderaan_ are so thoroughly steeped through everyone on the planet, that something as basic as this, as walking past a cart that sells some sort of meat on a stick, is something that happens literally _nowhere_ on her world.

She looks around, and asks Threepio, "How many people live on this deck?"

"On the F-Deck, there are currently 2,879,343 people, comprised of a bit over a million officers and their families."

That's a third of the population of the entire planet of New Alderaan, here, on just one floor.

She listens, everyone speaks galactic standard, but the accents differ wildly, and the clothing is… Not uniform. Not, mostly. There's a decent number of people coming off of or going to work, and they're in uniform, but everyone else... Off-duty, the Order looks a lot like what it is, a huge number of people from all over the galaxy. If The Order has a culture, it's… eclectic.

Helene sees her watching, and says, quietly, but it's clear Threepio hears her comment, "Strong alloys are made of carefully chosen metals that compliment each other. Not by tossing anything that comes your way into a smelter and seeing what comes out. You end up with something too hard to work, and too brittle to withstand the challenges that come it's way if you try that."

Heloise nods, but doesn't comment. She does understand the message though. The amount of 'smelting' they did to turn Alderaan into _Alderaan_ was all the mixing that Helene thinks they need.

* * *

A few more steps. Another layer. Kylo Ren. Child of Leia Organa. The man who gave up his name. The man whose birthright was taken from him. Who _Alderaan,_ official Alderaan, Helene's Alderaan, would prefer to cease the exist, is out _Alderaaning_ actual, genuine, _Alderaan._

 _Alderaan_ was supposed to be a beacon. It was supposed to be an ideal of hope and tolerance, peace and value through persuasion instead of coercion. Alderaan, ideal Alderaan, is where people work together, with each other, to make something great, important, and they do it because they value each other, and the future they're building.

They continue to walk through the market, through sentients of all colors and creeds and species. Of organics and mechanicals. All of them, here, in this space, working together. United by _The Order._

And Heloise knows why Helene _flinched._

* * *

Apparently, being the host means a lot of waiting.

Wait for the ship to show up. Wait for people to come out of it. Wait for them to show up to supper.

Rey's the one standing in the 'dining room' which is an empty store on the F-Deck, set up with tables and chairs and space for eighty, pondering the nature of waiting.

"Sometimes I feel like I've spent more of my life doing this than anything else."

Kylo turns from the windows. Why they're _here_ makes sense to him. If there's such a thing as prime real estate on the F-Deck, anything with sky access should qualify. And right now, they've got probably fifteen meters of unhindered view of the sky beyond them.

He crosses the room, weaving through the tables. He'd been mentally imagining something where, say, he and Rey, and Jon and Ellie sat down with the main New Alderaan delegation for supper, but there's seating for probably eighty people here, so… Quiet, intimate dinner does not appear to be on the menu tonight.

Granted, if he'd thought about it, he'd have known that it's not like the 'entourage' ceases to exist when they stop being convenient. And, assuming most of them actually are security, they likely do not want their Queen or Viceroy out of their sight.

A moment later, he's next to Rey, at the door. They're both still in their 'nice' clothing, decked out to look… elegant and glamorous or something. Ready to take a stab at this politics thing. He glances back at all of the tables. Politics with a _lot_ of witnesses.

He takes her hand in his, and thinks to her, _Thank you._

She raises a brow at that.

He gives her hand a little squeeze. _This is what my father wouldn't or couldn't do. What my grandfather didn't._ He kisses her hand, though it's clear he'd like to kiss her lips, but she's got makeup on and he doesn't want to risk messing it up.

She smiles at him, and they have one more breath of the two of them, just focused on each other.

Then the job begins.

"Oh, Good!" Jon's voice as someone neither Rey nor Kylo recognizes comes to the door. She's a tall woman, with dark skin and black hair. And, judging by her formal teal uniform, she's not just a guest, but part of the Order. Judging by the stripes on her sleeve, she's a very high ranked one.

Jon crosses the room, and the woman salutes him. He almost looks like he's going to wave it off, but he's aware of the line of people behind her, all in their dress uniforms, so he snaps off a sharp salute back, and then turns toward Kylo and Rey.

"Master, Mistress, this is Commander Graen Sloane. You remember when I was getting things set for the First Year Celebrations?"

That gets nodding.

"General Threepio had the idea that we really needed someone in charge of our diplomatic personnel. He went through the dossiers, chose Commander Sloane from our Intelligence department, and set her in charge of making sure that all of our guests had someone who knew something about their home world, more about us and what we're doing, and could do a good job of showing them around, answering questions, and being good ambassadors for the Order."

Sloane nods to her Master and Mistress.

"I've invited her to today's dinner, along with a collection of her best and brightest. That way, each member of the wider New Alderaan entourage will have someone to keep them company and informed."

Unspoken but understood is the fact that every one of the New Alderaan entourage will also have someone keeping tabs on them, seeing what they're doing, and making sure that the Order _knows_ who has come and why.

Kylo offers her his hand, and she shakes it, looking both wary and pleased. Rey does likewise and when the handshakes are done, Kylo says, "I was very pleased to see how smoothly the Last Night/First Day celebrations went. Thank you."

Sloane may or may not blush at that. Her skin is vastly too dark for it to be clear. What is clear to the empaths near her is that she's _deeply_ pleased to receive a compliment like that from her Master.

 _Jon?_

Jon doesn't blink or make it clear he's hearing a voice in his head.

 _Kylo._

 _How important is petting from the higher ups?_

 _It's something a good officer does._

 _Noted. Can I get lists of people going above and beyond for me?_

 _Yes._

* * *

Ellie and Thea Schiff join them next. Without their husbands. Rey's wondering about that, for a moment, but Ellie seems to catch her curiosity as she joins Rey and Kylo at the door.

"Two parts of imaging in play," Ellie says, voice low. "First of all, it didn't seem wise to have anyone who joined up with the Empire and was actively serving during the genocide to be part of the welcoming committee tonight. Many people, even those of a generous and forgiving nature, would consider than an insult."

Rey and Kylo nod at that.

"The Viceroy, especially, is looking for reasons to be prickly about this, so we're going to keep two thirds of your High Command in the wings."

Again, Rey and Kylo nod.

"Also," Ellie continues. "You remember our conversations about masculine or feminine power. The Order is masculine-power coded, but that doesn't mean that it's not a bad idea to show off that we're not entirely driven by might and military power." Ellies gestures to herself, and Thea, and to Rey. "Yes, we've got uniforms galore here, but no one is armed, and no on their side will miss that a decent number of the power players at these tables are not only not part of the masculine-power structure, they're also genuinely female."

Thea adds, in a low voice; she doesn't want the diplomatic corps to hear this next bit, "Plus, if what Ellie says is true, the old bitch'll take one look at us, know that we're just as old, if not older, just as wily, if not wily-er, and not just know every bloody trick in her playbook, but we wrote some of the chapters, too." She offers a slight wink, and goes back to looking like the image of wholesome respectability that a Grand Admiral's wife should embody.

Rey does her best not to laugh, and Kylo bites his lip to keep from cracking a wicked smile.

* * *

A few moments later, the Alderaan delegation has arrived. Kylo breaks into a wide smile at the door as they begin to enter.

It could look like he's just pleased to see them. And, to a degree, a small degree, that's true. But Rey knows that he's smiling like that because Threepio's guided walk through the F-Deck has had exactly the effect Threepio was hoping for.

Helene's face is blank and calm, but her mind is shouting her annoyance at the current set of events, and this… _child,_ she's thinking of Kylo as a child, who's unbalancing an perfectly functional society.

Another layer, deeper down, she feels like Heloise is about to pull the rug out from under her feet, but she doesn't know how, not yet, and that's making her deeply unsettled.

Unsettled people do stupid things.

Rey strokes his hand. _Dangerous?_

He blinks. _Not here and now._

 _Later?_

Again, he doesn't nod. _Feels that way to me. Sort of. I want to fight her, a little. So, on some level she's got to be setting my danger sense off._

 _When we get her alone, we'll remember to tell Heloise about that._

 _Very much so._

* * *

Looking at the menu cards at each place setting, Kylo notices that there's a vegetarian option, and a meat option, for each course, besides the sweet.

Helene also notices, and as they wait for the first course to come, she says, "I notice non-vegetarian options. I understand most of your people wouldn't have grown up in vegetarian homes, but do you personally keep the traditions of kehruut?"

Rey blinks, and Kylo thinks _fast._ He finally manages to dig up a very old memory of his mother talking a bit about her home. He turns to Rey. "Kehruut… It's traditional Alderaanian food culture. Not just vegetarian, but… I'm sorry, I don't remember the rules."

"Leia didn't pass them on?" Helene asks.

Kylo shrugs a bit. Not sure how deeply he wants to get into this.

Helene looks… he can't read the face. He can read what's under. She's actually pleased that he's here, in front of them, showing off how much _not_ Alderaan he is. Kehruut is like breathing on Alderaan. Everyone knows and understands it. Maybe they don't all practice it, but they all _know._

Heloise hops in with, "Food is vegetarian, anything like eggs or milk or honey has to be raised cruelty free, it's a series of traditions designed to make sure the animals that feed us are treated as kindly as possible."

"It's not _just_ food traditions," Helene adds. "Though those are the most visible aspects of it. It's… a collection of understandings and values that make us _Alderaan._ So, while the quick version is, _food culture,_ the deeper issues come from how we understand the value of any living creature, and what we do about it." She's just so pleased that Kylo doesn't know this.

Kylo nods. "I remember that." He offers a side smile. "I generally prefer vegetarian food, but will eat more or less anything put on a plate in front of me. From the age of eight on, I lived on my Uncle's farm. I was being trained as a Jedi, so... not much Alderaanian culture there. For the most part, animals were worth more as egg, milk, or fiber producers, so we didn't eat too many of them." He takes a sip of his drink, and can see the way the rest of his table is watching them. And so are members of both his staff, and theirs, at other tables, who want to know more about him. For all of them, farming, in a literal getting food out of the ground sort of way, is an alien concept. "That said, you only need one cock at a time, so there were usually a few weeks each season where we'd have meat with our evening meal. And in order to get ewes and hflers to make milk, they've got to make babies, and again, you really only need one male, so…" He lets that trail off and takes another sip. "Luke, of course, wasn't raised on Alderaan, though he thought it was important that we be mindful of the creatures who gave us our food. But, as a Jedi, he also knew that everything that lives has to consume other things that live in order to keep alive." That gets a little, half dismissive shrug. "I'm not saying a cucumber is the same as a cock," Samanth just about chokes on his wine, and Kylo realizes what he just said and almost dies, (He's clutching Rey's knee under the table, and she's stroking his hand.) but he manages to keep talking, "but they're both alive, and especially if you're as in touch with the Force as Luke and the rest of us New Jedi, it doesn't feel all that different."

Rey decides that Kylo's dug himself in about as deeply as he can, and might like a rescue. _Yes, please,_ sounds in her head.

"I like your ideas of avoiding cruelty," she says to Heloise. "We do that with the Maji, too. It's important to make sure that chickens and rabbits, or anything that gives us sustenance has a good life while it's living, and is taken care of as gently as possible. That's… the least we can do for them. But most of the Maji eat meat, and for the last several months, it's been meat we've raised ourselves." She touches the menu. "Here, in a perfect climate-controlled world, it doesn't matter as much, but right now, home is cold, and all-vegetarian food doesn't provide the kind of fats and proteins that help keep people warm."

Kylo nods at that, and adds, "Also, on a farm, a real working farm, animals get old, and sometimes predators get where they shouldn't be, and we didn't waste food. That was important. If an animal died or had to be put down, unless it was sick, we'd eat it. Keep the life circle going."

"That's also part of a more balanced idea of the Force," Rey adds. "The Jedi went so far as to say there was no death, only the Force, but Luke didn't quite believe that. He understood that death feeds life, and all the lives must die, and as Mistress of the Maji, I'm continuing along with that idea."

The server comes over, and the whole table orders. Rey has the options with meat. Kylo does the vegetarian ones, as does Heloise, Samanth, and Helene. Tayron makes a comment about broadening his horizons and orders a few, but not all, of the meat dishes.

"But you said you prefer vegetarian food?" Heloise asks Kylo, once their orders have been taken.

Kylo nods. "I'm just not a huge fan of the texture of most meat. Its not bad, the flavor doesn't tend to bother me, but wiggly, squishy things aren't my favorite."

Helene nods at him, a true smile on her face. "I was touring the north continent, and the biggest, well, only city there only has thirty thousand people in it, and the smaller settlements can get very small.

"We were in a very tiny village, on a very cold island, one of the ones where people still hunted," she backs up to explain to Rey and the rest of the Order members, "Meat consumption isn't outlawed on Alderaan. You could go to one of our main cities and open a store that sells the meats on a stick I saw walking through your main deck. It's just that you'd likely go out of business trying to sell them, and you'd have to get your wares off-planet, because there's no commercial meat production on-world. But the more widely spread out areas… Kehruut doesn't demand vegetarianism. It demands dignity and kindness and treating that which lives with love. That said, survival comes first, always, and the further out you go, the less easy it is to get a balanced diet by living off the land. Among other things, if the nearest grocery is 3000 kilometers away, just nipping out for a bit of synth protein to round out your meal isn't an option. Likewise, there's a vitamin that only comes from certain plants, or the livers of certain animals, and if you can't get those plants to grow, you've got to eat the animals." Everyone is following along now.

"Anyway, this was before my mother died, back when I was still the Princess, and I'm visiting this village of about a hundred people. Part of it was making sure that everyone had an idea of who I was. Part of it was making sure I had an idea of who my people were. And, they're celebrating, which means a feast. Part of the feast is roasted flerths."

No one in the Order delegation knows what a flerth is.

Samanth says, "They're about a meter long, and about half a meter tall, very round heads, no visible ears, but they've got wiggly, short noses, whiskers, big black eyes, two flipper-like legs in the front, one flipper-like tail in the back. They spend a lot of time in very cold water, so they've got thick, dense, waterproof fur, which the islanders use for clothing and insulating their homes, and thick, rich fat, which helps them stay warm, and vitamin-dense livers, which means people who eat them don't get sick."

"But, they're also achingly cute." Helene adds. "And there were these little baby ones, which are fluffy and gray, with _huge_ black eyes, and they sort of bark at people, and follow them around, and…" She sighs. "All I wanted to do was gather about fifty of them and get into a big pile and cuddle." She smiles a little, and waves her head in a somewhat dismissive gesture. "I was very young at the time."

Kylo quirks a small smile. He's got the sense that 'very young' means five years ago. "I made a stuffed tookka for my niece a few weeks ago, and may have spent a bit too long petting fabrics to see which one felt the best. We're allowed softness." He shrugs a little. "It probably makes us better people, even if it doesn't make us better leaders."

(He feels Jon, who is at a different table, smirk at that. He'd been a little taken aback when it took Kylo two hours to go through the fabric collection and pick them. A bit more taken aback that he did it by touch, and not sight. There were some mutters of 'colorblindness' when he decided which blue fabric and which yellow one he wanted. They did _feel_ really good together, though. But now he's amused by it.)

Everyone looks very surprised by that. Heloise is smiling widely as she continues with, "So, I'm there, being _Princess Heloise._ Learning about local village life. Dinner rolls around. It's my job to eat anything put in front of me, and this is not a tribe that's swimming in extra food. Though we did bring a _lot_ of rations with us, because we're coming from the city, and it's convenient.

"They've got open fires, which is another extravagance, because they're burning dried seaweed, and… That's a smell you're never going to forget. So, they've roasted the flerth over the fire, and are getting ready to serve it.

"Most of the meal I'm doing fine. Most of it is things like the local warm season tubers, and seaweed, and dried berries, and pickled grasses, and some sort of fish, and another roasted shellfish, but they bring over this poor, roasted flerth, and… The skin is fine, it's crispy and salty, and I can pretend it's a chip of some sort. But under the skin…" she does her best not to wince. "It's five centimeters of slightly melted fat."

Kylo closes his eyes, draws in a shuddering breath, lets it out slowly, and then opening his eyes, says to her, "I am deeply, passionately sorry."

She nods, slowly. "I felt terrible. I'm their princess. They are literally giving me the absolute best piece of the animal. It's their favorite, most elaborate, this is their highest honor in the form of food, and I'm all but literally turning green trying not to throw it up."

"Did you… get through it?" Rey asks. She'll eat anything. At all. That said, five centimeters of warm fat doesn't settle well on her stomach, either.

Heloise nods. "Barely. And I used every trick I had for hiding food, but…" She taps the menu card. "I appreciate the delicacy in making sure dinner would involve food we'd enjoy eating."

They pause again as the servers place the first course in front of them. Rey notices that Heloise is very interested in how she thanks the servers. Apparently, in her own household, one does not thank droids. That said, in her own household, said droids may not be sentient.

But here, today, for this meal, the servers are droids. Part of that is making sure no order can be mismanaged. Part of it is Threepio making sure that the New Alderaan delegation sees Rey thanking droids.

Once the food is settled, (And yes, each plate has a few bites only. Kylo's got a small salad of pickled radishes and carrots. Rey has a tiny square of some sort of meat paste on a piece of toast, with the pickled radishes on top.) Kylo says to Heloise, "General Threepio is to thank for that. He's exceptionally good at keeping all of the details arranged properly. If it were just me… This would not be nearly so well designed."

Helene raises a brow. "And what would it look like if it were just you?"

Kylo smiles a little.

Rey says, "Likely a lot smaller."

He strokes the back of her hand, and says, "Maybe one day I'll attempt to organize something like this for myself, and we'll see."

It's Heloise's father who says, "If you'll forgive the question, but… In many cultures, it's often the job of the political spouse to be in charge of things like this… Is this… not your domain Mistress Ren?"

Rey also smiles. "This is very much not my domain. Though, I'm certainly learning. Was this… your job when you were the Prince Consort?"

"Actually, yes." Tayron replies, "And part of what I do now, too. Heloise does not, as yet, have her own Prince Consort to handle issues like state dinners." He takes a bite of his meal, and Rey notices he did not opt for the vegetarian food for this course. "Kehruut is, at it's most basic level, a respecting of the dignity and value of the life forms around you. And while it's true that officially, Alderaan does not have a state religion, that's something that threads through all of the religions found on planet. So, part of my job is making sure that Kehruut is extended to anyone or thing that comes into our sphere of influence. That's… similar to what you do with your Maji, no?"

Rey looks pleased by that. "It is. Speaking of things I'm working on learning, how to extend that through and to anyone who comes into our sphere is on the list."

Tayron nods at that. "I find that the more I know about the people we interact with, before we interact with them, the easier it is to extend Kehruut to them." He taps the rim of his plate. "For example, we do interact with people where offering a meat dish would be considered a violent insult, so, in that case, it would never get near a plate. And we interact with people who will make an exception, because we're _Alderaan,_ but in general would consider the lack of a meat dish an insult, because that would mean we don't hold them in high enough esteem to slaughter an animal for them. And, of course, there are the ones who won't touch anything until they've fully scanned it. Or the ones who consider just sitting down to eat with someone a grave honor, because they come from a world where political assignations are so common they've got words for poison through food, or poison through beverage, and poison through cosmetics, and…"

"Where is that?" Rey asks, horrified.

Tayron shakes his head a bit. "The Padishah Imperium."

"I've never heard of them," Kylo adds.

"There's no reason why you should have," Tayron says. "They're not in our galaxy or anywhere close. And we ran into them a long time ago. They… this might be of interest to Force users. They don't travel by propulsion or faster than light engines. They have… well, supposedly they begin as humans, who they call navigators, and they drug them with something they call spice, which is very much _not_ what we call spice, and the navigators use their minds, enhanced by the spice to bend space around the ships. The ships don't move, the universe does."

Kylo doesn't let it show on his face, but he thinks, urgently, to Rey, _Does he know how I got to you?_

 _He… shouldn't. But…_

Kylo sips his drink, hoping the covers some of the expression on his face. _But covers a lot of territory._

Helene smiles at that. "That one's a good story. Apparently, a very long time ago. This predates us by quite a bit, one of their navigators misjudged what they were doing. Too much spice, not enough spice, they never found out, and ended up with an entire transport ship of Corrinos hovering just outside of Alderaanian space. Close to a thousand of them were going to… I don't remember, but apparently they were extremely confused to end up just outside of Alderaan two hundred years ago."

"It was a politically fascinating culture, and an abject lesson in _not_ letting the wrong people gain power," Tayron says. He shudders a bit. "They claimed to be part of the Imperial family of a man who ran the entire known universe, but, obviously, they didn't know us."

"Quite surprised," Helene says again.

"Chumly? Is that one of them?" Tayron asks.

"Poison by food?" Helene replies. "It was something like that. Imagine, if you can, a political system where one man claimed to rule the entire universe. He'd use magic and bloodlines and poison and war and… It was an absolute disaster. We used to study them in school as a how not to run a political system sort of lesson."

"How long were they outside of Alderaan?" Ellie asks.

"They stayed in orbit for a year," Tayron replies. "Once their navigator figured out that, even with a hyperspeed ship, they were, at best, seven hundred years from home, and that nothing anyone knew of anywhere in our galaxy even got close to their spice, they resigned themselves to having to stay in our galaxy. Last we heard, they emigrated to Coruscant."

"You… didn't let them emigrate?" Kylo asks.

The entire New Alderaan delegation looks horrified at the idea. "After we learned more about them, we decided it was better to suggest that there were likely worlds significantly more to their liking," Tayron replies.

"And they just… blended in?" Rey asks.

"They were humans, more or less. Less in the case of the navigator and the mentats." Kylo and Rey are both thinking _what's a mentat?,_ but neither wants to halt the conversation by asking. "We made sure the Jedi knew to keep an eye on them. They had… a few… I'm going to use the word witches, though I don't know if that's accurate, per se, among them. Able to do things… Well, the Jedi would have found them interesting. Our ancestors were just content to see them go," Helene replies.

That's a few moments of quiet contemplation.

Then Rey thinks to Kylo. _Message below the message?_

 _Probably._ He thinks back. _Are we the Corrino?_

 _I think the question is, do they think we are? Or… Is Tayron suggesting this to make sure we don't end up with our own Corrinos at the door._

Kylo sips his drink while thinking to her _Chat with Ellie and Pat about this later?_

 _Yes._

* * *

Heloise wonders idly, between courses, if Ren only wears black. Every image she's seen of him, mask or no, has involved head to toe black. Apparently, he's a little fancy today, because he's got a bit of silver to go into the mix, but… It's a lot of black.

Well… That's a polite question. A get-to-know-you gambit, "Tell me, Master Ren, is there a significance to the color scheme of the Order?"

Kylo blinks at that for a moment, and then swallows a sip of his drink, and she can't see it, but she's got the sense that he's holding Rey's hand under the table. "To a degree. Part of it is, I just like black." There's a second where it looks like he may say more about that, but he doesn't. "Part of it is that everything already was black and gray and white and red when I took over, and… You need to understand, that when I took over, this ship was in two large pieces, and a whole lot of little ones. My predecessor had managed to get more than half of us killed in less than a week, and lost most of our military. Fixing things up is a major budgetary constraint for us, so, while there are things I'm willing to do to spruce this place up, repainting anything that doesn't actually need it, seems like a waste of credits. That said, our newer construction is heavier on the gray and white, with black more as an accent than the main color."

"Part of it is that black and gray is long wearing," the Thea Schiff adds. "I don't know much about how cities work, but on a ship, if you can coat a surface in a color that won't fade, won't show dirt, and is more resistant to damage, you do it. Same with our uniform color scheme, black and gray and dark blue is just… easy."

"And part of it is symbolic," Rey adds. "The Order and The Maji both seek balance between the dark and the light. They understand the one does not exist without the other, nor should it try."

"I was under the impression that light is how you get color," Helene adds.

"I am, too, which is why you'll sometimes see me in white, rarely in black, but often see me in colors," Rey replies. Her current outfit is a floor-length gown, with a trim pearl colored bodice, no sleeves, and a long skirt of swirling blues and greens. "It's why the hard surfaces of what we're building tend to be black or white or gray, but the soft parts, and the plants, we're working colors into. Black and white may be the end conditions, and gray the mid-point, but they aren't the end all or be all of what's out there."

"As you'll see in a bit, when we talk in private," Kylo adds, "our own rooms are tan and peach with little bits of blue and some lighter cream colors."

"With some black," Rey says, with a smile. "Because he does genuinely like black."

Heloise smiles at that. There's a stab of annoyance from Helene at _speak in private._ And Samanth says, "So, does that also indicate that, on occasion, you're seen in something other than black, white, or gray?"

Rey laughs at that. "We're working on it."

Kylo smiles. "I'll have you know that I own at least two pairs of socks that are not black, and… a few other things." He grins at Rey, and she leans her head against his shoulder.

Helene raises a brow. "Really?"

Kylo rolls his eyes. "No. They're all black. One day I might, though." He takes another sip. "I have a blue bathrobe. But someone keeps stealing it from me, so I don't get to wear it much." He eyes Rey.

She looks innocent and takes another bite of her supper.

* * *

By Kylo's internal clock, this meal has been going on for seventeen hours.

 _One hour and nine minutes._ Rey thinks in his head. _The chrono's behind you to the left._

He doesn't glance at it. Doing something like that is probably rude or something to that effect. Still… He'd enjoy this more if they could really talk about why they're here, and meeting and… Do something real.

This seems to mostly be for show.

Rey squeezes his hand. _Heloise and Samanth are liking you better by the minute. Starting to feel more trusting._

He doesn't incline his head. He does take a sip of the soup. _I suppose that's something. Helene keeps staring at me and seeing my parents._

Rey doesn't nod. She's noticed that, too. _You could ask her about it._

 _Or I could not._

 _I know you're curious._

 _Yeah, but she's_ thinking _about it._ _Not talking about it. How would I know to bring it up?_

Rey strokes the back of his hand and smiles at him. _Remember that thing I told you about, making people want to talk?_

His eyes gleam at her, and fortunately, most the rest of the table mistakes it for the two of them being ridiculously lovey with each other. _Yes, I do._

 _Let's see if I can shift the conversation._

And, when there's a lull in the gentle burr of words between Ellie, Thea, and Helene and Tayron, as they discuss some entertainment that was popular thirty-five years ago, that all of them enjoyed, Rey gets thinking at Helene.

Kylo's holding her hand, feeling what she's doing. It's… enticing. That's likely the best way to put it. She's encouraging Helene's curiosity, making her feel content and secure, and like everyone around them would also want to know things like this.

He feels more of Helene through Rey, and through his own empathy. It's not that, on any given level, that Helene is hostile to him as a person. It's what he represents. If he were Kylo Ren, no relation to Alderaan whatsoever, she could not have cared less about him and what he's trying to do. The Order would just... exist, and do it's thing, and that would be that.

But as someone who might alter the path of Alderaan, she is very intently involved in who he is, and what he might do. Fear. He feels that arcing through her, especially as Rey gently nudges her toward her questions and thoughts about the Leia and Han.

Organas spelled doom for her and hers before, and now they're back, and… She's afraid. That's the feeling under the rationalizations and justifications.

She was afraid of Leia, and the changes she was working.

She's afraid of Alderaan really being gone. She's afraid of the Emperor really _winning._

She's afraid that one day, everything she loved about her home, about what made them special, about her ideals of herself and her world, will fade to dust, stomped out by tides of history she can't control.

And Kylo's got the feeling that _a lot_ of the population of Alderaan, old enough to remember Old Alderaan, feels the same.

 _Give her a nudge. She'll get talking,_ Rey says in his head.

A nudge… They're at another lull in the conversation, so… "Did either of you know my grandparents?" That seems like it'll roll in the direction he wants things to go, without openly plumbing what's going on in Helene's mind.

Tayron answers first. Kylo isn't sure, but he thinks he's older than Helene is. Maybe. Both of them look to be within five years of Leia's age, so… "Unfortunately, no. Our parents were diplomats to the Reth system. I was born off-world, and only visited home a few times." He offers a half-smile. "That's… a very common story for those of us who survived. Obviously, people travel, but most people are, at most times, wherever home is. So… For just about anyone who survived, Alderaan wasn't _home._ Or, it was home, not a physical home, but an emotional one."

Helene nods at that. "I was born on Alderaan, but hadn't started school when we moved. Bail and Breha were images. We see them on newsies, or sometimes our father would take holocalls with Bail."

"He took me to the Senate once, and I met Bail there," Tayron says.

"Why didn't I go?" Helene asks.

"Your school was taking you to… I don't remember. You were really looking forward to it, and pouted a lot at the idea of leaving."

Helene nods. "Right. The Kellian Crescent. I did not want to miss that trip." She looks to her brother. "He was young then, ten, twelve, something like that."

Tayron nods. "Bail was… kind. I remember that. He was taking time to visit my father, which means it was probably important, but he treated me like a real person. Looked me in the eye, talked directly to me, kept me in the conversation as much as it's possible for a child to be involved in a diplomatic conversation." Tayron sighs a bit at that. "Not a lot of people will do that. Especially people with tight schedules. He let me prattle on about a sport I was following in those days. He made me feel important."

Both Kylo and Rey smile at that idea.

"I did know your mother," Helene says, and looks a little surprised that she did. Rey mentally smiles, and Kylo strokes the back of her hand.

"I understand she was in the Senate, and you were on New Alderaan," Kylo says.

Helene nods. "She knew Tayron's wife better than she knew me, they'd both been part of the Rebellion, but over the years we worked together."

"What was she like?" Kylo asks.

"You don't know?" Heloise replies.

He shrugs a little. "I know… impressions. I was eight when we stopped living together. She kept me away from the politics intentionally, so I didn't know her as a leader, and… My job was to learn to be a Jedi. I wasn't very good at that, so a lot of the impressions I have are of her 'encouraging' me to do better at my studies." He takes a sip, and makes sure he's got good eye contact with Heloise, "And, of course, I was a child, and… There are things our parents don't want us to be thinking about, especially as children. I… didn't get to know her as an adult."

That resonates with Heloise, who also cannot know her mother as an adult.

"You talk about her as if she's dead," Helene says. "We… saw her visit you when you were on New Alderaan."

Kylo thinks about how to answer that. "You know my Uncle was Luke Skywalker. And he was my mother's twin brother." That gets nods. "And Force skills run in families." He hovers his glass a few centimeters. "And, with the Force, and a lot of tenacity, you don't exactly have to leave when you die. And, one thing that's true about my mother, something even I knew, was her tenacity.

"She passed from this life to the next a bit over a year ago. And, from what I can tell, she's seen absolutely no reason whatsoever to let being dead stop her from occasionally popping by to visit and chat."

That gets _dead_ silence at the table.

Finally, with a slow nod, Samanth says, "And now I understand why you keep your comments about her so… guarded."

Rey nods back. "It's… difficult to figure out how to… discuss something like that."

Unfortunately, that bit of conversation has pulled everyone's attention away from talking about Leia or Han to what happens to people after they die, and if ghosts are real.

"I've never seen a ghost," Thea says. "My gran used to. People would come to her to have her talk to them about their loves and what they were up to on the other side."

Kylo and Rey look really confused at that. He blinks slowly, and she says, "Any ghost?"

"Sometimes she couldn't get through to them, but if she couldn't, she wouldn't take payment. Back home people would call her a witch, too, but they always came around when they needed help, or missed their loves, or needed to find a copy of the will."

Until that last sentence, it's clear that Helene and Tayron were thinking Thea's gran was a con woman, but… "Could she… actually find wills?" Helene asks.

Thea nods. "Wills, keys to lock boxes, passwords. There are a lot of things people don't think about when a loved one is about to pass, or goes fast, and most of it's just stupid stuff that you need, but don't have, like how to get into data files, or which security company has the lock boxes, or… Just stuff like that. Gran could usually get the ghosts to talk."

Another _long_ silence.

"Was your Gran Force sensitive?" Kylo asks. If she was, there's no feel of it on Thea.

Thea shrugs. "Never knew how she did it. She certainly wasn't floating crockery around to make points," she smirks a little at Kylo, and he quirks his lip in response, genuinely amused, "and the Jedi never came calling, but if your own gran had just died and you needed to find where she hid her paperwork, my Gran could get her to tell, and then set you right."

"Where was your family from?" Rey asks.

"A billion klicks out from the middle of nowhere. When I was in my late teens, Gran died, and Daddy decided that the only good thing on that world had been Gran. So, he moved us to Calderrai. And a few years after that, this hot shot flyboy for the Empire gets stationed nearby. He was on convalescent leave, and then got moved into training for a while, and… The rest is history."

Ellie has a half smile at that. "I feel like I've heard a few hundred versions of that story."

And dinner moves on.

And on.

And _on…_


	61. New Alderaan: The Meat of the Subject

5/15/2

Kylo's fairly sure that dinner took seventeen weeks to complete.

And it's not that all of it was bad, or even most of it, or some really, it was just… Long.

On his own, or with Rey, they eat, they talk, they get done eating. Meals take, maybe, twenty-five minutes. They both like food, and eating, but this long, drawn out, bring food, eat food, clear food, bring more food, eat…

The food is good. That's a perk.

And Jon was right, even having eaten all eight courses, he's not feeling like he's gorged himself, so that's good, too. (Though tiny bits of food on each plate looked a little bizarre to him.)

Still, as the server is clearing up the sweet (a light citronen mousse) and drinks, (Not coffee. He opted for tea instead of brandy. He still doesn't understand why everyone is so hung up on tea. It's just… blah… to him. But he can feel the Alderaanians are pleased with what they've got and how it's served. Ellie steered him and Rey correctly. They're impressed when he pours and she serves.) he's glad to be wrapping this up, and finally getting to the first of the 'real' discussions for the evening.

Time to see about getting Heloise and Samanth on their own for an actual conversation where something useful may happen.

* * *

The next part of the evening is in the courtyard.

It's designed to be a space for people to linger and talk and mingle, so… Time to break it in.

Once they get down there, Rey's watching the 'politicians.' They're happy. They really seem to enjoy this sort of thing. And for several of the New Alderaan delegation, this is the first space, with it's reflecting pools, white pillars, high arches, and open sky, that they feel truly comfortable.

(She doesn't miss two of the 'entourage' drift over to the planters and just touch the soil. Apparently, some people prefer to keep feet on the earth of their home world.)

Kylo's talking about why this part of the Supremacy looks the way it does. He explains how he had some ideas, but it was really Jon who put them together and turned them into something that actually looks nice.

And Jon… Is being quiet. Really quiet. He's just… blending. He mingles, smiles. Rey's fairly sure he's personally greeted everyone there, but he's not exactly staring in this drama. He's just there, on the edges, making sure everything goes smoothly.

Right now, it's clear that he's doing everything in his power to make people think Threepio actually runs things.

That makes sense. If Threepio is the 'official' diplomatic channel for this endeavor, it makes a statement. One that she's sure they've gamed out into oblivion.

For the moment, Heloise is standing on her own, looking out at the billion stars around them, and the few star destroyers keeping pace. (Rey knows there are more than the visible three of them, but they're behind and above the Supremacy, out of the view of anyone casually looking out a viewport.)

Rey heads over to her. "I didn't think I'd ever get used to it."

Heloise nods. "It's… I suppose I'm literally broadening my horizons."

"Have you been off-world before?" Rey asks.

"A few times, but not like this. Most of our transport would be spent in hyperspace, followed by a brief stop, and then to the ground."

Rey continues to nod. "Very much not like this, then."

Heloise turns away from the view to Rey. "Did you get used to it?"

Rey shrugs a bit. "Sometimes it's just background. Sometimes I stop, and really look, and it takes my breath away." She feels Helene notice the two of them are talking and start to ease over. She's tempted to say something like, 'are you wired for sound' but decides not to. Instead she turns to Helene and smiles, gesturing to the stars beyond. As the older woman comes near, she says, "We don't have much to offer anyone who loves green, living things, not yet and not here, but we do have an amazing view."

Helene nods. "That you do." She looks down at where the containment field meets the floor. "It feels like I could just step off."

"If the containment field were to fail, you could, but I have the feeling if that were to happen, we'd not just be calmly standing here chatting."

Heloise quirks her lip at that. It's clear that she's trying to be amused, but now she's worried.

Rey touches her hand, and lays just a tiny bit of calm on her. "They won't fail." She turns her back to the sky beyond, and then leans against the field. It holds her steady. "You can't step off," Rey says, standing back up.

That's… somewhat comforting.

Kylo sees the two of them chatting, and heads over, with Samanth.

"I suppose we've got something to talk about," he says to Heloise.

She nods. "The view is amazing, but we didn't come all this way just to enjoy it."

He offers her his hand, and she takes, it, and for a moment it looks like it might just be this easy. They just wander off. They take one step.

Helene follows.

Kylo stops. "I understand that it's customary for any sort of even borderline political discussion on New Alderaan to be public and monitored. However, since we are not on New Alderaan, and this particular discussion involves what I consider my extremely private personal life, this discussion will not be monitored." Kylo's tone brooks no argument, and for the moment everyone looks okay with that.

Then he again takes a step, with Heloise and Rey, toward his office, and, again, Helene begins to follow.

He turns to her, brow raised. "Was I unclear about what I was expecting for this meeting?"

Helene is gobsmacked. She literally cannot believe he's even going to try it. For a second she just blinks, staring up at him, and then says, "You must have been. I understand a desire for no recordings, but you can't possibly hope to discuss a marriage pact without witnesses. That would be sheer insanity."

Kylo and Rey's turn to blink. She decides she'll be the one to respond. "I'm… unstudied in your traditions, but a functional marriage pact does require a written contract, no?"

Nodding from Heloise, who looks pleased to let the Rens handle her aunt. "Of course. Fully negotiated and signed by all parties."

"Then there's no need at all for anyone besides the three of us for this first, possible, round of discussions," Kylo says. "Anything we could possibly agree to will be recorded and viewed by everyone, later." He again gestures to the rest of the courtyard, for Helene's benefit. "Please, feel free to refresh yourself, or perhaps amuse yourselves on the F-Deck. I'm certain that if you wanted to explore, General Threepio would be more than happy to personally escort you." And, as if summoned, Threepio does appear behind Helene.

Neither Kylo nor Rey have ever seen him move so fast or silently, but, apparently, when needs must, he can book across a room and not be seen doing it.

Kylo's just about turned back toward his office, with Rey and Heloise when…

Helene is just staring at him. She can't believe he's trying it. He's really going to take their Queen off on her own and completely break tradition by having a completely unmonitored talk between two heads of state. Finally, her brain catches up and sets her mouth going. "It's… unseemly, for a young man to be alone with an unmarried woman in his private quarters." It's a desperate, last ditch attempt at something like an invite, and Helene is unashamedly laying it out.

Heloise is just about glaring daggers, and it's clear that she's about to go full out on her aunt, since both of them know that she's spent more than enough time on her own in Samanth's quarters, and, for that matter, the idea that such actions are unseemly is about a hundred years out of date, but something that Kylo remembered from one of the few novels Luke had in his library springs to mind. "I've been told that all the chaperone a man needs, in any situation, is his wife." Actually, in the book, it was a man saying that all the chaperone a woman ever needs is her husband, but he figures it's got to work both ways, "Since both my actual wife, and someone who is claiming interest in the position is asking for the meeting, you do not need to attend," Kylo says to Helene.

Helene's glare could strip paint. She knows this isn't a good play, but there are no good plays here. She can't be seen to not trust Heloise to be alone with Ren for an hour. But she can't let her be alone with Ren for an hour, either. "It's not…" she looks annoyed. "fitting." It comes out lamely because it's abundantly clear that she desperately wants to get into this meeting, and no one is going to let her.

Rey thinks to Kylo, Let her save some face. Invite Samanth. She still hasn't figured out exactly where his loyalties lay.

Kylo does not, visibly, roll his eyes. That said, even without doing it, he projected the desire to do it so strongly, that absolutely no one, including Threepio, missed it. "I understand that I have something of a… reputation." Though being even remotely concerned with a young woman's virtue in my care indicates you don't know what that reputation is. Rey stifles a snigger at that. "Samanth, would you like to come as well? We'll let no one say I took advantage of the situation or our queen."

Samanth smiles at that, and looks to Heloise. "My queen?"

"Certainly," and with that, and without Helene, the four of them head toward Kylo's office.

* * *

Threepio, watching another piece of the puzzle fall into place, takes the initiative. "Come lady, though the details are not yet worked out, there is quite a bit of interest in New Alderaan having an embassy on our capitol ship. I know the location isn't finished yet, but I have a feeling that you'd like a sense of what we're building, and where best to locate the embassy. A place of importance and visibility, something befitting of cousin empires…"

Helene isn't thrilled by that, but she's a political animal, seeing the angles, and though she's not sure about the ramifications of a close relationship with the Order, she's also taken the time to contemplate what Heloise had to say about how Alderaan, to be Alderaan needs a big, strong friend.

And damnably, the girl is right. In order to be peaceful Alderaan, they need a friend, preferably one who will clearly blow anyone out of the sky if they try something. And though they have a close working relationship with the New Republic, the New Republic is not necessarily, now, in the sort of shape where they'd come to Alderaan's aid, if they needed it.

But the Order probably would.

Especially, while it's ruled by these young hotheads.

She nods to Threepio. "Let us."

* * *

Kylo walks his 'cousins' to his office. "See, not all black."

"Just, mostly black," Rey adds.

Heloise looks at the vase in the middle of Kylo's conference table. "Are those… the flowers from Alderaan?"

Rey nods. "They're dried now, but, yes. They were pretty, and I wanted to keep them."

That gets a smile from Samanth and Heloise.

C8 steps over. He gestures to the snacks on Kylo's desk, and nods to the private chamber. "Everything was delivered and set up as requested, sir."

"Thank you." He picks up the tray, laden with a few bottles, a coffee pot, glasses, and cookies. "C8, this is Heloise Talmaash, Queen of Alderaan, and you've met Samanth Organa before."

"Greetings, my lady, and lord." He nods to them. "Is there anything else you need from me?"

"Just keep watch at the door. Helene wasn't thrilled about us wandering off unwatched."

"Yes, sir."

Rey gestures to the open door to their bedroom. Both Heloise and Samanth look surprised by that, but they do enter. Once Kylo follows them in, Rey shuts the door.

Heloise and Samanth are looking around at a very not black room. (Though the floor and ceiling are black, and so is a decent amount of the furniture.) The walls are, as mentioned, cream and tan. There are warm desert colors, splashes of blues, and… candles. A lot of candles. There are candles floating in the bath. Candles on the table. Candles on the little seat near the window. The whole room is suffused in warm, creamy candle light.

Heloise is starting to look a little perturbed. It's clear that she's suddenly not sure if Kylo ever got the message that she wasn't serious about the whole marriage part of their marriage pact. Especially since Kylo's laid the tray of goodies down on the table, and is in the process of kicking off his shoes, and about to take his hair down, but Rey stays his hand, and he stops.

He looks up at them. "Make yourselves as comfortable as you like. We're in my home. And" he gestures to the four of them all dressed up. "This is not comfortable at home for me."

Rey touches his hand again. "Still, we will be escorting them out, so you likely shouldn't wander out with your hair down and wild. Let alone changed into a new outfit."

He inclines his head and shrugs, while thinking to Rey, It'd be worth it just to see Helene's face. Rey smiles at that. Then he sits at the table, pours himself a small glass of wine, and points out what's on the tray, making up little plates for everyone.

Once everyone is seated, and has some sort of snack, he says, "I understand that it's customary among the political class of New Alderaan to be continually monitored for sound. Something about ensuring civic virtue by a complete and utter lack of personal privacy."

"We don't generally put it that way, but, yes," Samanth says.

Kylo nods. "Ah… And that's… immutable?"

"Generally speaking. In certain non-state matters some level of privacy are available," Heloise says.

"I'd consider my marital arrangements to be non-state, and since that's what we'll be talking about," and the electronics inside their room go completely dead.

Both he and Rey smirk when they feel a spike of panic from someone, who likely had the job of keeping track of what was going on, on the other side of the door.

And it looks like someone, maybe not Helene, had at least one of the two of them monitored for sound, Rey thinks to Kylo.

He smirks a little more, stretches some, takes another sip, and hands the glass to Rey. "This one is good."

"And we are free to speak," Rey says after she swallows.

"What did you do?" Samanth asks, glancing around the fire-lit room.

"This room already has the best-sound proofing money can buy. That said, it doesn't matter how good the soundproofing is if there's a mic on one of the people in the room. So, when it became clear that we'd be doing this, and that you'd want privacy to actually talk, this room has had an upgrade to it's security system. Anything electronic inside of it just died and will stay that way until I release the static field," Kylo says. He eyes the both of them, but it's clear neither one knows who's got the extra bug on them. "It's good for keeping conversations private, less good for my correspondence, or say the lights, or keeping the pool warm, all of which also died, but we are, for the time being, completely unmonitored and free to talk."

Rey adds, "It's probably worth really checking your outfits later today. Someone out there is very intensely displeased right now at having lost their feed on you."

The two Alderaanians smile. "Good," Heloise says.

"Someone?" Samanth says.

Kylo shrugs. "I don't know which one. I can just feel the wave of displeasure."

"Ah," Samanth replies. "Looks like your Aunt is hedging her bets."

"Or testing your security," Heloise replies. Now that she's sure the candles and flowers and whatnot aren't a seduction tool, she's a bit more relaxed, but, still… "Uh… just to be clear, and to put you and your lady at ease, I genuinely am not interested in a marriage pact with you. I'll likely have to make one eventually, but I know you are not available."

Kylo smirks a bit, as he gently strokes the back of Rey's neck. "I don't know… I was starting to warm up to the idea of two wives. Seems like it might offer some interesting experiences." He glances to the bed.

Both Heloise and Samanth were not expecting that, and it flatfoots them. For a long moment they just stare at Kylo.

"He's joking," Rey says. "Mostly."

"Mostly," Kylo replies with a smile.

Heloise and Samanth exchange nervous grins. This, especially after watching the interview, was not what they were expecting.

"Oh, am I making you somewhat uncomfortable this time around?" Kylo replies, setting a drink in front of Rey, the back of his hand caressing hers.

Heloise just looks at him. Then she smiles. "Rey, I'm sorry for bringing it up that way, but I honestly had no other ideas for how to take advantage of the situation."

Rey nods to her. "So, how long can we possibly stretch out a polite, no-a-marriage-pact-isn't-going-to-happen,-but-how-about-this-instead sort of meeting?"

Samanth and Heloise glance at each other. Heloise shrugs a bit. "Two or three hours would be good for us to just talk with each other, but… Realistically, an hour?"

"Realistically, we can't get this planned in an hour," Rey says. "There's got to be some way for us to get to meet with each other again."

They think for a moment. "Solonift dinner," Samanth says. "Dad hosts, so it's a private affair, family is welcome. She's been to several of them already, so going to more wouldn't be out of the question. Come to a few just the two of you, and bring some of your young Maji to a few more. Teach them about some other cultures."

Rey smiles, that looks like an excellent way to sneak a few more meetings in. "And, of course, you'll come for our wedding, the private, family celebration. That'll get you a few days well off the beaten path, and well away from prying ears and eyes."

Heloise looks pleased at that.

And Kylo decides to start the real conversation. "All right then, we've got the start of an idea of how to get meetings done, I guess it's time to start talking about what it is you actually want to do." He takes a sip of his drink. "How can the Order help?"

Heloise and Samanth look at each other, then Heloise says, "Believe it or not, just this is a start. A place to talk without constant monitoring."

Samanth adds, "The problems are easy to see. The holes. The discontents. Having time and a place and the options to even really talk about potential solutions… that's valuable."

"That's easy," Rey says. "Anyone is welcome here at any time. You get time off, right?"

Heloise rolls her eyes a bit and sips her drink. "In a manner of speaking. I'm rarely allowed off-world though. People get nervous when their monarch wanders off." She sees the look Rey and Kylo share. "Or so I'm told. Do they not… try to keep you close?"

Kylo bites his lip and Rey squirms a bit. "Well, we have to keep a comm handy," she finally says. Mentally, they're both very aware of the fact that if they actually had to travel for hours or days to get back to the Order in an emergency, the 'tours' they intend to go on might be somewhat curtailed.

"And my capitol comes with me," Kylo adds, rapidly jumping on a very mundane reason for why his people would be less fussed about them going abroad. "It won't hover right above, but between the speed this ship can bring to bear, and any transport we may have, we're never more than a day from home."

"So, they don't try to keep you close, then," Heloise says, thinking.

"No. The plan is we'll be out and about all over the galaxy in the nearish future," Rey says.

That gets a look between Samanth and Heloise. They're certainly intrigued by that. Finally, Heloise asks, "Why?"

"Good will, humanizing the Order, helping people see that we're worth working with, finding places to put recruiting centers, looking for people with problems and money, so we can get the money and solve the problems, things like that," Rey says.

"What do you hope to get out of… well… whatever this is going to be, between us?" Kylo asks.

Heloise thinks about that for a moment. "Your population is…fourteen million now?"

"Something like that," Rey says.

"And it was two million three years ago?" Samanth asks.

Kylo nods, not entirely sure exactly when StarKiller blew. Three full years ago now? Close enough, he's sure. "Again, something like that."

"The day Alderaan died, our population went from 2.2 billion, to something like 2.3 million. That was thirty-eight years ago. There are 9.8 million of us now. Two generations. Trippling in two generations isn't bad, but it is stupid. Abysmally stupid in a galaxy so filled with people.

"But we're so mired in keeping New Alderaan Alderaan that we're stagnating—" Heloise says.

"And we're going to start running into real population problems soon, too," Samanth adds. "This is the one line that actually has some weight on it for trying to get new people on world. Every day we get more people, but most of those people are already cousins to many of the rest of our people. Our population grows but our genetic pool gets shallower."

Heloise adds. "That's… that's the poison that seeps into the blood and slowly kills you. The original wound didn't manage to kill us, but the unclean shrapnel in the wound..."

"And you think we can help you… clean the wound and set it to healing?" Kylo says.

Heloise thinks about it. "Maybe. My Aunt isn't completely insane, she's just… wrong."

Rey quirks a brow at Heloise.

"If we don't allow new people in, we die slow from inbreeding. If we allow a lot of new people in, Alderaan may die because our culture will go with it. So, what are we saving? Bloodlines? People? A culture?"

"We… want to see if we can get more people in, but in a controlled sort of way. Not your Order's free for all, but not our current, the only way to immigrate to New Alderaan is by marrying someone who's currently a citizen. There's got to be some sort of middle ground," Samanth says.

"And, to answer your question about can you help. I think the man who used to be His Royal Highness of New Alderaan Ben Solo is in a unique position to offer said help, and not be immediately denounced as an outsider who doesn't or can't understand Alderaan."

And that's why she Helene so happy I didn't know any of the traditions, Kylo thinks to Rey.

Apparently.

"I'm obviously not an insider though," Kylo adds. "Or for that matter, Ben Solo any longer, either. Any claim I had on that… died a long time ago."

"We don't give up on things just because they're supposed to be dead," Samanth adds.

Kylo nods. He's familiar with that.

Smanath cracks a smile. "Whatever is true about your mother, if not even death is stopping her, she truly is Alderaan."

Kylo sighs, and Rey thinks to him, Or, you know, Naboo.

He doesn't laugh, though he does want to. "True." He could be responding to Samanth, or to Rey, either works.

Rey's the one who says, "Obviously, when I got back from Alderaan, I talked to my people about this, and Threepio" Kylo and Rey don't miss both Samanth and Heloise stiffening at that, "had concerns, and a comment. Namely, he's under the impression what you're dealing with is… generational. So, I guess maybe, if we're going to do anything, we need to start here, do you actually have support for any of the changes you want to make?"

Heloise's eye twitches. She's angry at that. "Threepio is part of the problem. I… You maybe didn't pick up all the context, but he was right there with Aunt Helene and the rest of them, showing off Old Alderaan, the image of the world no longer with us."

Rey tilts her head. "It was his home, too. And unlike a lot of the survivors, he remembers it perfectly."

That gets a sigh from Samanth and Heloise, and a look, and a deep ache of being trapped by this horrible past that petrifies anything it touches, and a wave of futility, the feeling that even suggesting changes is desecrating the dead.

Heloise shrugs it off. "Did you wait to see if you had support before you moved to take over?" she asks Kylo.

Kylo stares at Heloise, feeling. There's real steel in this woman, but… Maybe also some niavete.

"Lady—"

"Stuff that, you know my name, use it."

"Fine. Heloise, do you have any idea how many people I had to kill, personally, or on my orders, or outside of my knowledge, but done in my name, to get here?"

She looks uneasy at that. Samanth fidgits a bit.

"Personally, my own two hands and blade, we're at more than a hundred. On my orders, thousands. In my name, we're close to a third of a million people. I, personally, cut my predecessor in half. We," he gestures to Rey, "killed his guards. I killed most of my original high command. I have literally mutilated and decapitated people in front of an audience to keep this position. Now, if that's something you consider… inappropriate… I have a feeling you're going to need some level of broad support to do what you want to do."

"So, do you have support, or is this just you and Samanth, and a few buddies who are getting sick of the powers that be and want them to be the powers that were?" Rey asks.

Samanth settles back a little, eyes unreadable, though his emotions aren't, and says, "Does it matter?"

"Only one of us has a gambler for a father, Samanth. Don't bluff. It doesn't suit you," Kylo says.

Samanth's annoyance reaches his eyes. "Fuck. We… don't know."

"We're not… in a good position to really find out," Heloise says. "And… No. I'm not willing to murder ten people, let alone hundreds of thousands to make this change. It…"

"Will likely happen anyway. The powers that are won't live forever, and you're beyond well-suited to take over, gradually, as time passes," Rey says. "You can… take the time to find like-minded people, and support them in your elections, no?"

Light side politics, Kylo thinks to her. Out loud, he says, "Well, I do know some people who might be well suited for locating themselves in and with New Alderaan and learning things like that. We are talking about setting up an embassy somewhere on your world. There's no reason why I wouldn't be willing to share my own, internal, intelligence reports. My people are good at finding out who wants what, and how, and what they're willing to do to get it."

"Especially if copies of the ones my own people, in the embassy we're planning on setting up here, find their way to your eyes," Heloise says.

"That'd certainly sweeten the deal," Kylo replies.

"And… It's not a massive help, but it's something. We can be… generous… in the number of people stationed at that embassy," Rey says. "Some of them will likely go native. And service in the Order is a five-year term, so if we get recruiting stations on New Alderaan, it's likely at the end of their terms, a decent number of your people will come back with new friends, loves, and families."

"And a decent number won't," Samanth says. He's debating what to say next, carefully.

"Just say it," Rey says.

"Recruiting stations are a bad deal for us. We can't afford to lose people right now."

Kylo and Rey both wince.

"Does it really matter that much?" Heloise asks.

They glance at each other, and Kylo's the one who replies. "On the greater scale, no. On the small scale… We need agronomists and were very much hoping you could help in that direction."

"Oh," Samanth waves that away. "That's a few dozen people. That's not a problem. Your stations would be what, thousands? Tens of thousands?"

Kylo shrugs. "Fewer, probably. After all, how many people on Alderaan want to risk ending up in a combat position?"

Rey taps her fingers on the table… "What if, for every person we got through a recruiting station, we sent one back for training in farming, land management, agronomy, or whatever? Would that… work?"

Samanth and Heloise look at each other. It's clear their immediate response is "Yes, go for it." It's clear their second thoughts can feel that's a part of the deal that would involve a lot of debate in Alderaan's house of representatives.

"It's a thing we can put into a potential contract and let our negotiators hammer out," Heloise says.

"That's a way you can judge how much support you have in the wider world, too. See who thinks that's a good plan. Do you have free trade?" Kylo asks.

"To a degree. We allow our people to sell their things anywhere that will take them. We use standard credits. We allow most goods free entrance to New Alderaan. Fresh produce and plants we're picky about, because the wrong spore on the wrong fruit can blight an entire crop, but most things can just come in…." Heloise replies.

"And… people like your aunt are generally okay with that?" Rey asks.

"Old Alderaan had the same laws," Samanth says.

Rey and Kylo nod. If it was law on Old Alderaan…

"What, besides some agronomists are you hoping to get out of this?" Heloise asks. "You mentioned it earlier, the Order solves problems for pay, and we're not in a position to pay, not credits, for this."

"You brother is with the New Republic?" Kylo asks Samanth.

Samanth looks amused. "Is that a sticking point? Do you want us to cut ties with the New Republic?"

"No," Kylo says.

Rey adds, "Like yourselves we have… big plans, and at some point it might aid those plans to have someone in the New Republic who can… gauge the temperature?"

"Gauge how?" Heloise asks.

"We have information, but maybe not reliable information, that the New Republic would not, on any level, mind if we were to cease to exist, and that, likely at some future point when they feel more secure and we look a bit less imposing, they may decide to attempt to do something about that," Kylo replies.

"And were we to have a way to find that out, before it bites us in the arse," Rey adds. "That would be valuable."

"After all, it's not like our family line has… an aversion… to being part of something like a political body and passing that information along to where it'll do the most good," Kylo adds.

"You want me to ask Daveed to spy for you," Samanth asks.

"Like grandfather…" Kylo says.

"Technically, he's our Great Uncle," Samanth says.

Kylo rolls his eyes. "Right. The main point still stands, you have an ear in a place we want an ear. We have the ability to at least offer you an unofficial place to talk."

"And, more than that, you have the ability to give us what the New Republic, can't, right now. Old Alderaan could be Alderaan because every other system around it knew that if they tried something, the Republic would come and stomp them into dust," Heloise says.

Rey's nodding. "And right now, the New Republic can't, or maybe wouldn't, come to your aid if you needed it."

"I'm sure they'd send some help. But…" Samanth glances to Kylo. "You don't count the death of the Hosnian system among the body count that got you where you are now."

"No. It certainly made my life easier, but I didn't order it, didn't design it, didn't approve it, and killed everyone involved in making it happen. There's a lot of blood on my hands, but that's not part of it."

"Most of the New Republic's military forces were lost along with the Hosnian system. So, what they could send, even if they very much wanted to send help, has been steeply curtailed," Heloise says. "Most of your military might is still online and available."

Kylo inclines his head. That's… true enough. Especially, from the point of view of someone unwilling to use a weapon like StarKiller.

"Will the New Republic allow you to maintain ties if you have visible ones to us?" Rey asks.

"That's a question for Daveed," Samanth says.

"What would you do with the information Daveed could give you?" Heloise asks. "When your grandfather found out what your other grandfather was up to, he had the whole planet destroyed. We're not interested in being the conduit for something like that again."

"No, not like that," Rey says, laying as much convincing magic as she can on top of it. "The actual plan isn't settled yet, but… There may, if things unfold in that direction, be a time when The Order will, assuming it can get the heads up, preemptively offer a non-aggression treaty to the New Republic."

"In order to do that," Kylo says, "we need enough time to show that we're serious about being peaceful, but we also need to get the offer in before the New Republic starts shooting at us. Ideally, someone like Daveed would be able to let us know when talk of doing something like that is starting to get enough traction that people are thinking about putting it on the docket, and then, hopefully, we sweep in and offer a non-aggression treaty before it gets going too much further."

Samanth lets out a long breath. Heloise shoots both of them a 'better you than me' look. Both of them look at each other, and she's the one who says, "And I thought we were being foolishly optimistic."

Samanth nods. "Kylo… Time will tell. But, at least right now, they'd shoot your ambassador out of the sky before he even got within hailing range."

Kylo nods at that. "I'm working on how to do something like that and not get shot down before we get the offer out. It'd be nice to have some sort of public face, someone who is… friendly, but has access to the New Republic, and a private one, who can take the temperature and tell me when to move. And… After all, New Alderaan is peaceful, and how better to do that than to help usher in a non-aggression treaty between the largest military left in the skies and the largest political organization?"

"That's also part of trying to stretch out the time before doing that as long as possible. It'd be nice if we had at least a few years to work on building up a reputation for not being the First Order, so that more people will take the offer seriously when we make it," Rey says.

"But if that offer comes after the New Republic has massed it's guns…" Kylo says.

"It will be too late," Heloise replies. She looks to Samanth. He looks to her.

"Daveed doesn't precisely love you, but… I have off time coming up. He can probably swing something as well. Is there… somewhere, not here, we can meet up?" Samanth asks. "You can use your fancy ship to get in unnoticed."

Kylo smirks a bit. "Something can probably be arranged. Or, let's put it this way, you and Samanth pick a place, and Rey and I will join you, and no one will notice anything other than four people having a nice family supper, or something like that."

Samanth shakes his head a bit, but… "Dad wants to meet you. So… Family supper is a tradition at his place. He closes the bakery for Solonift so Solonift eve we get together there, catch up. Daveed only makes about one out of four of them, but… You could come."

"You mentioned that before, what's Solonift?" Rey asks.

"On Old Alderaan, it was a tradition that went with the cycle of the moon. Every full moon, from moon rise to moon rise, everyone stops working, and spends time with their family."

"It's part of Kehruut, right?" Kylo's got a vague memory of that.

Heloise nods. "Obviously, we're lacking the moon now, but every thirty five-ish days—"

"We're also missing the planet with the solar year that matched up nicely with the lunar cycle. But, we're making do," Samanth says.

"We shut most businesses down, schools close, the government shuts down, and we just… Well, in most cases cook, and eat, and spend time with our loves. The day before and after usually involves a decent amount of traveling, as people go to wherever home is, but the day of is pretty quiet."

Kylo and Rey share a look, and it's abundantly clear that the Maji is stealing that tradition as soon as they can possibly figure out a calendar to slap it on top of.

"Won't they want to have us wired for sound?" Rey asks.

"Want, certainly, but Dad's a private citizen and he's allowed to have his sons and friends visit in the privacy of his own home."

"They'd likely expect you to stay in the Palace, use Leia's suite when you come, but what you do when you aren't in the palace can be as private as you like," Heloise says.

"So… Why don't you just leave the palace?" Rey asks.

"We do, but leave too long, too often, and people start to whisper about why," Heloise responds. "That's actually how the two of us were able to start talking about this. I've been to several of the family dinners, and then we take a nice stroll up to the palace back home."

Kylo nods at that, and then looks at Samanth. "Are we supposed to be… rivals?" he glances to Heloise.

Heloise shakes her head, and Samanth laughs.

"Anyone who's in the know, meaning the kind of people who'd whisper about things like that, also know that…" She delicately sips her wine, "I'm not really… Romance isn't my thing."

Kylo remembers talking with Jon about 'verse and narrow, or all or none. It clicks on in his head like his lightsaber coming to life, a sudden flare of understanding, and then a few seconds later of more glow. Heloise doesn't have any interest in him, or anyone else, when it comes to relationships. "Oh… Uh… But you said you'd likely have to make a marriage pact."

"Well, yes. Which is part of why someone who is already intensely devoted to someone else who also happens to have no interest in my throne, and would not have been even remotely put out by the fact that we'd literally never have sex seemed ideal. If I could design my ideal spouse, it'd likely be you, but… You are, obviously, very married. And 'mostly joking' or not, it doesn't seem like there's room for another lady on your dance card."

Rey thinks about that. "Why would you make a marriage pact?"

Heloise rolls her eyes viciously. "Like I said, I very much like the chance to do real good as Queen of Alderaan. I love the idea that I may make a real difference in the future of my world and people. I'm not so thrilled about the fact that I'm literally the only person on the damn planet more or less required to produce an heir, and well, as your parents proved, Kylo, I don't have to literally be married, but it'd certainly make things look better."

That stops Kylo and Rey dead. There's a moment where neither of them know what to say, and then Kylo finds words, "What do you mean, 'As your parents proved?'"

"Wait… Were they married?" Now Heloise looks confused. "It's not in our records. Granted… We didn't get them up and running until well after you were born, but…"

"I…" And now Kylo's confused. Had either of them ever referred to each other as husband or wife? Han didn't quibble about political spouse, but… "Never asked." Because why would he ask? His mom and dad who… Shit, basically never lived together, didn't have a functional home life, didn't share a name, and stopped seeing each other after he "ran away."

Both he and Rey have a moment of, Oh, that makes sense wash over them all at once.

"It's not in our records, I can tell you that. Your mother only signed away your position and hers, and she pulled the run around of waiting until after you were eighteen. If she just hadn't registered her marriage to Han, that would have also been a work around, kept him in the succession line, too."

"I… wouldn't put that past her," Rey says, though it's clear both she and Kylo are thinking that his parents should have, as well as they know, gotten married well before that was even a cloud on the horizon.

"That's probably what happened. Your mother… Everyone talks about her seeing every possible angle and running every line… She's a political legend, even with how it all worked out," Samanth says.

"Yeah, a legend… All right," Kylo says.

They're quiet for a moment. Samanth nods to the ships outside of the viewport. "There is something that my side would very much like, something that would likely buy a lot of concessions."

"Yes, we understand you're going to want some… technology from us," Kylo says, looking sheepish. Neither he nor Rey missed that comment about the fancy ship.

Heloise nods. "Yes. Your… stealth visit certainly attracted a lot of attention, and my people would be willing to offer generous concessions, or honestly, large piles of credits, since you seem to be interested in them, if we too could partake of this ship."

"And likely even more credits if you'd agree to not let anyone else get their hands on the plans for that ship. And, possibly copies of every report Daveed sends home from the New Republic," Samanth says.

Kylo sighs. "It's not the ship, it's the pilot." He levitates his cup. "I've got… skills… that are non-transferable. If I could offer you a ship that bends the light beams of your sensors, I'd do it, but I literally can't. Such a ship does not exist."

"You do it?" Samanth asks.

"Same way I can make people not see me." He's worked on this to make it look right. He doesn't have an invisibility spell. If someone can manage to point their eyes and attention at Kylo, when he's got the spell up, they'll see him. He just makes it very hard to do that. Kylo stands up, starts to walk across the room, pulls up his do-not-look spell while teleporting a few steps past where they expect him to be. It works, their eyes don't track him because they can't, and for a second they look very startled. Then he ports back to where he was and drops the spell. "It's just… bending the light around me. Your sensors probably show a blip of some sort, and your people likely decided it was just a bit of debris, but… I can't give that away."

"And he'd prefer that skill wasn't broadcast widely. It's…" Rey gestures to the room. "Unlike New Alderaan, we like being able to go out privately and not be The Rens all the time. The ability to slip in and out of tight spaces comes in handy now and again."

Samanth and Heloise can see how that'd be useful. And how that leaves them dangling. "I… understand," Heloise says, "but… I need something to take back to my people. Otherwise, this looks remarkably one-sided."

Rey nods at that. "We've been thinking about that. How much more easily would your archaeologists be able to do their jobs if they had translated works?"

"It'd…" Samanth blinks. "There's no way to describe how much that would improve the field. We'd… It's the key to understanding everything."

Rey nods. "Pick five books. Not too big, and I'll translate them for you. It won't be fast, but I can probably spend an hour or so a day on them."

"How…" Heloise asks.

"The same way he can bend light. I can't do that, but as of this point, I can read anything I lay my eyes on, so… Give me a few things you want translated. I'll read them, write down what I think they are, and then you can use that to break the code on the rest of it."

"The Force lets you… translate dead languages?" Samanth says.

"So far," Rey replies. "Most of the time it's not terribly useful. And I didn't even know that it wasn't normal to just pick anything up and read it until he explained that the languages were all different. It's possible that I just pick whatever it is up, and feel what the author intended. Maybe. I don't know how it works, just that it does."

"Do you do that with spoken language, too?" Samanth asks.

"To a lesser degree. I might not get every word, but I can usually understand the intent. And I can't come up with the words on my own, so I can't speak everyone else's language, but I understand most of what I hear."

"Wow!" Samanth says.

"Maybe… Three books and a few recordings? We have… We guess they're some sort of entertainment. There's music with some of it, there are certainly plays or shows of some sort, and we can sometimes hear an audience laughing, so it's clear some of it's funny, but we don't know what the words mean," Heloise says.

"I could probably translate that. Is that worth a few dozen Agronomists?"

Heloise nods. "I think that is, especially if you're paying their normal wages."

"We of course would, and offer room and board, too," Kylo says.

"Our legislature would likely agree to this deal," Samanth replies. "And say, in a month or so, you and Rey come for Solonift supper at Dad's place."

Rey smiles, "And then, say, next month, you'll come here for a treaty signing. And then a few of the Maji will go and visit you on a good will tour. You'll come here for the wedding. We'll send people there to break ground on our embassy. You'll do something that we'll provide a meeting space for. And we'll use those times to talk, privately, and get a feel for what is going on."

"Pass reports and intelligence back and forth," Kylo says. "Do we have a way to… get information directly to and from you without it being read?"

Samanth nods.

"And, if it looks like we have internal support for more… expansive changes…" Heloise says…

"The Order will happily offer… strategic analysis, and say, personnel, for any ongoing political situations our cousins in New Alderaan may desire," Kylo replies.

"And, of course, we are in the security business. A non-aggression treaty could also include a second strike clause. Something along the lines that anything that attacks New Alderaan is also attacking the Order. That might buy you the image of protection you want, without causing the New Republic to kick Daveed out," Rey says.

Samanth's still thinking about that. "Uncertain. But it's probably worth talking about." Samanth glances around, finds the chrono, and sees they've probably got an extra twenty-minutes or so to talk.

Rey catches it. She stands up and takes Kylo's hand. "Come on. We'll let you two talk. Use the time and privacy as you will."

And she and Kylo exit their room.

* * *

In his office, he says, "I think that went well."

Rey nods. "Yeah."

They both feel what's on the far side of the door. "They seem pleased, too," Kylo says.

Rey nods at that, too. "She doesn't want to produce an heir."

"I noticed that when she was talking about it," Kylo replies.

Both of them can feel another level behind Heloise Talmaash's desire to blend her line with Kylo's, especially a well-married to someone else, Kylo.

"Samanth doesn't know that, though, and he's hoping to be the one who fathers that child," Kylo adds.

"I noticed that, too."

"Trouble for us?" Kylo asks.

"I don't know," Rey replies. "I don't think they do, either."

"What happens, now?" Kylo asks.

"I think they finish chatting, we escort them out, and then we're done for the night."

Kylo sags a bit. "Amen!"

Rey kisses him, feeling how much he really wants to pull his hair out of the tail it's in and run his fingers through it.

How about I do that for you?

That gets an even more heartfelt AMEN!


	62. Armor For Lady Ren

5/17/2

Jon stretches, and looks at his schedule. He's got an entire afternoon to himself tomorrow.

That's almost too good to be true.

He thinks about the huge list of stuff that he likely should do, but aren't on his list, like visiting his mom, and promptly comes up with something else.

But… Poe's not on-board today. Officially, he's off Maji-ing about. Unofficially, he's putting together the first of the 'herbological extraction units' and they're figuring out what target to aim for.

(His mental image of this is Poe, Chewie, and Finn sitting around in the _Falcon_ shooting the shit, debating which target is the softest and the easiest to get to. He's not exactly _wrong_ about that, but he is missing some details, like what the inside of the _Falcon_ or Finn look like. And his mental image doesn't include Jacen suggesting that he's _got_ to come along, because he can fast talk his way into and out of _everywhere,_ and this whole thing is going to go a lot smoother if they don't have to shoot their way out.)

He looks at his to-do list again. For something that's… relaxing. Maybe.

It's a long list.

He reorganizes it by the dates he put things on there. And up by the top is one he hasn't even thought about in months. It'd be fun, though. And he hasn't really gotten back to Kylo and Rey to talk about the Post-Alderaan clean up.

He decides to check in with Kylo see if he and Rey are free. After all, it's not like the two of them are particularly reticent to clear some time, and they have asked for this.

He closes up his calendar and taps his comm. Time to see if Kylo's got enough time to squeeze in a training fight with Rey so he can see about making her some armor.

* * *

Given the choice between reading another seventy reports and angsting over ways to get more money into the coffers, and sparring with Rey, there's no contest.

Kylo's down to fight literally _before_ Jon gets the entire sentence done.

* * *

Given the choice between 'translating' (those texts showed up before the New Alderaan delegation left) what appears to be shipping manifests, ('Are you really sure you want _this_ translated, it's… lists of goods.' 'Wait, really, that's amazing! We'll learn so much about the economy of the Glendive people.' 'Okay, then…') and sparring with Kylo, Rey is slightly less interested in leaping into something else, but it's not like she's going to require strenuous convincing on this one.

* * *

5/18/2

Rey and Kylo find Jon leaning against the door of Kylo's training gym, a bit of a smirk on his face.

"You look pleased," Kylo says.

Jon shrugs a bit. "Not sure if this is something either of you'd understand, but there's a certain pleasure that goes with skiving off from your duty, and…"

Kylo blinks, and then smirks, and nods. "Even young Jedi, do, on occasion, skive off from lessons."

Jon snerks at him, as Kylo opens the door to the gym, and Rey watches them. "So, you just… don't show up?"

Jon and Kylo share a look, one that's a combination of curious, that she doesn't know this, and then sad, very sad, because she didn't have the kind of life where skiving off could have been a thing she did.

"Two parts," Jon says, rallying, because he knows Rey doesn't enjoy people getting sad about her past. "Part one, coming up with a reason to not be wherever it was you were supposed to be. For me, it was mostly school. We were walking the tightrope between making sure I was seen to attend, because after all, the way you get Happy New Republicans is by making kids attend schools that teach them the right things and brainwash them into being Happy New Republicans, and my mom very much not wanting me to turn into a Happy New Republican, while, at the same time, doing a passable job of _looking_ like one.

"So, she wasn't… nearly as conscientious as she could have been about checking my attendance records, or… uh… making sure those notes from home saying I'd been ill the day before were actually written by her." He smirks a bit.

"What did you do when you weren't in school?" Kylo asks, pulling his hair back.

Jon shrugs. "Depends on the day and if I had pocket money. If I did, I might wander down to one of the cafes I liked, grab a tea and treat, and settle in to watch my favorite shows. I think they knew what I was doing there, and it's not like they didn't know who I was, so…" He offers a half smile. "I wasn't the only kid who tended to 'get ill' from time to time, especially on days where history was going to be 'Yay! Rebellion! classes."

"And if you didn't have money?" Kylo asks.

"If not, I might go to the library or something like that. Just… go somewhere that wasn't making me pretend my Dad was evil." Jon shakes his head. "Well, that's cheery. And let me guess, skiving off of Jedi duty was fun until Luke would just give you the disappointed look?"

Kylo shrugs. "That's…" He sighs a bit. "Actually, wrong. You couldn't do it too much, but… If it wasn't a really important duty, and if you kind of… timed it right. Picked a day where he was in a good mood, and everything was going well. He'd mostly be amused. And he'd think about being stuck in his Uncle's farm, working for him, dreaming of being _anywhere_ else."

Rey and Jon look surprised at that. Kylo shrugs again, and finishes with his hair. "Like he told us, he was a kid once, too. And his Uncle was one of those guys who was all work, work, work, work, all the time, and… Anyway, he had some empathy for wandering off on a really nice day to get an extra swim, or eat the berries right off the bush, or..." He pulls his shirt over his head. "It probably didn't hurt that there wasn't a whole lot of mischief for us to get into. And he also thought it was important that we got some 'kid' time. There wasn't a lot of playing in our schedules, and there wasn't ever in his as a kid. He… had a lot of empathy for feeling like the adults wanted you to always be doing something you'd have rather not done." He shrugs again. "I haven't thought of that in years."

Jon and Rey share a look at that, and Rey decides to change the subject as she pulls her own hair back.

"Didn't you watch me fight the K'Arans?" She remembers fighting. She knows Jon was there. And it's not that she minds a chance to play against Kylo some, but…

Jon rolls his eyes, sighs, and looks chagrined. "I was… uh… distracted."

Rey raises an eyebrow at that. "Distracted?"

Jon sighs. "He's told me that you're the one who cut his face in half, so I know on some level you can fight, but…" He sighs again. "But…" his voice drops and he mumbles, quickly, "I'm not sure if he actually tried to fight you or just rolled over and took it." Fortunately, that amuses Rey more than annoys her. Kylo raises a brow at Jon, and he just shrugs, and then says, mostly to Kylo. "K'Oanan couldn't keep it down when they were fighting. Which means I was… more concerned about his intentions than I would have been if this was just sparring to see who was going to end up K'Aar."

They both feel Kylo flare hot, though he keeps his voice under control as he says, "And this would be why you didn't think I needed to watch the video of the fight?"

Jon nods, watches Kylo's hand clench and teeth grind together, and then continues by saying, "And I'm the idiot who said, 'Rey, that's a great idea, we should really do this,' when she suggested it, and then they're fighting, and his shaft is leading the charge, and all I could think about was how, when you found out that he was trying to pin Rey so he could rub his shaft against her, you were going to personally remove my testicles for agreeing to this plan. With a very tense, very nervous side of wondering how badly I was going to get hurt if I tried to jump into this thing and take him down, because…" He shakes his head and offers a limp, half smile to Rey. "I rationally know you're a better fighter than I am. Especially, now, after seeing you drop both of them. But, you're also smaller and female, and I hadn't yet seen you drop both of them." More head shaking. "And… I've been kind of trained since birth that if there's a smaller female person around with a big male one attempting to fuck them without their consent that it's my job to get my arse between the two of them, posthaste, or die trying, so…" Another sigh. He's thinking _four older sisters,_ though he doesn't say it. "I was _distracted._ "

Rey nods at him.

Then Kylo says to Jon, "Why would I remove _yours?_ " He's certainly feeling some desire to remove K'Oanan's, but he's not immediately seeing why he'd blame Jon for this.

Jon sighs. "Because I really should have known better. He was _way_ too eager for it, and… I trained in hand to hand here, I _know_ some guys get off on getting smacked around. I should have known."

Kylo glances at Rey. Then back to Jon. Then he says, "What, exactly, do you think would have happened if you'd said, 'No, Rey, you can't do this?'"

Jon rolls his eyes at Kylo, and shrugs at Rey, who is coolly appraising Jon, ready and waiting to see how he spins this. He sighs again, and rubs his hand through his hair. "I'm not that stupid. But if I'd said, 'I don't think this is a good idea. The K'Arans aren't going to react well to seeing their princes get smacked around,' you would have thought twice about it, and we'd have come up with a different plan."

Rey does nod at that, because if he or Threepio had said, 'This is not culturally appropriate,' she absolutely would have bowed to their expertise. "That would have worked. So, you were busy fearing for your… stones… and missed what I was actually doing?"

"More or less. On top of that, I was also working through the diplomacy of what the hell we'd do if Kylo did somehow get wind of what K'Oanan was doing, dragged, or worse, ported his ass out of bed, and castrated him with his lightsaber in front of everyone, while also exposing the entire delegation to Hiffa virus."

Rey winces, hard. Because she has a very vivid mental image of a naked, gray, barely upright, slick with sweat, swaying and shivering Kylo popping up, lightsaber in hand, totally eviscerating K'Oanan, and then puking on and collapsing in a heap next to the corpse. "That would have been a nightmare."

Kylo smirks. "I believe we'd put that under Ellie's _do not fuck with the Master or anything he cares about_ heading and leave it there." He's enjoying that idea way too much. (Though his mental image of it involves a lot more eviscerating, and a lot less throwing up and passing out.)

Rey lays her hand on his arm. "If I'd wanted his stones, I'd have them."

"I know. I'm allowed to enjoy the idea of it, though."

"As long as it stays an idea."

Kylo shrugs at that. "Are we going to see them again?"

Jon replies with, "Actually, yes. We've invited them to your wedding, and apparently K'Ahuana has a coronation and possibly wedding of his own coming up, and we've agreed to attend that. That's… Seventh or eighth month, I think."

Kylo grins. Rey's eyes go wide. He winks at her. "I promise, it'll never go past being an idea."

Jon rubs his forehead. "You're going to literally scare the shit out of him, aren't you?"

"And I'm going to _relish_ every second of it."

Rey rolls her eyes. "Fighting?"

"Yes, please!" Kylo replies.

* * *

The first time Rey fought Kylo, really fought him, crossed sabers with him, they were on opposite sides. Both of them were emotionally shattered, the planet they were on was rupturing, a million plus voices were screaming through the Force, and he was fighting with a fist-sized hole in his torso.

Finn got him in the right arm. She hit him in the leg, put a light saber through his left shoulder, and then sliced his face in half, and he was _still_ working on getting up for another go at it when the planet split apart between them.

The second time they fought, on the same side, was less than four days later. It was the literal fight of their life. Both of them knew this was win or die, and neither of them wanted to die.

So, they didn't.

She was fighting on borrowed skill, nerves, and the hope for a future glimpsed less than a day earlier.

He was holding together on hate, barely healed scar tissue, fear, pain, rage, and enough raw Force to drop a Rancor.

The third time Rey felt Kylo fight, it was more than a year later, and she was ghosting along in the back of his head, feeling his joy of combat, the pure, exhilarating pleasure of doing the thing he was made for. His dark finally used for something _good._

The fourth time, they were again on the same side, though she wasn't paying much attention to his fight, because all of her secrets and lies were crashing to the ground around them as a massive turtle tried to bite her head off.

One more time, burning off fear. Fear that had nowhere to go, and no good way to combat it, nothing to be done except, slow, boring, niggly things that would take time and effort, and no matter how uncomfortable it would be, most of it would have to be outside of their direct control. Training blade versus training blade, the strike and crack of plexiplast soothing away the primal need to run away from, or kill, anything that spikes a fear response.

Now… Now they're in his training gym, and she's got just a basic staff, and he's got his training blade, and this is…

Fun…

And… Rey's dodging and blocking, and watching this huge, sleek, powerful force in front, and behind, and beside her, and…

She realizes she's never seen him fight, not really, not as he is now, properly fed and rested, _healthy_ , using his Force and force because he enjoys it. Not feeding his body with hate and rage. No edge of fear. He's still not elegant or graceful, at least, not on any level beyond the grace of something _extremely_ dangerous moving _very_ fast. If he's graceful, it's the grace of an avalanche. Of a sand dune slide, something that's going to overpower and obliterate anything that gets in its way.

He's beautiful in that same way. The glint of steel before it penetrates skin, or the flash of a blaster in a dark room. The beauty of violence, of pain, of death, all condensed down, focused, and wielded with pinpoint accuracy.

She gets her staff up in time to block the latest hit, and he's grinning at her, really enjoying this, and she is, too. The backhand that gets her under her elbow she wasn't expecting, and can't block, because her weapon is two handed and she's using both of her hands to keep his training saber from crashing into her shoulder, but he can use his saber one handed.

She's on the ground, looking up at him, and he's smirking some, very pleased with himself.

"You're really good at this," she says, hopping back up.

"I bloody well better be." He glances at the training droids standing along the far wall. "If I can't read a fight now, I've been wasting my time."

That gets a small laugh from her. "Uh huh. Toss me a saber. Let's see what happens when I don't need both hands to hold the weapon."

His smile lights his eyes and a training saber, smaller and lighter than his, floats over to her. "As you wish."

* * *

It's 'Verse hell.

Or maybe heaven.

It'd be heaven if this weren't his boss and his boss's wife.

It's two, _beautiful_ people, not wearing a lot of clothing, doing heavy strenuous things, with each other.

Who are clearly attracted to each other.

Who are clearly showing off for each other.

Who clearly _like_ this.

And, Force, Ilona help! The banter. Kylo's got Rey's hands pinned in one of his hands, behind her back, his thigh between her legs, his lips by her ear, saying, voice low and easy, "You like this, don't you?"

And Jon almost whimpers because holy fuck he _does._

But he _shouldn't._

Like any First Order officer, Jon Frakes _can_ fight. Can't get your first stripe if you aren't ranked in hand-to-hand, blaster, and at least one other martial weapon. (Sniper rifle in his case. He wasn't about to risk his hands with any combat training for a second longer than was absolutely necessary.)

Unlike many of them, he doesn't _usually_ enjoy it. He's actually not a fan of exercise at all. His metabolism keeps him slim, and he spends the exact minimum amount of time in the gym to keep himself at 14% body fat, and not a second more.

Likewise, he isn't the kind of person who finds fighting erotic, either.

Normally.

He watched Kylo fight with the training droids, and he certainly enjoyed the scenery, but not to the level of his current state where bits of his anatomy are sending him some rather urgent requests along the lines of 'get me out of these pants and over there with them!'

This has never been Jon's thing. Okay, sure, he'll tease Poe a little bit with some comments about maybe some spanking, but… That's mostly just to get a rise out of Poe. He gets adorably flustered at that, and… Well, that's for wank fodder bank. That's not real life, or his real erotic desires or, his real, now, standing (or at least trying, his current position, and the crease of his trouser leg is mitigating that to some degree) tall and proud shaft.

So, the fact that he's _enjoying_ what is supposed to be him watching Kylo and Rey fight so he can see how she moves and thus design armor for her is _surprising_ to him.

Until Rey pins Kylo, and he's flat on his back, her knees on his shoulders, her feet on his hips, pants tight across his body, and…

Oh…

Jon rolls his eyes. Bloody Force users emoting all over the place.

He's not enjoying this, not beyond his usual level of pretty people doing heavy, sweaty things making gasping and grunting noises while teasing each other about sex. (Which he doesn't exactly _mind,_ but it's not the sort of stuff he's got on his smut drive for when he's feeling randy and wants something to watch to go along with his wank _._ )

 _Kylo's_ enjoying this, and… Rey, too, likely, and he's getting it secondhand, because they're not trying to keep their own feelings in their own heads.

He rolls his eyes again. And notices that there are a few movements on both of their parts that don't exactly look like grappling, combat, or wrestling, and, for that matter, Rey's knees are no longer on Kylo's shoulders, and that did not sound like a combat grunt at all from him when she settled on his lap, and at this point he's just about got a view of his brain his eyes are rolling so far back.

And he's also got a _situation_ where it appears to be clear that neither of them are aware of the fact he's still in the room, and if he just sits here quietly, he's likely going to get to see a lot more of Rey than he ever has before, and… Again, it's not that he _minds_ but… When they notice he is here, things are going to get sticky, and not in a good way.

(Though there is a tiny, little voice in the back of his head that almost, sort of, wants to just sit here quietly and watch… After all, he doesn't mind the view, _at all_. He tells it to shut up.)

He sighs, deeply, clears his throat, and then says, "I'm still in the room, you know?"

* * *

"I'm still in the room, you know?"

Rey feels the blush burn from her ears to her stomach. She did not, in fact, still know that. Between the fight, and Kylo, and Kylo fighting, and shit… _Kylo…_ she'd forgotten that Jon was in the room. She makes what Kylo will later refer to as an adorable squeaking noise, before burying her head in her hands.

Kylo meanwhile is _laughing._ He's laying on his back, hands on her hips, shoulders shaking, loud, happy laughs just pouring out of him, before he says, "So, uh… that wasn't what you meant by a fight demonstration, then?"

Jon walks over to them, hands very intentionally in his pockets, looking down at them, and Rey tries to roll off Kylo, but he won't let go of her. After all, if this is bothering Jon, the view he's going to get if Rey suddenly goes rolling off of Kylo's lap is _not_ going to make the situation any better, so there's nowhere for her to go but on him.

Jon sighs, long and loud. "Take pity on your poor, lonely, horny friend, who, unlike the two of you, is not going to get tuffed in the next hour, and keep your emotions to yourself. I'm stiff just being near you two, because it's bleeding off of both of you, so, _please,_ unless you're going to invite me to play, too, rein it in."

Rey's about to combust from the heat of her blush. And Kylo's vibrating from head to toe because he's trying not to laugh out loud.

"Noted," he says, and then, "And… dismissed?"

"Finally!"

And Jon heads off.

* * *

When Jon leaves, Rey looks at Kylo and says, "You enjoyed that too much."

He grins up at her. "In that we're both still dressed, I'd say we haven't enjoyed this nearly enough, yet."

"Kylo…"

He's still grinning up at her, "Rey…" He elongates the sound.

"We're married. I wear a ring you gave me every single day. I go by your name. I am your _Queen._ Every newsie in the galaxy is currently running footage of the two of us being… us. You do not need to show off the fact that we're having sex, too. Trust me, they, especially Jon, _know._ "

He pouts a little, playfully, and flips them so he's on top of her. "But that's the best part."

She rolls her eyes, but with him above her, looking down, a grin in his eyes and on his lips, she can feel it. It is _the best part_. And not for the reason she was thinking. For most of his life, he was never allowed to want or enjoy or need anything. Certainly not anything wholesome and pleasurable, and right now… If he could, he probably would have sex with her on the table in his office in front of a million viewers because he wants _everyone_ to see and feel and know that he does _finally_ get to enjoy this.

That he _won._ Pleasure and love and joy and contentment, which for him all wrap up in the very tidy package that is sex with her, are all his now. His and hers and they get to share them, and…

And every time he pats her tush in public, every kiss, every moment like this, every sigh and thrust, kiss and groan, is him standing tall, fingers extended in the rudest gesture he'd ever imagine, at every single one of the people who tried to strip anything even remotely approaching a functional life away from him.

And he _loves_ it.

Rey kisses him, soft and sweet. "How about, instead of torturing Jon, we go out tonight, in public, and I'll wear a pretty dress, and you'll hold my hand."

He lowers himself further, kissing her deeply. "And how about, under that dress, you're wet with my spurt, and when we get back to our rooms, I'll lick it off you and get you all wet again."

"You really like fighting me, don't you?"

He rocks his hips against hers. Both of them can feel the hard proof of it. "Only reason I wasn't hard the whole time is because I did know Jon was still in the room. You," he kisses her again, rubbing his body along hers, "are the sexiest woman alive," more kisses, as he nibbles down her jaw and throat, "and when you're hot, and flushed, endorphins flowing," his lips find her breast, kissing over her training top, and the conversation switches to inside his head, " _moving fast, dangerous,_ " he worms his fingers under the training top, rauching it up, so his lips can find skin, _and I know you're mine. That you chose me. That you give me all of yourself._ He's sucking on her nipple, stroking the other one with his fingers, and gently rocking his shaft against her hip. _That gets me hot. I can feel the fight, and the passion, and you, and your body moving and shifting, and_ he hisses as she gets a hand down his trousers, and cups him, _and it's all fucking, all sex, you and me and this and_ he gasps against her breast because she's added a little twist to what she's doing to his shaft _and fuck!_

He's sitting up, pulling her up with him, yanking off her training top as she shimmies his training pants down far enough to get his shaft out.

He's peeling her trousers off, and she's pushing him back down on the floor, sinking onto him, both of them hissing at the feel of it.

His thumb finds her pearl, and she's bouncing, hard and fast, not looking to take a long time. This, like the fight, is too intense and present and needy for slow and relaxed.

This is about speed and motion and pushing muscles to their limits and barreling over the edge in a glowing burst of lust and love and life.

He's staring up at her, watching her bounce, her hair and breasts and token all jiggling with each thrust, and she can feel the beauty and awe and pleasure just arcing off of him.

 _I love you. I love you. I love you._

It's a mantra, thought on repeat, punctuating each thrust and jiggle.

 _Love love love love_

His head is thrown back, eyes wide, watching. Her hands are on his chest, giving her extra balance and leverage. And both of them are blazing, hot of temperature and temperament, and need. Aching, sweltering _need_ pouring through bodies moving fast fast fast

And…

It bursts over both of them, blazing supernova bright and pulsing quasar throbs as it eases away.

After, Rey's laying against him, and says, "So, that's one more room you can't go in without remembering us having sex in it."

He sniggers, a very relaxed, tired, and amused sound. "We're going to have to up our pace to at least five times a day. There's something like a million rooms on the _Supremacy_ alone."

"We're not fucking in other people's private chambers."

"That wasn't counting private chambers." He gently kisses her forehead as his fingers ghost over her back. After a minute of quite cuddling, he says, "I'm not sure I can do five times a day. Not most days."

She giggles a bit.

He sounds contemplative as he says, "Maybe if we didn't see each other for a few days. Or didn't have sex for a few days for some reason other than me catching the plague… But…" He doesn't say it, but he does flood her with his sensation of contentment and comfort, of how much he adores their life together, and how it makes him bone, soul, and yes, shaft-deep happy. "Can't imagine voluntarily being away for a few days."

She kisses his shoulder. "I don't need five times a day. Or every room on your ship."

"Don't want to test your limits?" It's clear he's just playing with her right now.

"Five times a day sounds like chafing, not fun."

He sniggers at that.

* * *

It's later. Well later. Kylo's back at his reports, and Rey's on Lirium with the kids, looking over the first full map of Achc-To, figuring out which parts are most likely to work for them, when a thought goes wandering through her mind.

 _Kylo?_

He's distracted by the report he's reading, and there's a few beats before he thinks back, _Rey?_

 _Uh… Do we need to… apologize, or something, to Jon? You know… That… 'poor horny friend'… And 'invite me to join in' comment…_

Kylo sits in his office and blinks. Because it's one thing to show off he has a sex life, in a somewhat less than perfectly subtle sort of way, and it's likely a whole other thing to dump a metric ton of lust on one of his friends who didn't exactly sign up for that.

 _Shit. I… don't know._

 _Yeah. Me, to._

They're both quiet. _Can you ask Rose if that's the sort of thing you apologize for, or just shut up about?_

Rose is a few meters away, going over a one thousand by one thousand kilometer chunk of the map, checking off islands that are completely not going to work for them.

She can kind of imagine asking.

And she can imagine the answer, too.

 _I think she'd tell me that it depends on the person, and if they're insulted or not._

Kylo thinks about that, and about how Jon felt to him. _I don't think he was insulted._

 _Yeah, but he wasn't comfortable, either, was he?_

Kylo looks at his report. He swivels in his chair and looks at the stars streaming past. _Would you mind if I had dinner with him?_

 _Not at all._

* * *

 _You have some time?_ Kylo thinks to Jon.

Jon sits back a bit from his drawing board and the preliminary sketches of Rey's armor and thinks back. _Sure._

And a second later, Kylo's in his rooms.

Jon raises an eyebrow at him, and says, "What if I'd been in my office?"

"Then it would haven taken me longer to get to you." He steps over and sees the start of Rey's armor. "Looks good."

"Thanks. Let's see how it comes out of production. Like you she moves a lot when she fights…" He bites his lip, glances around, and clear that Rey's not about to pop up, he says, "Did you… teach her how to fight? She's got a lot of your moves."

Kylo rolls his eyes a bit, and leans against the wall. "Not exactly. The first time we met, I was trying to get information out of her head, and it… didn't exactly go as planned"

"You didn't get it?"

"Oh, I got a lot, not exactly what I was looking for, and… she also got all of my stuff, so… She got fifteen years of Jedi training, and eight years of training with Snoke, second hand."

"But you didn't get her language skills?"

Kylo shrugs. "Maybe if I ever tried to test that, we could see. I haven't."

"Ah." Jon looks up at him. It's clear he's thinking _This is nice, but you're here because…_

Kylo _doesn't_ blush. He just thinks that his cheeks would very much like to.

"So…" Jon leads. "Remember, I'm the one who doesn't read minds."

"Yeah. Uh… Today, earlier… Uh…" Kylo winces a bit. "That was inappropriate, wasn't it?"

Jon rolls his eyes. "Kylo…"

"Just… You were uncomfortable, and that wasn't good, so… Sorry."

Jon rolls his eyes harder. "Look…" But he doesn't seem to know what he was going to say after that, so he stops.

Kylo just keeps watching him.

Jon sighs a bit. "Thanks. Uh… There's a level of flirty playing that's generally okay with other people around, but…"

"Crossed the line by more than a few meters, yeah."

Jon shrugs again. "And there's… situational… allowances…"

"I'm not looking for a primer for correctly fooling around with my spouse when other people are present, Jon. I just… don't want to be a shaft to you, okay?"

That gets another sigh from Jon. "I… It's not that I was uncomfortable, just… I don't know… You two are a lot more intense when you get going than normal people, and… I've got pretty damn good mental control, but…"

"Stuck in a room with randy empaths/mindreaders is a lot less privacy than you'd like?" Kylo says.

Jon nods. "Look… Either invite me to play, too." He winces having said it, but pushes it away, and keeps going, "Or keep it in your own heads. Just seeing it is… Well, look, I have sex in public because I like the kick of it, so I _get it_ but… It's just what's in my own head, not… everyone else's…"

Kylo nods. "Ah." And he thinks…

Jon winces again, because he can tell Kylo's thinking about that stupid little sentence that keeps leaping out of his mouth when he'd rather preferred it didn't.

"Would you… want to play?"

Yep. Out of his mouth, and into Kylo's brain, and now…

He sighs again, gets up, crosses the room, and opens his cooler. "You want a drink?"

"I was thinking, if you weren't busy, we'd have dinner, so… Yes?"

Jon nods, opens up a new bottle of wine, and pours both of them a glass. Then he turns on his data pad, and orders supper for both of them. Then, giving the wineglass to Kylo, and nodding to his table, he says, "Food'll be here, soon."

Kylo nods, sitting at the table, letting him get around to answering his question in his own time.

And after a few sips, Jon does say, "Not really." He shrugs. "I mean…" He rolls his eyes again. "As pure sex, I'd likely enjoy it, and I'm sure you and Rey'd have a good time, too, so, just for fun… Yeah, sure. But…"

Kylo can feel the loneliness aching through his friend. "But you've got no shortage of sex on tap. Especially, just-for-fun sex."

Jon nods. "Yeah. It's…" Kylo can feel Jon's about to tell one hell of a lie, and Jon knows it, too, so he stops, and takes another sip, and then says, "Okay, that's shit. I miss the sex, too. A lot. But… It's not just, or even mostly the sex I miss. It's… the affection and mattering and… And it's the same thing with Unthar and Amilie. I like fucking them. It's _fun._ It feels good, all over. But… I don't I want to be part of their love, or yours." Kylo just watches. Jon closes his eyes, and sighs, and tries again. "Okay, yes, that'd be nice, too. But it's not…"

"What you need?" Kylo says.

"Yeah. I don't need to be part of you and Rey, and I don't need to be part of Amilie and Unthar. It'd be… nice, but… I want _mine_ back." He clears his throat and takes another drink. "And… uh… that's not happening, so…" He drinks deeply. "Sometimes… It's nice to be near it, you know? Or… pretend, maybe. But, there's only so long you can pretend…"

Kylo shrugs. He doesn't, not really. But he can certainly empathize. Right now, he's steeping in the sore, throbbing ache in Jon's heart.

"It's been thirty months, eleven days, and…" Jon thinks, checks the chrono, and then says, "three hours. More or less. And it's better. I'm not talking to my blaster any more. Or even thinking about it. And most days I don't expect him to be here when I open the door." Kylo stares at him. "Some." He keeps looking. "I don't expect. That second of, 'Where the hell are you,' doesn't happen any more." He smiles. It's a weak, sad gesture. "I still hope sometimes. More than I should."

Jon taps the rim of his glass. "Two a day. That's my limit. Unless I'm going out and having fun. And… most of the time, I manage to stick to that. I haven't had any stupid sex since the Last Night Party. Granted, I haven't been swimming in opportunities, either. Part of it's intentional, keeping myself busy." He glares, but it's not angry, at Kylo. "It's easier not to make stupid decisions when you aren't swimming in free-time." Kylo shrugs at that, and makes a mental note to keep Jon nearby enough so that, when they are on 'off-time' he's still not swimming in opportunities for stupid sex. "Part of it's making 'better' choices, I suppose." He shrugs. "A work in progress, I guess."

Kylo nods at that, not sure what comfort to offer, or how. He takes a sip of his wine, and tries to think through it. Tries to pull out of the ache that's flowing from Jon through him, tries to see it from the outside.

What, right here, right now, does active, attached _love_ look like? How can he use his dark to help Jon?

He doesn't feel certain, but… It likely won't hurt.

He scoots a little closer, and slowly and tentatively puts his arms around Jon, giving him the space to retreats if he wants to.

Jon doesn't retreat, but he doesn't nestle in close, either. Granted, Kylo's a little fuzzy on how platonic friends hug, but… He can feel the memory of his dad, and how he'd play things by ear and luck. Well, he may have tossed the name, but he's still a Solo, so he might as well wing this. He scoots a little closer and gets a better hold on Jon.

"No one touched me, before Rey, not with any sort of genuine affection, for more than a decade." He kisses Jon's forehead. "I think it helps. I know it helps me. And I get the sense it's been a long time since someone held you with love."

"Not that long. Unthar does genuinely like me, and I make sure to see him at least every few months," Jon says. But unlike most of the times Kylo's touched him, he does relax into Kylo's embrace, and lets himself be cuddled. "It's been longer than I like, though."

Kylo nods, and keeps holding him. He closes his eyes and lets himself feel Jon. The Jon beyond the flesh and blood in his arms. "When we were new, still learning each other, I can remember Rey just touching me, sort of like this, feeling who I was," his eyes are still closed as he says this, his mind zipping along through the currents, eddies, and whorls of Jon's energy. "And she didn't say anything, but she found the knots, and the snarls, and the slow, hurt, sluggish places. The ones that hurt so much they petrified, so they couldn't hurt so bad." None of the hard, dense, cold and dark places on Jon are physical. There's no sense of badly healed bones, or scar tissue so entrenched it calcified. But there are huge, aching, hot/cold balls of loss in his psyche. Kylo doesn't poke them, though, like Rey was with him, he is a bit tempted to try.

"I can feel what you're doing. It's… weird."

"Just… seeing the you under the you."

Jon nods. "Hurt places." He pauses, feels what Kylo's doing. "I don't… think of them like this. They just… are. Kind of weird to… It's like looking at myself from outside of myself."

"Yeah." It should be a non sequitur, but Jon follows along. "I move differently now. Compared to the last time you saw me fight. A lot of my hurt places were physical, and… A few months back, a lot of them released."

"You do." He'd noticed that. Kylo's fight got a lot 'free-er' for lack of a better word. More fluid. If he wasn't read in on the current state of the Order's expenses, he'd be tempted to redesign Kylo's armor, too. (As it is, he will re-design, but he won't upgrade until the current armor is damanged and needs to be replaced.)

Kylo lets his mind brush up against the biggest of the snarls in Jon's energy. "Scars keep us together. When you get hurt, you need stability to keep the body together, let it heal... Because there isn't enough strength to do it, rigidity takes over. Muscles get stiff, scars form, your body protects itself."

"Hearts do, too."

"Yeah." Again, he just lets his mind brush Jon's scars. "It's… do you know what a nettle looks like?"

"Nope."

Kylo brings the image to mind, the swollen bulb of prickly green, and then shades it black and gray. He shares that with Jon. "That's what it feels/looks like to me."

Jon just nods. "How'd it… you… release?"

Kylo sighs at that. "A combination of things. Help from Rey. Being willing to let it release. It wasn't going to work if I fought her on it. I think my body finally got the message I didn't need those scars any more."

Jon pulls back a little to look at his face.

Kylo rolls his eyes a bit, rucks up his shirt, and puts Jon's hand on his abdomen, near his hip bone, on the straight surgical scar from where they 'fixed up' and closed the hole Chewie made in his side. "Huge mess there. You can't get shot in the side with a bowcaster and not end up with problems. You can feel it now, underneath." He stops, and feels a little silly. "Actually, you can't feel it. It's all smoothed out." He moves Jon's hand a bit lower, to his hip. "Broke that hip, and it never quite worked right, after. The joint went rigid and stiff. That's why I walked the way I did. Broken knee and ankle didn't help, either." He raises and lowers his leg. "Last year, it would have ground and clicked if I did that. Nice and smooth now."

They're both quiet.

"My body… mind… needed to feel safe before it could let it go. Couldn't drop the armor until I knew I was out of the fight. I think that's… the heart of it." He doesn't think it, but they both know, on a lot of levels, Rey makes him feel safe.

Jon's head is against Kylo's shoulder. "How do I feel safe from this?"

Kylo kisses his forehead again. "I have no idea." Though he thinks Jon letting himself be held and comforted is a good thing.

Jon nods at that, and the door to his room chimes. He untwines from Kylo, and opens it. A small delivery droid scoots in. He presses his hand to the scanner. It reads his prints, and the delivery hatch opens, allowing him access to dinner.

He takes out the plates, and the droid beeps at him, before scooting back out the door.

Kylo sniffs. He looks confused. "What'd you get?"

"My idea of comfort food. Tasha's husband, Brent, he'd make a version of this when I was over at their place, feeling out of sorts." He puts a plate in front of Kylo, who clearly does not know what he's looking at.

"Lamb stew. We don't often have it available here. And it's not Brent's. But… It's close, enough." He's about to turn around and grab the salt and pepper, but Kylo can feel his next move, and just hovers them over. "For all you say about that not being terribly useful…"

Kylo smirks a bit. "Yeah, well… There's the things we say because it makes other people feel better, and the things that are true. It's really nice when you don't want to get out of bed to get your morning coffee."

Jon snerks a little at that. "New meaning to the idea, 'breakfast in bed.'"

Kylo knows Jon's done a lot of saying things to make people feel better over the last few years. And he's got the sense that a lot of other serious stuff is just… not needed right now. "What's Brent like? You've mentioned him a few times…"

Jon smiles a little, digging into his stew. He thinks for a bit, looking for a way to describe his oldest brother-in-law/step-dad.

"He's… I mean, I like him. But, I would. He's always been decent to me, even though I was this little kid who kept annoyingly tagging along on dates with my sister when he first came courting. I don't remember it very well, but apparently Mum had told me to keep an eye on them, so I _kept an eye._ "

"He wasn't appalled at a…"

"Two-year-old spy? Apparently not. Granted, it's likely I didn't know much of what I was seeing, so there were probably a lot of ways to fool me."

Kylo smirks at that.

"And I think it was also a way for Mum to see if Brent was serious about being part of the family. If he was decent to me, he'd likely be a good man for my sister, and good to their kids as well, so…"

"And…"

"Yeah, he's a good guy. They've got three of their own kids now. Arabelle, my oldest niece, is only five years younger than I am."

Kylo chuckles and shakes his head at that.

Jon takes another bite. "Really not his recipe. Granted, we probably can't or don't get half the ingredients here. And this probably isn't really lamb…"

It tastes fine to Kylo. Meaty, savory, rich. He'd prefer more veg and less meat, because, as far as he can tell, the point of stew is to make meat mushy, but that's neither here nor there. The biscuits taste good dipped in the liquid.

Jon's still thinking about how to describe Brent. "Okay. I've talked about how thrilled my family was that I was marrying a man?"

Kylo nods. And if he hasn't explicitly mentioned it, he's more than got the idea.

"Brent offered to stand up for me at our wedding."

Kylo blinks at that. "I… Don't understand that reference."

"Have you never been to a wedding?"

"I caught the tail end of Finn and Rose's, mostly just enough to see laughing, and Poe and Rey dancing a bit. The only other one, I was eight, and we were far enough back I could really only see my Uncle Chewie."

Jon's amused by that. "Okay, in a lot of traditions, weddings start with the spouses walking to some sort of central stage. They start off on their own sides, often, and come together in the middle."

"I can see the symbolism."

"Good. Now, usually, it's not just going to be you and your love up there. There'll be some sort of officiant or master of ceremonies. And there'll usually be readings and vows and speeches and… Stuff."

Kylo rolls his eyes.

Jon commiserates. "Yeah, that part is often boring as all get out. But in a lot of cultures, you're not really married unless you've made everyone you've ever cared about wish they could shoot themselves in the head rather than listen to another minute of blathering about love and romance."

"So, you're saying Rey and I should be able to clock this thing in at less than three minutes?"

"Preferably."

Kylo does laugh at that, and takes a sip.

"Sometimes, depending on how complicated the contract is, they'll read the contract out, and then sign it. Sometimes, you just say your vows to each other. I was at one where there was an entire interpretive dance section that took half an hour and involved twenty-five dancers."

"Should I be impressed or horrified?"

Jon shrugs. "I thought it was impressive. Certainly, wasn't boring, but it seemed weird in a wedding."

Kylo inclines his head, and Jon takes another bite.

"Anyway, in a lot of… let's call them 'Imperial/Old Republic Standard' weddings, it's not really a wedding unless there are at least two witnesses, in addition to the person who's doing the wedding, and the spouses."

Kylo nods at that. "And that's where stands up with you, goes?"

"Yep. You invite, usually, your closest friend or friends, and they stand up with you, sign the contract, and often give some sort of speech at the party after."

Kylo blinks. "Oh. Uh…" He smirks. "I… Dad was nervous at Lando's wedding, and we were running late, and he was upset by that, and… He and Chewie were standing up with Lando. He was nervous about the speech."

Jon nods along. "That's the general idea."

Kylo looks away from his supper to Jon. "Will you…"

Jon rolls his eyes a bit, and gives Kylo a shove. "I've got my suit designed and already have the rough draft of the formal speech done."

Kylo grins at him.

"I don't know about your private thing, but for the formal one, I was hoping we'd get Kinear up there with us, too. Probably Schiff. If you've got friends I don't know about, now's the time."

"Poe…" Kylo leads, wondering why Jon didn't mention him.

Jon glances away from his supper to Kylo. "Usually, weddings have someone, who's a member of your faith, or politically important, or…"

"The master of ceremony… Officiant… Right?"

"And unless I'm sorely misunderstanding where Finn and Rose and Chewie fit into all of this, Poe's the only other adult Maji, no?" Jon asks.

Kylo thinks about that, too. And about the image they're working for, of Poe, Master of the Maji, goes in, spreads the good word, steals a few hundred thousand people… Stuff like that…

"I guess I need to talk to Rey, and him."

"That's usually how that works."

They keep eating for a few more moments. Quiet and content with each other. Then Jon remembers part of what he was hoping to talk to Kylo and Rey about either during or shortly after sparring.

"So, in addition to an embassy here, one of the members of the New Alderaan delegation thought it would be interesting to explore a more explicitly _Order-_ type of arrangement."

Kylo nods. "Right, my backdoor man—"

Jon snerks.

Kylo raises a brow. He knows it's a sex joke. That's clear from the snerk. He doesn't know exactly what sort of sex-joke it is, because Jon's just being amused at the idea of it, and not focusing on the specifics.

Jon waves it away. "Yes, I know I opened that one up referring to what I was doing as being a backdoor channel, but… Just, in generally, don't refer to me as your backdoor man, unless you want a very… unlikely… image about our relationship going around." Jon's brain fills in the images that go with that statement, and Kylo nods.

"Ah… So… Uh… My unofficial diplomatic channel…"

"Better."

"What's an _Order-_ type of arrangement."

"So, of course, Alderaan is _peaceful._ So, it doesn't have its own military forces, at least, not officially. I'm sure they've got something hiding in the background. Anyway, with the New Republic being less than… uh… wildly effective at policing it's current territory, they're seeing a lot more in the way of piracy."

Kylo nods. "That's part of why we monitor the border with the Rim in our territory. Keep the less-well marked spaces clear."

"Exactly. Now, part of how Alderaan stays Alderaan, meaning able to pay for all the spiffy stuff they like to do, is that they make extremely-expensive, tailored-to-fit-your-biome plants. But, if those plants don't get where they're going, they don't get paid."

"And they'd like some… I'd imagine non-Order branded—" Jon's nodding. "security to help them get to where they're going?"

"Exactly. And we likely don't want to stick our brand on it, at least right now, because The New Republic does have shoot on sight orders for any of what's left of their military if they see one of our ships."

Kylo digests that idea while he eats another bite of supper. "I don't see why we couldn't do that. We sell security, and if it's got our symbol on it, it makes things less secure, then we'd prefer not to have our mark on it."

"Maybe stick the branding on the _insides_ of the ships?" Jon offers.

Kylo thinks about that. "Does it matter?"

"I'm thinking through that. Everyone who sees people with our marks on them gets a living advertisement for the Order and why we're worth joining or backing…"

"Which is good."

"But it also means that if someone decides to board that secure ship…"

And Kylo doesn't need it spelled out further than that. "Would they do that?"

"For Alderaan?" Jon shrugs. "Probably not. At least not anything from the official Republic military or police. But if we offer this to Alderaan, others are likely to think that we may be offering something of value, too…"

"And some of those others might be looking for security against the New Republic," Kylo says.

"You know, I hadn't thought that far ahead, but… Especially, if they start cracking down on traffic in certain goods that we allow… I could see people looking for security, and that's a situation where it would likely be to our benefit if they weren't Order branded, unless we are looking to get a war going." Jon gives him a curious look. He sits on the thought for a few heartbeats, though, and Kylo lets him. Finally, Jon says, "Rey's not here. Poe's not here. It's just us… Just… The Order. We could probably, if we strike now, or organize a situation to make them strike at us, take what's left of the New Republic out."

Kylo sighs. "Is that you talking, or Kinear?"

"Does it matter? It's a question that I'm willing to ask. And if even I've come up with it, it's certain a lot of the rest of your high command is contemplating it, too."

Kylo sighs again. "First, and for me, most important level; Rey'll leave me." And he knows that. Clear as the ice in his heart at this idea, if he orchestrates something to make the New Republic strike at them, so he can strike back, she'll leave. She loves him absolutely. She also will not stand by if he wants to set himself and the galaxy on fire. Jakku was his last free shot, and that's that. "So, absolutely, as long as I'm in charge, which, unless you feel really strongly about this," and both of them know he means, _unless you're willing to attempt to kill me over this one,_ and Jon's immediately shaking his head at that, "the time frame where that sort of strike is possible is out."

Jon nods. "And secondly?"

"What the fuck are we going to do with the chaos that'll pop up if we take the New Republic out? Even we use standard credits, backed by banks built on the legal system they uphold." He fiddles with his drink. "I can feel how you're thinking about it. Take them out now, and we don't have to worry about our biggest threat. We don't have to be constantly wondering if today's the day they get fed up enough to do something about us. We don't have to worry about if they're building up a lot faster than we think they are. And, on top of that, since it looks like the current plan is keep things going at our current status quo while I'm in charge, and then drop the heavy lifting on dealing with the New Republic on you—"

"You do know I've never said I actually wanted to be Master of the Order."

Kylo shrugs at that. "I didn't either. Not really. I just wanted to keep Rey alive. And then myself. After that everything else sort of fell into place."

"And there's no guarantee I could even win an election."

Kylo just stares at him.

Jon blinks. "Wait. You…"

"I promise, if you decide you want it, you will win the election."

"Uh… I thought…" Jon's looking really startled by that.

"My mother was a democrat, and a republican, as long as it got her what she was hoping to get. I have a feeling my own convictions along those lines are likely to be similarly shallow." He offers Jon a bit of a smile. "The more I think about it, the more… this voting thing… It's about making the people who don't want to go your way, go your way. I think the fact that we won't extend our laws to anyone who doesn't want to abide them will be more effective than democracy."

"But you want the… image of it?" Jon doesn't look confused so much as he looks like he's got the shape of an idea, but he's still getting the fine details of it.

"I think it'll make it easier to figure out what our people want, so we can move in that direction, but… Like Kinear said, you've got to be a system of men before you can be a system of laws, and… We're talking with the Alderaan people, and how much of their culture has enforced ideals in ways that laws can't, and… Like they said, you don't have to enforce no meat sales by making it illegal. They just had thousands of years of certain behaviors being outside of acceptable."

"You can't do that in ten years."

"I know. Which is why it's likely at least as long as I'm alive, and maybe the kids that come after us, that Masters run for election, and either they're picked from a collection of the right people, or we make sure the right ones win. At least until we've got the culture steeped into everyone."

Jon exhales a long breath at that.

Kylo chews for a moment. "You don't hate the idea, I can feel that. And you'd likely be better at it than I am."

Jon shrugs. "I don't love it, either."

Kylo's turn to shrug. "I might consider that a plus. It's probably easier to do a better job of it, if it's not your passion."

"How much of that is Ben talking about his Mom?"

Kylo shrugs. "Probably a lot. Maybe too much."

Jon nods. "You're thinking a lot more about her with dealing with all of the Alderaan stuff, aren't you?"

Kylo doesn't physically shrug that that, though Jon can sense he's feeling shruggish. "Hard to look at Heloise and not see His Royal Highness King Ben Solo of Alderaan."

"All the pretty braids in your hair."

Kylo smirks at that. "I'm sure King Ben is a lot prettier than I am. No broken bones. No scars. He's probably good at calligraphy and gardening, maybe he breeds champion Faviers or something, and spends a lot of time reading."

Jon laughs. "And likely has a marriage pact with Heloise, or some pretty princess from Naboo, and doesn't have any real Force powers, and… he's actually His Royal Highness Prince Ben, because his Mom is still alive and driving the Alderaanian government crazy. Yeah… The life that didn't happen."

"Yeah."

"Speaking of Mom… Everyone at my table heard me say she was dead, and then they looked very nervous for a moment, and promptly decided to not think or speak of it again. Granted, Thea did a very good job of distracting them, so…"

Jon nods. "You asking what I heard?"

"Yeah. Gossip?"

"Not a lot. Deciding not to touch that with a three-meter pole seemed to be the most common response. Ghosts tend to make people feel squirmy."

"Anyone think I was crazy?"

"Not who was willing to say, hint, or even think it loudly near me."

Kylo nods at that. "Of course, they all saw her on the recording, so that likely did a good job of disabusing them of the idea I'm off my head."

"Photographic evidence does tend to help. And, if it's a lie, it's a stupidly bizarre one to fake." Jon sips his drink. He's quiet for a moment, and then, "So, there really is… something… after?"

Kylo shrugs at that. "We were taught that no one is ever really gone, but…" He looks at Jon, knowing what and why he's asking. "Best I can tell, some people just aren't out there. They don't… come when I call, or interact, and my ghosts can't find them, either, so…"

Jon just stares at the home he shared with Lane, his eyes landing on their wedding picture, and the wave of tired, sad… anguish… Is clear.

He's just so lost. And Kylo's again thinking: What does love look like, right here, right now? Active, attached, motivating and changing love? What does Jon _need_ out of this moment, and how can Kylo give it to him?

He closes his eyes and feels. There's nothing out there, and it was a long shot, anyway. Kylo puts his hand on Jon's shoulder. "All the ones I see are… offering me motivation/plans/help getting to where I need to go. Their… jobs… for lack of a better word, aren't done." He scoots closer again, cuddling in against Jon. He keeps his mind, his Force, soft and gentle, and he holds Jon's self, his body, his own light, and his Force, with it. "Lightling. You and Rey. My lights. It's easy for you to get stuck. He loved you." He looks at the image of them. "I can see it just in that photograph. I can feel the echos of it in you, and in here. This _home_ feels love." He squeezes Jon a little tighter, pulling him to here, and now. "Everything you needed from him, except forever, he gave you.

"My guess is, he's not out there, because you and he are done. You want him, but you don't need him, not anymore. And him back here… He'd just… tie you even tighter to the past, which is where you don't need to be." He hugs him a little tighter, again, putting his own love into his voice. "It's also the only place you _can't_ be. It's _gone,_ Jon."

Jon rolls his eyes. "Great."

Kylo shrugs again. "Well, you know my famous, 'the Force is an ass,' line. Did you ever get the idea I was kidding?"

"I really didn't, but…"

Kylo nods. "Yeah. All the problems in the galaxy, and there's supposed to be this overwhelming power that guides and pulls and molds and… We're left with _this._ " He hovers the salt shaker, demonstrating exactly how little that is in the wider scheme of things.

Jon nods at that, too.

"Would you trade it. Give up now to go back?"

Jon shrugs at that, too. "Not right now, and not right this second, but tomorrow the answer will be different, and yesterday it was, and…" He turns and lets himself nestle into Kylo's arms, and Kylo strokes his hair gently.

"I wanted to go back to Luke's, even though he tried to cut my head off, for the first year. Every day. Every hour. He tried to kill me. I burned his school to the ground. My friends… we killed everyone at the school who didn't join us, and every single day I wished I could change or shift or… Rewind time."

"What changed?"

Kylo shrugs at that, too. "I mostly stopped wanting anything. Just accepted I was going to hurt all the time, and that was that."

"Oh."

"Yeah. A lot of my story isn't exactly happy."

"You broke the rut, though?"

"Eventually, I got to the point where not breaking it hurt more than breaking it, so, yeah, I did. How bad does this hurt?"

"I'm not loving it."

"How bad does breaking it hurt?"

Jon makes a little pfth sound. "I don't know how."

Kylo pulls back a little, and then stares at him. "I doubt that. Very much. I do believe that the fear of what happens if you break out is so great that it's keeping you walled off from breaking out."

"I come back to an empty apartment every evening. I have sex with strangers because they look a little like my husband. I measure out how much alcohol I can have each day, because if I don't, I drink myself stupid. What's left to lose?"

Kylo strokes his face. "Everything the first run through didn't kill."

He feels Jon crumple a bit at that. "Yeah."

"Having to do it again."

"Fuck," he just mutters it.

"Another good man, and another life, and another love, and everything about yourself that you cherish, and everything about him, and…" He holds Jon's face. "You glow. You know that?"

Jon rolls his eyes and then aims a skeptical expression at Kylo.

Kylo nods, and again presses his lips to Jon's forehead. He pulls back a moment later. "You do. It's dim right now, because you're comfortable enough to allow yourself to be sad, but… when you're happy or interested… It's still there. All that life and affection and passion and… It makes sense to be afraid when you've got a lot to lose.

"The only way I broke out of my rut was standing there knowing that if I didn't do it, I was going to have to literally cut Rey's head off. That's what finally shoved me out, and as you know I'm not exactly a paragon of light. I don't tend to carve deep, inescapable ruts. I move in and out pretty easily. And getting out still hurt."

"Wonderful." Both of them sit there quietly for a long moment. Jon's not exactly thinking much. He's just… aware, of here and now and how much he doesn't want to change. Finally, he says, "The diplomacy office. It's got an apartment for me. And, unlike the rest of that floor, it's going to be done in the next six weeks."

Kylo can understand why that matters. "Are you going to move?"

"I really didn't intend to. I'm still pretty sure I won't, but… Maybe that's part of breaking free."

"Could be. I've heard significantly worse plans. Made a bunch of them, too."

That gets a smirk out of Jon. He shifts a bit so his back is flush to Kylo's chest. It takes him a little scooting around to feel comfortable. "Feels weird. Usually when people do this with me, they want to have sex."

Kylo shrugs a bit. This is warm and comfortable for him. It feels good. Like something he should be doing, but… There's no flush of heat to it. No erotic desire or mood. "Sorry. Not gonna happen."

"Yeah, I know."

Quiet, for a long moment.

"Would it be easier if I did?" Kylo asks.

Jon shrugs. "More familiar. I'd know… how to be."

"Just be you."

Jon snerks at that. "You is a series of scripts that you follow to keep interactions simple."

Kylo holds him a little tighter. He kisses the side of his head. "Bantha shit. Trust me, this is not a position you can lie to me in."

"Maybe, I just want to lie to me."

"Maybe you do, but… It doesn't get better that way."

Jon eyes his wine, but doesn't reach for it. "Better hurts. Worse hurts. Everything fucking hurts all the damn time."

Kylo snuggles Jon. "Yeah. I know."

"I… almost wish there was some sort of… Clear, bright, 'Do the Right Thing, Arsehole!' moment I could cling to. 'Don't Cut Rey's Head Off' looks like a really easy, clear motivation."

Kylo doesn't mention the long series of exceptionally bright 'Do the Right Thing, Asshole!' moments he went sprinting past, leaping into the wrong thing, and says, "Take your ring off, go call Poe, have a good time, and here's the trick, keep doing it. Don't go home after and feel like your heart's cut in half. Bring him home to this apartment, know in your heart Lane'd be beyond pleased by this, and just… enjoy each other." He hugs him a little tighter. "Do this… close, intimate… real… stuff with someone who wants to fuck you, who you want to fuck back, and then _enjoy it._ "

Jon winces.

"Yep. I was thinking that's how that'd go. I think he is, too. Which is part of why he's 'being your friend,' which I know annoys the shit out of you, but…"

Jon waves that away. "Yeah, great." He groans softly. Voice more a sub vocal vibration than a sound.

"Jon?"

"He would be, you know? Okay with Poe. Jealous as fuck, because Poe's here and he's not, but… He'd probably even like the bastard if he could get over the Resistance angle. At least well enough to shoot the shit over a drink or something."

Kylo chuckles at that. "He's stupidly charming, isn't he?"

Jon shakes his head a bit, but he's not disagreeing, not really. "I wonder sometimes, what he'd think of this. He wasn't exactly a First Order loyalist. He didn't go through the Hux method. He was _pissed_ when we found out about the Hosnian system. Not publicly, of course. Publicly, you pretended that just the thought of blowing a billion people out of the sky got you hard. But that night…" Jon just remembers Lane ranting about that. Part of why his command couldn't seek terms when the war ended was that they were part of the group that supported the Death Star. And, at least according to Lane, a lot of why the Empire lost the bloody war is that once you enact a genocide, you prove you're too dangerous to allow to survive, and anyone, and everyone would be gunning for them, soon.

Kylo nods along. "Mom always said getting ships and men and weapons was a _lot_ easier after Alderaan."

"Yeah. Once Alderaan blew, anyone in an Empire uniform was looking to get killed if they walked around openly anywhere that wasn't an Empire stronghold, and they were starting to get sniped in a lot of them, too."

"How'd he feel about the rest of the First Order?" Kylo asks.

"From his position, it wasn't much different than the Empire. Wasn't much different than a lot of militaries. I don't think he cared much." He shrugs at that. "Maybe, in Republican or Jedi families it's different, but… we didn't exactly _talk_ politics much. We knew what the job was, we did the job, and when it was done for the day, we had each other."

"Yeah, we never talked politics growing up with Luke. It was assumed we'd all be New Republicans, and other than a little bit about how the Jedi of old got too tightly entwined with the Old Republic, and became political tools instead of guardians and guides to the Force, it wasn't anything we paid attention to."

"He wasn't training you up to be the Knights of the New Republic?"

"He wasn't. Mom and M'Gll certainly wouldn't have minded moving in that direction. There's something to be said for having negotiators who can read and change minds."

Jon says, voice dry, "Yeah, I can see how that might be useful."

"Yeah, Mom could, too."

Jon sighs at that, and then scoots away from Kylo. Kylo keeps his hand resting on Jon's back. "I'm okay, Kylo."

Kylo doesn't move his hand.

"Enough," Jon says.

"Enough." And Kylo pulls away. "Hugs are always on offer, though."

Jon rolls his eyes and shakes his head. "You're a cuddle slut, aren't you?"

"I don't know what a slut is."

Jon rubs his forehead, shakes his head, and begins to work on filling in another chunk of the education Ben Solo should have had by the age of twelve. He's half-way through it when it occurs to him that the _mindreader_ is asking him for the definition of a word.

He stops mid-sentence, and Kylo just smirks at him.

Jon shoves his shoulder.

And they go back to eating.

* * *

Kylo finds Rey in the communal kitchen with the older kids. They're scattered about the tables, some sitting on chairs, some sitting on the tables, and in the middle of a conversation about one of the letters she'd gotten. "If this balance thing is real, does that mean evil has to exist?"

Critt's saying, "Well… we're talking about a balance between dark and light, right? Does it have to go further than that?" And he stops as Kylo just pops into the room, looks around for a moment, takes three steps, hoists himself onto the counter Rey's sitting on, and snuggles up next to Rey.

She strokes his hand, and leans into him, but doesn't acknowledge beyond that. "I think that's a good thought, Critt, keep going with it."

Critt gets up and begins to pace, letting his feet move so his brain can flow more easily. "Well… Evil is hurting people for kicks and giggles, right? And… You can do that dark, or you can do that light? Right? Like, those asshats that you kept running into, Cassie, they were light, right? All steady and conservative, and dispassionate?"

Cassie inclines her head. "Probably. I think… It always felt to me that they enjoyed making us hurt, but… That doesn't have to be dark, does it?"

"I don't think so," Rey replies…

Kylo lets that swirl around him. He's in a warm room with a collection of bright minds. Some bright meaning light, some bright meaning inquisitive, and all of them are interested in the conversation. He's holding his light, his love.

He doesn't add to the conversation; he just works on actively cherishing this. On _feeling_ it. Being here and present and in the moment with Rey. An hour later, when the kids break up, she turns in his embrace and says, "Good conversation with Jon?"

He holds her, his lips against her temple. "Yeah." He breathes her in, steeping in the feel of her in his arms, very much, right now, not taking this moment, this life, and this love, for granted.

"He okay?"

"Missing Lane."

Rey nods, and snuggles in closer to him. Both of them have too much empathy for that.


	63. Kylo's Day Out: I

5/19/2

"Our people and their people have been bouncing this back and forth since we made it clear that our security forces are for hire," Threepio says.

Kylo's nodding along. "So, this is just… wrapping things up?"

Since they've started offering services for sale, Kylo's noticed that not only does he generally avoid the hashing things out stage, but for the most part, everything works better if he does. The lawyers, negotiators, and whomever tend to prefer that he doesn't read every stage of every contract and add his own "suggestions" to the documents. Something about how, because he was involved, the settlement with the Polonians took 8 rounds, and if he'd kept out of it, they likely could have gotten that down to three. (He still thinks it was a 'useful learning experience.' His negotiators are under the impression that they took decades to learn this shit, so he doesn't _have_ to.)

So… Now, well. Here's Threepio, with an almost finished contract, and they're _talking_ about what's going to happen, tomorrow, and the day after, and as of this point, he has not only not lain eyes on the contract, but he more or less didn't know it was even on the horizon.

Which, of course, makes him want to be even _deeper_ involved, but… Finite time in the day. He does make sure to give himself at least twenty minutes a day to pick a contract at random and skim the damn thing to make sure his lawyers aren't stabbing him in the back, or taking the Order somewhere it's not meant to go. (So far, so good. Threepio just _sighs_ at him about that. If his eyes could roll, they would.)

"Not exactly, Master. We have a set of terms that are likely agreeable, that said, the Kresh have only rarely done business with humans, and don't generally enjoy trusting things like security to outsiders. Since we've been doing a good enough job with our part of the border on the Rim, and they're currently embroiled with several inter-and-intra-system wars, and would prefer to have their extreme borders secure, there's a good possibility they may pay us to take up the slack."

"May?" Kylo says.

"May. In the sense that, as of now, the contract is agreeable, with us and them, but they are wary of working with strangers. They'd like to meet you, get a sense of who you are, see how you mesh with their culture, and… as they put it, 'Feel him out.'"

"So… I just go to this thing, and… what, be friendly?"

Threepio nods to the datapad with the briefing notes and the particulars of the contract. That nod tells Kylo what's he's going to be doing for most of today. Reading. "I'm certain they'll want to talk security, border control, but yes, mostly they want to know if you, as a person, are someone they'll be comfortable doing business with. Their Primo is mostly retired from actively running their military and fighting, but for big battles, he'll join in the fray. They expect something similar from us."

"Did they seek us out because I fought on Qualee?"

"It certainly made them more interested in seeking us out."

Kylo smiles at that. "Just me? For the feeling out?"

"To begin with. They're a very hierarchical society, and tend to think that if the man in charge is an honorable person the rest will follow. That's why they think it's important to meet you, personally. That said, for the dinner portion of the event, Lady Rey and Grand Marshall Frakes will be joining you."

That makes sense to Kylo. "What about the Kinears?"

"Already booked for an evening with the B'Rinna, otherwise we'd have sent them, too."

Kylo nods to Threepio, and gets to reading.

* * *

"How could there possibly be this many of them this fast?" Poe asks Rey, as the two of them sit at the conference table in Kylo's office, sorting through the already thousands of letters to Rey about… everything. About half of them are just… fan mail. That's what Poe called them, which absolutely flatfooted Kylo and Rey. (And now he's wondering if he gets fan mail, too, and if C8 just… deals with it. He's just… a little too proud to actually _ask_ though.)

The other half, which they're working their way through, is "Tell me more about this Maji thing" letters.

"So, we just… respond?" Rey asks.

C8 nods to her. "Yes, Mistress. I have the program set so that each letter is recorded, and so are your responses. As you get to each new one, the responses to any previous questions will already be set. Then all you'll need to do is read, edit, and sign, and they'll be ready to. Eventually, the program will know how you think about basically any question that could come your way, and it will write your correspondence. All you'll need to do is sign off before it sends."

Rey doesn't wince at that, but… "It feels—"

Poe cuts her off, laying a hand on her arm. "It's you. Or me. Us, I guess. The Maji. We're writing the responses, we're just…" He looks at her inbox. "Shit, fifty more of them in just the amount of time it took me to do that. There's no way anyone can keep up with that. Just signing off on them personally is already more time than we really should be devoting to this."

Kylo looks up from his reports. "There's a reason I spot check, instead of going through everything personally."

Rey nods. She knows that, but… "Feels weird to do it this way."

Poe nods back at her. "Trust me, I get it. Leia didn't like this either."

That's got Kylo's attention. "Did she…"

Poe replies with, "Oh, she was just swimming in correspondence. And fan mail like you wouldn't believe. Her senate staff had three people who just wrote thank you notes for the nice letters people would send her. Think about that. The same kind of computers we're working with, and three people, who just replied to letters. And best I know, none of them ever saw an empty inbox."

Kylo and Rey groan at that.

Rey opens the first of the letters. It's nice, and apparently from someone who thought ideas of balance resonated. The questions are… not easy, per se, but… It's a place to start thinking about this as something beyond a 'just do it so it feels right' sort of thing they pass onto the kids.

"How do you know you're in balance?" Poe reads.

They look at each other.

"I suppose if I say, 'You just feel it,' that's not enough, is it?" Rey asks.

Poe shrugs. "But that's the answer, right. When you find the balance, things tend to fall into place. Maybe the outside world doesn't, but inside your head does?"

* * *

Kylo listens to the two of them batting that around for a while. He's not having an easy time letting that be background noise while he reads more about the Kress and where they want their security details.

Mostly because… while he thinks they have the right 'ideas,' he feels like the… packaging… for lack of a better term, is missing.

(There's a vague sense of Luke smirking behind him. It's almost strong enough for him to turn and check. His desire to _not_ see Luke keeps him looking ahead as he gets up and joins them at the table.)

He leans his hips against the table, and looks down at Rey and Poe. "Recording?"

"Sure. Gonna wow us Mr. Use-To-Be-A-Jedi?" Poe asks.

Kylo flashes a cocky smile. "Of course, in all things, the Force balances. It cannot, ever, be out of balance, because balance is its nature. It is our job, as sentients, to find our own internal balance, and though said balance will shift with time, nature, and our circumstances, it is always there. Finding it, and keeping on it, may be difficult, but your body and mind will help you on the journey toward it. You know, if you allow yourself, what you need to do to get closer to your balance, and the closer you get the easier it is to keep on it. So, the first moment, first question, of seeking your balance is to take the time to know yourself, not the who you should or want to be, but the who you are. Once you know that, assessing where you go next becomes easier. Once you know where you need to go, the next bit is just… doing it, and that's where the real challenges lie."

Poe and Rey stare at each other, both suddenly very aware of the idea of Master Ben Solo, in his tan and beige robes, and his holy books, and then Poe says, "So, one of you was formally trained in religious philosophy, huh?"

Rey nods. "Yup."

Kylo smiles, feeling very glad to add something useful to this idea, and then wanders back to his own work.

* * *

Jon's not, as best as Kylo remembers, on his schedule for this afternoon, which is why he's a little surprised when C8 announces him.

But, as he can feel, Rey and Poe aren't, so…

He doesn't recheck to schedule to see if he missed a chunk of it.

"Looks like a party," Jon says, bag in hand.

"Only if answering questions like, "The Jedi believed the best path for sentients was to serve the light. Why do you think that's wrong?" is your idea of a party," Rey replies while Poe just grins at him.

Jon smirks at that. "You know what, that's _not_ my idea of a party."

Poe laughs, mouths the words _Thank The Force,_ and nods to the bag. "Party tomorrow?"

"Ish. Rumor has it the Kress really know how to have a good time, but this isn't supposed to be that sort of a shindig." He nods to Kylo, and pats the bag. "Up you get. Time to get this one ready to go," he points to the door to Kylo and Rey's room. "Rey and I'll get our kits together later, but you've got to leave in four hours—"

And Kylo remembered _why_ he didn't bother to check his schedule too carefully, because if he did, he'd have to contemplate that, in order to get to this thing, he's got to leave at just a bit past what he'd normally consider suppertime.

Alone.

This is not, as it were, making his day, or night.

He follows Jon to his door, opens it, and then stands by his bed while Jon starts laying things out.

What he's laying out a lot like the blacks he's wearing right now. They've swapped out his dress trousers for combat ones, boots instead of shoes, and his heat protectant gloves are back.

"It's a martial culture, so every adult male has his own pet weapon," Jon's saying as he's nodding to this outfit. Which is when Kylo notices the real difference. The belt that goes with this jacket is designed to work with his saber.

Jon doesn't need to ask. Kylo pulls it to hand, feeling it zip through the air of his office and room to his palm. It's an odd sensation. First of all, it's his saber against his bare skin. He's not sure how long it's been since he touched it skin to metal, but… A long time.

Secondly… How long since he's touched it, period? He's certainly trained recently. And he's used the training blades and punched and kicked the living shit out of several of his bags and more droids. But… he clips it into his belt. Was the last time he picked it up, intending that he might have to use it? When Critt's parents left?

Could he have really gone almost… slightly more than… half a year without using it?

No. That's just not possible.

But the little niggly voice in his head thinks that it might be.

* * *

There are perks to this being a, as Threepio put it, 'Masculine-coded honor culture.'

And, in a second, he'll get to it. Right now, Rey's seeing him off. There's a bizarre performative feel to this. They're… doing it for the cameras, but… He holds her close, and she arches up on her tiptoes to kiss him. They'd do this, something like it, probably not nearly as dressed up, if there weren't any cameras.

There were stories, the ones he read as a small child, of warriors who went off with the kiss of his lady as a token of goodwill, and protection.

He rests his forehead against hers, and she squeezes his hand, the grasp of her fingers against his marriage band.

And then it's time to go.

And he, thank the Force and the Kress's ideals of proper honorable male behavior, gets to fly his own ship, by himself, without having to take twenty 'entourage' and a specialty luxury yacht.

Him coming, on his own, in a combat vessel, is _important_ here.

* * *

Once in hyperspeed, he has time to think. (And maybe nap.) (Probably meditate.) It's a ten-hour trip, so it's not like he's low on thinking time.

The _Supremacy_ is lumbering along behind him. It'll catch up eventually, and that's when Rey and Jon will join them.

His hands caress over the controls, designed to his specs. He settles in to just look at the _Silencer_. He didn't create her. (Or name her for that matter. He's never really thought of her by name, but he's pretty sure _Silencer_ isn't something he'd pick for himself.) He doesn't know the name of the engineers who designed her, but they took his suggestions seriously, and measured for him. He's too tall to fit easily into a traditional TIE cockpit. They're built for men who look more like Poe than him.

He strokes the armrests. He'd only flown her three times before everything went insane. He was supposed to still be testing her, making sure she was done properly. He wonders if the engineers who were waiting for his reports survived Starkiller. Probably not. Most of them didn't.

Unlike his saber, he knows, exactly, when the last time he slipped into his _Silencer_ was. The battle at Qualee.

And it feels significantly less odd that it's been months since he's flown himself anywhere, but the saber was always more personal than a ship. He built the saber himself. Like all… he almost thought Jedi, but… well he _was_ a Jedi when he met his kyber.

There were never tons of them. And after the Empire got done with Jeddah, they were even fewer and further between, but Luke had found four of them. Found, begged, borrowed, maybe 'stole' in the sense of… suggested _intensely_ that it would be a good plan for whomever had them to give them to him, them.

It was a milky-blue crystal, never the most stable thing. There were little veins of black calcite through it, not common for kyber, and that made the blade, even then, a bit on the tetchy side. It would flare unpredictably from time to time. But from the first second it landed in his palm, it was his.

It was blue the first time he turned it on.

And blue the first time he defended himself with it.

And it was blue while he fought M'Gll, and it stayed blue though most of the battle. Blue until a point, and he remembers it. There was a moment, like when he fought Rey, where their blades were locked, and he was using his weight to bear down on her, and… He had the balance. He knew how to do it. He could have just stomped her knee, shattered it, dropped her, taken her saber, and left it at that.

Even Jedi masters don't fight well on a broken knee, let alone without a blade.

He could have disabled her, and walked away with the rest of his Knights.

But he didn't. He leaned into her, hard, used his weight, his power, his strength to his advantage. In the end, Jedi fight technique, all seven forms, is all about upper body strength, and if you and your opponent are equally strong in the Force, then, eventually it'll come down to muscle.

And he had more of it.

And when his weight broke her, he cut her head off, and his kyber cracked. Before M'Gll finished vanishing, his saber was sputtering with flickering red streams of energy. The grip turned to slag seconds later as the heat became too much for it. He had to force himself to calm in order to wield his Force to turn it off, because he couldn't touch the glowing hot metal.

He left the grip. Left the Jedi. Left Luke buried in the ruins of his hopes.

He took his crystal, and his knights, and that was the end of the Jedi.

His hand drifts to the saber he hasn't even turned on in months, and he idly wonders if it's gotten more… stable.

Or if this is the symbol of his dark, his violence, his destruction.

And not him as a whole.

* * *

That's a thought to occupy a few hundred thousand klicks. The idea that he's more than his dark now. More than his destruction. That… it's his _tool_ now.

Not just him.

He's not sure how he feels about that.

* * *

For a combat vessel, and for him personally, the _Silencer_ is insanely comfortable.

For something he might want to attempt to sleep in, not so much.

Next time, they're getting the _Supremacy_ closer to… Right. They were schedule to pick up… stuff. That's part of why he's showing up in his own personal combat ship, and not in the _Supremacy_ itself.

After all, if the idea that he's a warrior is what's going to float the Kress' boat, having the _Supremacy_ show up should just about blast them out of the water.

He fiddles with that idea, and comes to the conclusion that they want to meet him _personally._ Because who he is _personally_ matters. And he doesn't _personally_ command the _Supremacy._ (It occurs to him that that's the sort of thing he probably should know. Whoever it is is under Schiff's command. But… he puts that on his ever-lengthening list of things to do and people to meet.)

He squirms a bit, tries to get his seat to lean back a bit, and maybe catch some sleep.

He tries that for five minutes before scrapping it and pulling himself into the meditations that used to bridge the gap between no sleep and no rest.

* * *

Kreh is blue. With bright, at least from atmo, orange-y streaks. Kylo's ship is beeping at him, letting him know they're out of hyperspeed and it would really appreciate it if he were to take over piloting.

He thinks he might have slept. Maybe. No dreams. But that's something he's used to, how he could meditate himself into a space that sort of looked like sleep, or very deep relaxation. He doesn't feel like he slept, though.

He blinks a few times, and takes control of the _Silencer,_ and begins to close on the planet.

Threepio had told him about Kreh, and… Right. He's heading to the main planet of a seventeen-planet system, with a unique gravitational pull that comes from being close to a second system that sends its extreme outlier planets through their main system's orbit.

He knows the Kress are on the Rim, and border the uncharted territory. In fact, they're actually Order neighbors. There's only about fifty-thousand klicks between where Order territory officially ends and Kress territory begins.

The nine core planets that make up this system are at peace with each other. The exterior six have been involved in some level of fighting, with each other and the six core planets, for the last three hundred years. The two XO planets that go swooping through their orbits every nine hundred and eleven years, and stick around for two hundred years, joined different factions among the six fighting planets, and, depending on the year, are allied with different ones among the fractious planets.

And, of course, they're on the Rim. And they're outside of the territory the Order controls, which means that anyone who thinks going _around_ Order territory is worth the detour, comes through them. And not all of them are… friendly.

Add to the fact that the different fractious planets use the border with the uncharted territories to move weapons, people, and goods…

Well, home world Kress has decided that, if their border were to be better controlled, they could focus more on their internal affairs.

And the Order is… well-situated to take that business over.

For a price.

(It took him a while to find the price. Somehow, it didn't make it onto any copy of the treaty he got. Once he pulled it out of Threepio's head, 500 billion credits for five years, he decided that maybe he might have been better off _not_ knowing that. Because, gazing on Kreh, that number in his head, he's starting to feel _nervous._ )

* * *

Closing in, Kylo can see the blue is oceans, and the orange streaks are… probably deserts of some sort, but he's not sure about that. For all he knows, the local vegetation may be orange. The main star is a purply-blue shade, and he's got no idea how that might effect plants.

He does know, because Threepio told him, that he might feel a little overdressed, because Kreh is _warm._ There was some discussion about tailoring his outfit to make it lighter, but… Kylo can control his body temperature if he wants to, so he didn't think they needed to send Jon scrambling about trying to figure out what a sleeveless, short-trousered formal uniform looked like.

"Order ship Silencer, welcome to Kreh!" comes over his comm after a moment. "This is Krellia landing station one, coordinates for landing are forthcoming."

It's an accent he's never heard before, but he understands what they're saying, so that's all that matters. "Krellia Landing Station One, this is Order TIE _Silencer,_ message received, awaiting coordinates."

And then he knows where his landing space is.

Time to do this.

* * *

The downside of the _Silencer,_ like any TIE, is that there's no particularly stately or elegant way to get out of one.

It's open the hatch and hop out.

Unlike, say, The New Alderaan delegation where the hatch opened and everyone strolled out, and it looked really impressive. This is Kylo flipping the release, unstrapping himself, grabbing his bag, hoisting it, and then hopping out the side.

The fact that he just hopped the four and a half meters between his cockpit and the floor without even a thought for the ladder being wheeled over seems to impress the… people… waiting for him.

The Kress are not human. They're definitely humanoid, two arms, legs, and eyes. Not much of a nose, and the ears are... not human standard. No tail, at least not that he can see. No one saw fit to tell him that, but it only off-foots him for a moment. They're, at least the ones greeting him, all taller than he is, with smooth, almost leathery skin of dusty browns and gray greens. Local dress seems to be loose trousers and shirts with no sleeves.

Threepio did tell him that it was his job to greet them by nodding, dropping to one knee for a moment, and then standing back up. He did that what felt like a million times for Snoke, so he can do it graceful and easy, even with his bag over his shoulder.

They nod back to him, and drop to one knee before standing in front of him.

"Greetings Master Ren of the Order, I am Sirreths, Sub Prince of the Kress."

Kylo nods to him. "Hello." He supposes this is usually where he'd introduce his people, but he came on his own. It's, as Threepio put it, a power move. He's the man so secure in himself that he'll go to a foreign planet, just with himself, his body weapon, and his ship.

And, even if they weren't playing up the martial valor and honorable angle of this, that's true. Kylo, on his own, would go alone to something like this.

They stare at each other for a bit, and Kylo's got a memory of Poe, 'who talks first' in his head. He shuts that away, and tries to remember what was in Threepio's report. He talks. "I thank you for your hospitality. A warm place to stop is a welcome respite from the cold of space."

"Our sands are yours. Sun yourself, and grow warm."

Warm. It really is warm here, and as he looks more closely at the Sub Prince, he's starting to think they may be cold-blooded. There is a sort of reptilian look to him, and he can imagine them laying out on warm sand to keep themselves comfortable. Meanwhile, he's starting to wish he'd gone for the short-sleeved jacket.

"Thank you. I look forward to basking in your sun." Though he's not sure about that. It is _warm_ but he doesn't know if this is the sort of sun where if he lets his skin spend to much time it in, it'll turn bright pinky-red and hurt. At least on Lirium, with their green and blue suns, he didn't burn, so maybe here he won't either.

He hopes.

"Excellent!" The Sub Prince… He remembers this. This is the first grandson of the Primo. They've got a birth-right monarchy here, but it's the first male in any generation, not oldest son to oldest son to oldest son, and… The Primo has… several wives, and sixteen sons, maybe? He's not sure if he's remembering that correctly. He does know that this is not the son of the Prince. "Come, Master, let us extend our hospitality."

"Please!" Kylo says.

As they walk away from the hanger, Kylo can feel the Kress eyeing his lightsaber. They're all _wondering._ They've, of course, heard about them. And, apparently there are entertainments that show people supposedly using them, but… No one's actually seen one, not a real one, let alone with their own eyes, in… On this planet, probably ever.

Kylo's fairly sure that drawing his weapon will set the wrong mood here, as they stroll toward wherever they're going next. But he does decide that since everyone around him is armed, to ask them about their body weapons.

"I know it's a sword of some sort," he starts, and the Sub Prince's eyes gleam as he reaches for the blade he wears across his back. "But I don't know what sort."

"This is Grrattss," Sirreths says.

It's _huge._ Gleaming… steel? Kylo doesn't know. Just that it's very shiny, and very sharp, and it's _big._ He also doesn't know if Grrattss is the name of the blade, or the sort of blade it is.

"One or two handed?" Kylo asks, and that impresses his hosts.

"Unlike a lightsaber, it's a two-handed weapon," And Sirreths, shows him a few strokes with it.

"Impressive," Kylo says, resting his hand on his saber hilt. "May I?"

"Please!" The Sub Prince and his… friends, retainers, whomever, are very interested in this.

Kylo draws and ignites the blade. It roars to life and with the glow of his blade a soft flicker of Force bleeds up his hand and arm and settles into his heart with a happy, little purr. A second later, the vents start to do their job. They're all surprised by his blade. "Mine is a one-and-a-half-handed blade. I prefer the flexibility that comes with fighting one-or-two-handed depending on the situation. You're right though, most lightsabers are one-handed weapons. But mine isn't based off a saber." He nods to the vent. "I needed a way to bleed off extra heat, and then used that as inspiration for a claymore-based blade. If it were made out of metal, it'd be a full two-handed weapon, but my blade doesn't have weight."

The Kress are just about cooing over his saber, and very eager to show him theirs and this feels _good._

He's just about hip deep it sharp, shiny blades and people who not only know how to swing them around, but love doing it. It's been a long time since he's had any personal time with other fighters, with other men who love the feel of danger and destruction, and it's just _nice._

By the time they get to the end of the hanger, and have shown off all of their weapons, Kylo's feeling very pleased by this excursion, and like, maybe, if his job is to just… be himself, that this might be the sort of place that likes people like him.

It's certainly the kind of place that would give anyone who suggested that the relationship between a warrior and his weapon is supposed to be detached respect for the havoc the blade can wreck, a very long moment of side-eyed-glances.

"Ah… Krenth!" Sirreths says to another Kress who's been waiting for them at the edge of the hangar. "This is our m'rth, Kylo. Kylo, this is Krenth. He is my Chief Seneschal. He will take you to your suite and allow you time to refresh yourself."

"Thank you," Kylo says, because, as they are moving along, he is starting to really feel the lack of sleep, and more importantly, the complete lack of coffee to go with the lack of sleep. "Time to refresh myself would be well-appreciated." He almost asks, as they break off, what a m'rth is, but decides if it translated neatly, they'd have likely used galactic standard like the rest of the conversation. As it was, he didn't feel anything bad to go with that word.

* * *

"Master, we're so pleased to have you." Krenth says, oozing charm, showing off the suite that Kylo will be staying in for the next night. "We trust that your accommodations will meet your needs."

"I'm sure they will," Kylo replies, tired. The room he's in looks fine, and even if the bedroom is appalling, the sofa in the sitting area should do for him. Really, all he wants right now is a place to get horizontal for a while.

By his local time, it's _early._

Here, though, it's mid-morning. They wanted him here for some sort of game and then lunch meeting, and then there's an afternoon _thing._ It's… Threepio's best guess for something similar to it that he's experienced is a play, so… Anyway, he's booked until an hour before supper, which is when Rey and Jon will be joining him.

"And your lady and concubine will be joining us for supper? We've set aside an adjoining suite for them."

Kylo's tired enough he almost missed that, but after a few beats his brain notices what he's just been nodding along to and sends all of his attention to that last line.

"My wife is attending, as well as the Grand Marshall of my Diplomatic Corp."

For a second, Krenth seems to be under the impression that that's what he said, but he notices how Kylo's under the impression that that's not what he said, and then it dawns, slowly, on him that just possibly there's an issue of communication here, maybe he's got the wrong people or something, so… "Oh. Sir… I'm… We've… misunderstood? They told us the young, blonde one would be joining you."

There's only one young, blonde on his staff, so… "He is joining us. He is not my or her concubine." His eyes are cold. Jon said it would happen sooner or later. "And, do you mean to tell me, you've set aside a collection of rooms for him and my wife to inhabit, together, and a separate suite for me?"

His host looks chagrined. "Is that… not how the Order does things?"

"That's not how I do things!" His voice is sharper than it needs to be. He rubs his forehead and reins his annoyance in. "My wife sleeps with me. Jon sleeps with whomever he likes, but not us."

"Ah…" The Kress takes a moment to whisper something, from the tone of his voice, urgent, into his comm. "If you will be patient, we can re-arrange."

All Kylo wants to do is eat something, crash into a quick nap, and hopefully look at least a quarter awake before his first meeting. And re-arranging doesn't likely go with that. "You said it's a suite attached to my apartment. Does it have a separate entrance?"

"No, sir, it doesn't."

Kylo sighs at that. If it had a separate entrance, that'd have been fine, but he doesn't want Jon to have to go tromping through his rooms to get into and out of his. "Okay. Find a set of rooms somewhere for Jon. _Good ones._ He is the fifth highest ranked person in the Order, and answers directly to me. Rey and I will use this apartment."

"Uh… Yes, Master. Would you like to inspect the rooms, take time to refresh yourself?"

As long as inspects means get horizontal with his eyes closed, he's all in favor of that. "Yes. The meetings begin?"

"In two hours. We can have food brought to you, and if you'd like fresh clothing or anything along those lines, we have more than enough droids to tend to your needs."

"I'd appreciate that."

* * *

The apartment is _nice._ It's beyond luxurious, in a very functional sort of way. It's very clearly a space for someone to have meetings, eat, drink, sleep, and wash. Everything is made of fine substances, soft fabrics, rare metals and woods, discrete and complimentary art, but there's nothing he'd call a frippery.

By human standards, Kylo is big. By Kress standards, he's on the small side of average, so this is one of the few places he's been where all of the furniture is actually just the right size, if not slightly too big for him. That's… really nice actually. He eyes the sofa, fairly sure he could actually sleep on it.

Then he decides to cross into the "suite" for his "wife and concubine," just… because he can… or something. He opens the door… His eyes shut slowly, and then open again, just as slowly, and… He takes a few steps around, just looking, and comes to the conclusion that it's likely a very good thing that the Kress are not a species he finds particularly attractive, because otherwise his shaft would be leaping to attention and he'd be _beyond_ distracted for the first run of meetings.

There's… artwork, and sculptures, and… Force! _tapestries_ , and… That one appears to be some sort of holovid image gyrating about in the middle of the room, and… He blinks… It just… so much sex. In positions he's not only never dreamed of, but aren't anatomically possible for humans, and… Okay, actually, some of the furniture might be interesting to try out if they're here long enough, but…

Apparently the Kress have a very set idea of what, exactly, it is Rey and Jon are supposed to do for him on this visit, and if it involves going to meetings and providing him with advice, they're the sort of meetings he's _not_ expecting to attend, certainly not today, let alone with people who aren't Rey. And, though he supposes that this is the sort of subject that Jon could offer him advice on, again, it's not the sort of advice he's expecting to get from Jon, let alone tonight.

He backs out of the room, shaking his head, shuts the door, finds the bed he's supposed to be sleeping in (quite large, more pillows than he needs), and crashes onto it, getting that nap.

* * *

An hour and a half later, feeling significantly sharper, and absently wondering how much of everything around him he missed during the years with Snoke where he barely ever slept, he's feeling pretty ready to have the Kress, as they said, 'Get a feel for him.'

He noticed that in his sitting room, not only was food laid out, but there is an outfit much more closely approximating local dress. He gets out of his own gear and slips into it. Yes, he can keep his body cool, but that's one less thing he's got to think about if he's wearing something cool.

Then he settles down to read over the presentation he's supposed to give, while munching on a… fairly tasty food substance he doesn't know the name of, thinking he's going to enjoy dinner if the Kress like food like this.

There's a niggly little thought dancing around between troop deployment schedules, and finally, he finishes reading, and lets it get to the front of his mind.

Rey and Jon will be joining him for supper. His wife and concubine. According to the Kress. But they're not coming to this thing to be his 'wife and concubine' at least not on any level commiserate with the suite they set aside for them.

He's got no idea what the Kress expect Rey and Jon to be doing at this thing.

 _Shit._

And the only person he knows who knows the answer to this doesn't exactly enjoy talking to him, but… He's certain he cannot afford, literally afford, that gray bloody line is always hovering in the back of his mind, to be wrong on this.

He hits his comm, putting in Threepio's code.

The voice on the other end is startled to see a call from him come through.

"Master Ren," the perpetual tinge of nervous that used to always go with Threepio's voice is absent. Kylo's not sure if he's a better or worse adviser now that he doesn't actually care what his boss thinks of him. He knows he's a significantly less anxious one.

"Threepio. I've gotten to Kreh, and there's been a… mix up in their understanding of who's coming to this."

"Were they not prepared for Grand Marshal Frakes and Lady Rey?" Now, _that_ is making Threepio sound nervous.

"They're prepared for someone. They know I have two guests, but they referred to them as my wife and concubine, and judging by the rooms set aside for them, they don't anticipate them doing anything here other than me. So… Am I going to blow this if I send Jon or Rey to a meeting here? Are they supposed to just accompany me to dinner and play with me after?"

He can feel Threepio parsing 'doing anything other than me.'

He's silent for a long time.

"You're fluent in over six million forms of communication, so there's no possible way you didn't understand what I said. So, is it that perplexing of a situation, or did the idea of it just break your brain?"

Eventually, after what, for Threepio, is a freakishly long amount of processing time, he says, "What would you do with both Jon and Rey?"

Apparently, broke his brain was the correct answer. Granted, that question's also in danger of breaking Kylo's brain, because… Well… Okay, now that he's got to think about it, and this has to be exactly why they set it up this way, because now he's distracted with that question, and… _Shit._ "I think the correct question is: What would Rey do with Jon and I?" Because, well, thinking about it, he knows that there's nothing _he's_ going to do _with_ Rey _and_ Jon. There likely are things Rey might want to do with both of them, though. Or with just one or the other of them. That he might like to watch, or be watched doing. That little bit of his brain that knew Jon was still in the training room with them lights up at the idea. _Fuck!_ He mentally glares at himself, his current situation, and the room of sex next door. "And the answer is: I shouldn't think about that right now. What's the diplomacy on this?"

There's another silence, but this time he can sense that Threepio's looking something up.

A moment later, Threepio says, "I believe they are trying to rile you up and set you off-foot, but do so in a way that looks like an 'accident.' In the Kress culture, it is common for men of power to have both a wife and at least one favored concubine who will travel with him to keep him… amused… in his off time, _relaxed_ … during formal meetings, and as a backdoor channel for diplomacy. The 'friends' of the man will mingle and talk with each other, and pass things around unofficially.

"That said, all of our communications have been explicitly clear as to who is coming, when, where, and what they will do at each function. If there is to be backdoor communications, it won't be through the seraglio."

Kylo doesn't know what that word means, but figures it's not terribly important. "Okay. So, no one is going to be mortally insulted to sit down to a meeting with my 'concubine.'"

"If they are, it's an intentional 'mix-up' designed to raise tensions. Both Grand Marshal Frakes and Lady Rey have all of the correct diplomatic credentials due their ranks. They are here as their own envoys, not as entertainment for you. And all of their highest-level diplomats have signed off on this."

"Good. Thank you, Threepio."

He feels the nod on the other side. "Anything else, Master Ren?"

"Not that I know of."

Then the comm goes dead.

* * *

The day goes fairly smoothly from there.

The game is fun. Once again, Sirreths is hosting him, showing him around, and explaining a bit more about Kress culture and history. This particular game started as training for cavalry officers, but at this point no one rides actual animals into battle any longer, so the training has become a sport.

It's a bunch of Kress, each one on some sort of quadraped, galloping about, whacking a ball at each other with a large stick. Get hit with the ball, you're out of the game. Fall off the animal, you're out of the game. Last Kress on the field wins. Betting on how long the players can last is also part of the game.

After the first round, they offer to let him play, instead of just watching, but he's fairly sure whatever the quadrupeds are, they aren't going to like him any more than any other animal ever has.

That said, he does join in on the betting, and shockingly enough, his player _doesn't_ get hit by the ball. (Though there are a few _very_ close misses.)

(And, apparently, giving his winnings to the man is a good call, because that seems to make the other Kress around him happy with him.)

* * *

The presentation goes with lunch. It's his job to stand up there, in a group of ten Kress, this time with the Prince, the Sub Prince, and their military high command, and explain, in detail, while answering any questions they may have, what, exactly, it is The Order can do to flesh out their defenses, and improve the situation.

Normally, this would be a break out into a cold sweat moment for Kylo. It's been quite a while since he's had to recite to anyone, and he _really_ didn't like it back in his days with Luke, and it _never_ worked when he'd done it with Snoke.

It helps that this is actually something he's interested in. Helps more that he actually feels pretty comfortable with the people around him. On top of that, these are people who actually want him to have right answers, and… It's actually a very freeing sensation, the idea that he can be right here. The whole point of reporting to Snoke was so Snoke could punish him for being wrong (no matter what), so just the fact that he can be right here is…

Really nice actually.

He feels like his presentation on how and where they'd move their men, the way that would ease things up for the Kress, and the steadier flow of legitimate traffic from the Unknown Regions would benefit everyone is maybe not amazing, but no one falls asleep, he answers questions well, and everyone here seems to be pleased by him and his objectives.

(And they all think his lightsaber is the coolest thing they've ever seen. He spends just as much time talking about it as he does talking about potential Order plans for how to defend Kress space. He can feel that, were kyber crystals easier to locate, the Kress would be very interested in trading how to make lightsabers for a _lot_ of credits. In that he and his have only found one since Poe brought home the black crystal, and it hasn't chosen anyone yet, he's not thinking they'll have much luck with that.)

* * *

Lunch is good. The Kress are humanoids, with fairly similar nutritional needs to his, so while he's never actually had anything they serve him, it's all good. They either know about his preference for non-squishy food, or prefer their food firm, too. Either way works for him.

The local beverage of choice appears to be something in the range of eighty percent alcohol.

He takes one sip of it, and just about dies. It's scorching through his throat, burning his lungs, and makes his eyes water. The only thing he'd even begin to think about using this stuff for is disinfecting wounds. (And he'd likely dilute it before using it for that.)

"I'm sorry, is it not to your taste?" Garreth, the Prince asks, looking concerned. "We read up on human culture and nutritional needs and we know your species can metabolize alcohol and enjoys drinking it. But we couldn't find details on how much was too much. This is…" he says a word Kylo doesn't understand, possibly because his sinuses are trying to claw their way out of his face, to get away from the burn, "Is it too much?"

Kylo spends another moment gasping for breath. He finally gets his body back online and says, "It is for me. I'm sorry, too." He looks around, frantically, for something to wash the inside of his mouth out, and a moment later a glass of what he sincerely hopes is water is placed in front of him. A tentative sip lets him know it is. Then he gulps it.

Once he's got himself more or less back together, he says. "Your research isn't wrong. Humans can metabolize alcohol, and often enjoy drinking it. That said, we start out with a fairly low tolerance for it, and over time build up. I have a few friends who likely would enjoy your drink, but it's well beyond the tolerance level I have."

Gareth thinks about that. He nods slowly. "Is… not having that tolerance…" He's not sure how to ask the question. He doesn't know if they misread the culture, or if it's something personal to Kylo, or…

Kylo rescues him. "That's personal to me." His water glass refilled, and he takes a few more sips, and then spoons a little of the alcoholic drink into his glass. "I was raised in a culture that didn't drink alcohol, so I didn't get the same sort of practice that a lot of other humans did." He takes a sip of the much-watered drink. "Oh! This is good!" And watered down, it is. He can actually taste flavors other than alcohol. "It's… citronen and… herby… It's nice."

It almost puts him in mind of a sort of candy Han would occasionally bring for all of them when he'd visit. It was black and sweet with a very strong flavor. Kylo, and Luke, and Jax liked it, no one else did. But this isn't sweet, and it's got a nicely sharp citronen counterpoint to the dark candy flavor.

"We start with raw spirits, and then macerate fruit and barks in it. The Firsstris takes on the flavors of the fruits and barks. Then we age it for ten years to smooth it out and let more of the water evaporate off," the Prince is saying.

The idea that this is the _smoother_ version of the drink is staggering to Kylo, but he rolls with it, taking another sip of the watered Firsstris. "I don't drink a lot of alcoholic beverages, but I think we've got something similar to this. Gin? Have you tried that?"

Gareth shakes his head.

"I'll make sure to comm my Grand Marshall, and have him bring some. We'll see if you like it." He takes another sip. "Granted, it's likely going to seem very tame compared to what you like. I don't think most alcohol sold to humans is above fifty percent alcohol."

The Prince nods. He thinks, looking at Kylo, really looking, focusing on his hair and skin, and lips. He's thinking of the things he read about humans, and puts a few facts together, then says, "You make your own heat."

And that's when it clicks for Kylo. "If you get too cold, your blood freezes doesn't it?"

"Exactly."

Kylo smiles at that. "For our ships, we have a fluid that we add to them, to keep the other liquids from freezing. That used to be made with very strong alcohol. They use something else, now, but… My dad… He had a story… Let me back up…" And he begins to tell the tale of the time the _Falcon_ was all but dead in the air, and the only thing Han and Chewie had on hand was a hold filled with Ulrian Fire Water. "It kept the fuel lines from freezing solid, and got them back to a base where they could get real anti-freeze."

* * *

As for the _thing._ Well, he supposes that, it could, possibly, sort of, be like a play. Maybe a poetry reading. Possibly a… _thing._ It's a _thing._

They're outside, on a stone round, surrounded by other Kress. No one's in costume, though they do have scripts, and… it's got to have some sort of cultural significance. The people around him all know all the parts and words and are having a good time. The ones in the audience are yelling out responses to certain parts, and a bunch of the 'actors' are yelling back, and… He can read as well as the best of them, and he's not exactly practiced or anything, but…

It doesn't feel bad. He's off foot, but not in a terrible way. Just… this is new.

It might be a joke. Like the room of sex. It doesn't feel malicious. Most of the players around him are pleasantly amused to see him doing this, but there might be a certain level of, 'Lets set up the silliest thing we like doing and see exactly how far we can push the human into doing it.'

So, he mentally rolls his eyes, and gets into it, and he feels like he's a bit of a twit, but… Ben Solo, at Luke's school would have really liked something like this.

Plus, the story is good, and he appears to have one of the more important parts, so…

It's good.

(Later, it will occur to him that, if he'd drunk more of the Firsstris, but not so much as to set him snoring under the table, he probably would have had a _really_ good time with the play.)

He's got his script in hand, enunciating away, trying to read at least a line or two ahead so he can get the right words out at the right time, and sort of look like he's got a clue as to what his character is supposed to be doing.

He really hopes this is the kind of thing they want him to do. That he's supposed to go along and be pleasant and act like he's just… one of the Kress, apparently, or something. Or maybe part of 'feeling him out' is just seeing what the hell he'll do if dropped into a lot of strange situations he's never been in before.

He didn't think to ask Threepio how he was supposed to respond to this stuff.

They seem mostly amused and approving. Maybe the sort of approval one might give a small child mastering a fairly simple concept, but… It's still approval. So, that's something.

But, he also hasn't actually met the people in charge yet, either.

Gareth is in the audience, and Sirreths is one of the other actors. The Primo is nowhere to be seen. (Or, at least, no one Kylo's been introduced to has had that title. Unfortunately, especially a little buzzed from the drink, most of the Kress are starting to look a lot alike, and he's not well-enough versed on their outfits to really tell rank signifiers.)

It also hasn't escaped his notice, that there don't appear to be any women here. Maybe. He's not entirely certain of that. No one is using feminine pronouns, and none of the characters in the play have female pronouns.

He thinks he's got an idea of what Kress women likely look like (at least if the room of sex was anything to go by) and he hasn't seen anyone who looks like that. (Granted, from what he saw in the room of sex, if one were to put clothing on any given Kress, they'd all look pretty similar, at least to Kylo.)

He supposes that the Kress might all be the same sex. Or gender? The room certainly showed there were some biological differences, but not nearly as many as human males and females have. And maybe they just all dress the same and use a masculine pronoun?

(That thought has him idly thinking if they give birth to live young or not. As he understands biology, cold-blooded creatures tend not to be mammals, but… Hell, he's got no idea. And really doesn't need one. Kylo mentally rolls his eyes, if he wanted a bloody idea, he could just go spend some more time in the room of sex and really _look_ at the pictures. That'd be all the damn idea anyone could ever want or need for how Kress mate.)

As it is, he's got another line coming up, fast, so… "No, Grytths! Do not go this way! This is the way of deceit and falsehood!" (It's probably a good thing he never felt any desire to be an actor.)

* * *

After the _thing,_ he's got time to rest, and then change, and get ready for the formal dinner where he'll get to spend some time with the Primo of the Kress.

But he can feel several of the Kress looking at his weapon. He can feel the curiosity. They're really, deeply, truly impressed by the idea of a lightsaber and…

He wants to show it off.

He _never_ gets to just show it off.

If he's with the kids, they use the training blades, because he's more than confident in his own skill, but… Any given one of them might whip something out he doesn't expect. And, of course, Jacen, the only one who's really ready to work one on one with one, doesn't want to.

And… well… Rey's just… not that impressed by it. It's a _tool_ for her. (It is for him, too, but… It's also _not._ )

He doesn't train with his own soldiers, because… Hmmm… Well, at this point that might be something he can revisit. He didn't used to train with them because of the combination of not being able to risk any of them learning to truly fight him, with a side of not wanting to damage anyone valuable, but… He tucks that into his mind for things to do when his schedule somehow magically opens up some free time.

And, with Luke… When they were with Luke… he… they could all _feel_ how much he enjoyed using his saber, how happy he was at doing something right, how passionate and attached and… _not a Jedi_ he was when the blade was in his hand…

There was a window, a few years, where he still had his knights, under Snoke, and… right now he _misses_ that. Misses it _hard._

He glances around, most of the crowd that had showed up to watch the _thing_ have dispersed, but there is a group of Kress lingering around with the Prince and Sub Prince, and…

"There's still, what, two hours between now and supper?" Kylo asks.

Sirreths nods. "That sounds right, and, of course, we won't actually seat until your party is ready."

"Ah." He's not sure exactly what that means, but… It's probably good. "I've never actually used a metal blade."

Sirreths looks startled, and then a wash of glee spreads across his features. "No? Did you learn with your saber?"

"Not exactly. We start with plexiplast training blades. It's not exactly like using a lightsaber, the blade obviously has some weight, but it'll be the right size and shape, and the blade will be hot enough to singe, but not take a limb off."

"Ah. We start with wooden training blades. Let the children learn with something that will bruise but not maim."

"Exactly. Would you…" he hesitates a second, "like to trade, for a little. Just, get a feel for it?"

Sirreths is _eager_ at that. Then a little worried. "I mean no disrespect, but… If your blade has no weight, and mine is steel…" He's eyeing Kylo, looking down at him, because he's got at least twenty centimeters on Kylo. "And more than two-thirds your height."

Kylo waves that away. "I've got… coping mechanisms… for that."

"I'm sure you do, but we could also find one that's closer to built for your size."

That's an idea. That they'd actually go and seek out a blade to fit him, rather than try to make him fit the blade. Because these are people who love the fight, and want to be good at it, and want _him_ to be good at it, too. "Oh. Yes, certainly."

One of the Kress run off, and Kylo can feel that there's a Sub Sub Prince who's probably whatever the equivalent of Critt's age is for Kress, and about Kylo's size, who's got a blade he can borrow for a bit.

Kylo hands over his saber. He shows how to thumb on the blade, but doesn't turn it on. He does tap the heat vents. "Like yours I've got a cross guard. Unlike yours, this'll take your hand off if you slip. I wear gloves for protection when I use this blade."

"Keep your fingers on?"

"No, my glove doesn't have that much heat protection, but they do keep the skin from blistering." (Another Kress goes running off to find some sort of heat protection gloves.)

He flicks it on, and shows his usual starting stance. Then he shifts it to the one Luke taught them as children. "There are seven lightsaber combat forms recognized by the Jedi. Depending on what you want to do, how skilled in the Force you are, your shape, size, and speed, you may gravitate to any of them. Each has its own strengths and weaknesses."

"Which do you prefer?" The Sub Prince asks.

Kylo rolls his eyes a bit. "I might answer differently if I'd been trained by an actual Jedi saber master. You have to remember, that what we learned of the forms and techniques came from books, and somewhat incomplete ones at that. By the time I trained, there was only Luke, and Luke didn't learn saber from anyone who's mastered it, either. He mostly taught himself."

"You taught yourself as well?" Sirreths asks.

"To an extent. I moved past what Luke knew fairly rapidly, and then began to apply the forms from the books, and… He used to say, there are seven forms recognized by the Jedi, and an eighth form, practiced by me. He called it Solo, my surname at the time, and would mutter about pulling techniques out of my ass."

Sirreths laughs at that. "And do you still practice the Solo form?"

"Honestly, yes. Though it's been well refined and improved over the years. It probably is it's own form now." The Kress who ran off to find a glove comes back, handing it over. Sirreths tugs it on, and Kylo hands over his blade. "Watch the vents."

Sirreths flicks it to life and like the blade, he just about lights up with pleasure to be holding a _real_ lightsaber in his hands. He swishes it around a few times, faster than he intends because it is much lighter than anything he's ever used. "This is amazing. You can fight forever with something like this."

Kylo nods at that. "I don't exactly advertise that, but, yes, the lack of weight on the blade means I can keep going longer than someone with a more traditional hand to hand weapon."

Kylo glances around. He does notice that a few of the Kress wear blasters as their body weapons. "If you like, I can show you another advantage it has, as a defensive weapon."

Sirreths clicks the saber off, and hands it over, eager. Kylo tugs on his own gloves, and nods to the Kress with the blasters. "The rest of you likely want to move behind me." He looks around. "And let's…" he shifts them a bit. "Generally, if I'm doing this, I'm not particularly worried about my surroundings," Once he's got them in the right place, a place where, when he bounces the bolts back, they won't destroy anything important, like the buildings or other people, he says, "Okay, shoot at me, as much as you like."

He can feel the Kress just staring at him. They look horrified. They look to Sirreths, terrified that if they fuck this up the entire Order is going to show up and murder all of them. Sirreths though, looks certain that Kylo won't try this if he can't pull it off. (Granted, Sirreths has also seen the footage of Kylo fighting at Qualee Prime. And, well, it's true that a lot of people are under the impression that footage is _edited_ to make Kylo Ren look a lot more frightening than he actually is, but… Maybe it's not.) He nods to his men.

A few of them wince, blink slowly, and then raise their guns tentatively to fire at Kylo. The first few bolts are one at a time, and aimed wide, he's actually got to jump for one of them, but he swats them away with no effort.

Once they realize they can shoot at him, and he'll just whack the bolts back, it becomes something of a game.

"Normally, if I was doing this for real, I'd angle my blade a little differently, and send the bolts back where they came, but I'm not trying to shoot your men," Kylo says between strikes.

Sirreths holds up his hand, and the firing stops. "I'll admit, I'm envious of your blade."

"If I didn't have it, I would be, too." He hands it back to Sirreths, who again flicks it on and plays with it.

"How did you get it?"

"Same way any Jedi gets their blade. I built it. The crystal that powers it thrums with the Force, and when you find one that thrums with you and your Force, you can build a weapon that… well…" He's never tried to put this into words. "It's _yours._ A part of you. We don't… usually, trade blades, or hand down weapons. The crystal that works for you won't work as well for me, and vice versa."

"It feels good in my hand."

"Because you know a good weapon when you feel one. And, honestly, most good weapons get along well with me, too, but, it will work significantly better for me than you. And some crystals… the ones that aren't well suited for lightsaber work, they don't necessarily like me, either."

Sirreths nods along, and then says, "My blade was my grandfather's, and his grandfather's. We usually pass weapons down."

Kylo smiles a little at that. "I like the idea of weapons having history. My wife's blade… the crystal, and part of the controls, used to be my grandfather's, too. She gets along with that crystal better than I did, probably because it recognized a lot of similarities between her and my grandfather. But that's rare. Usually finding your crystal and building your blade is part of how you get your weapon. But she was able to call his weapon to her hand. They have the right resonance." He's never really thought about that before, but… One desert nobody to another… He can see how that might work.

That confuses Sirreths, after a moment he says, "You let your wife have a blade?"

For a moment, Kylo misses the main thrust of that question, because he's still excited to be talking weapons with someone who really likes them, and says, "Actually, it's a light staff. She's primarily a quarter-staff user, so when she gained resonance with the kyber, she built it into her staff. It's a really good offensive and defensive weapon, and unlike mine, if she just wants to subdue someone—" And that's about where the _let_ part of the question wanders into Kylo's mind, along with the way Sirreths is just staring at Kylo like he's completely insane.

"Your woman… fights?" Sirreths says tentatively. "You… encourage that?"

Kylo's flatfooted, he's got no idea what to do with this. He does his best not to look panicked, and works hard to get a feel for where Sirreths is coming from.

Alarm. Curiosity. Some level of wondering if Kylo's actually _a man_ or whatever the local Kress equivalent is. Jon's 'properly masculine' stuff. Titillation. A woman _fighting,_ it's tingling through him with an almost horrified, almost enchanted image. More curiosity. Unease… What would happen if they let Kress women handle weapons? And all of that underlain with a level of _humans are weird._

"Let and encourage aren't the right words." That seems like a safe start. "She likes it. And it's something she was doing well before she met me. At least, the staff part. The crystal and I popped up at about the same time."

Sirreths thinks about that for a moment. "But she has you now." He can kind of wrap his mind around the idea that a woman on her own might need to protect herself, and he does remember something about Rey being on her own before she met Kylo. She's an orphan, so she didn't have a father to take care of her, so he can understand that, but she's got a husband now, and Kylo's obviously up to the task of keeping a woman safe, so…

"She does. Sparring with her is fun."

That also gets a slow blink. And then another one. And then Sirreths lights up as he decides that it's got to be a sex thing, and he just doesn't understand all of the nuances, because, well, humans are weird. But, he does get the idea that some people like feisty women, and obviously Ren must be one of them, so… "That's usually the kind of fun we have with our friends and brothers."

Kylo's eyes narrow a bit, because he's fairly certain that Sirreths does not mean brothers in the sense of male siblings, but… There's a definite cultural disconnect… Sort of. But he makes the leap. "When I was younger, I had my knights. We'd spar, and that was something I enjoyed very much."

"What happened to your knights?" Sirreths is eager to get away from Kylo's domestic life which apparently involves fighting women, an idea that, the more he thinks about it, the more squirmy and less titillated it makes him feel.

Kylo doesn't wince, because that's a question he's opened himself up to. He does sigh in relief when instantaneous night falls. Around him, Kress are startling and he knows that the gesture a few of them made was designed to ward off evil. He does his best not to grin at that. He does look up, and the sky is dominated by the _Supremacy_ hovering above. "My ship is here."

Sirreths stares at the sky. He knows, intellectually, how big the _Supremacy_ is, but seeing it block out the sky from horizon to horizon is still awfully impressive.

"Then we must go greet your Lady and Concubine."

Kylo bites his lip. "Grand Marshall."

"Of course." Sirreths hands Kylo his saber back, and Kylo tucks it into his belt.


	64. Kylo's Day Out: II

2/20/2

It's the same landing pad as before, and the shuttle lowers itself next to the _Silencer._

This time, there are some entourage members. Rey can fly, and could handle the short hop from the _Supremacy_ to the ground, but Threepio thought it would be more fitting for them to come in a ship with an actual staff.

(Kylo's almost starting to wonder if Threepio just doesn't feel comfortable with Rey flying. He can't imagine the droid was traumatized by her behind the controls of the _Falcon_ or something, but… He's never asked.)

Jon, on the other hand, does not fly. So, that was that.

A pile of armed and armored stormtroopers march out of his command shuttle before Jon and Rey stroll on out. They look significant more put together and elegant than he did, hopping out of the _Silencer_ after ten hours in hyperspeed.

And, from afar, watching them come to him, he can see that it is rather imposing to see them striding through a collection of men in blinding white armor, standing at attention, waiting for anyone to try anything with either of them.

It… looks good.

Kylo smiles at that.

He can feel the fact that the Kress around him think it looks good, too. They're impressed.

That smile widens. He crosses the hangar, hugs Rey, kissing her, and nods to Jon. "Good trip?"

"Fine," Jon replies as Rey thinks, _I really miss teleporting._

 _I know!_ Kylo thinks back, his face against the top of her head.

"Long trip," Rey says, snugging him. But she actually thinks to him, _Sitting in a transport with a pile of extremely nervous stormtroopers, all of whom were sure they were going to fart or something and horrifically embarrass themselves and make me uncomfortable, thus causing you to kill them, was not fun._ After all, the actual trip from the _Supremacy_ to the ground was about twenty-five minutes.

He holds her for a moment, eyes closed, content. _They get nervous like that around me, too. And then they start thinking about if I'm as scary as they think I'm supposed to be. And then they remember the rumor I can read minds, so they start singing rowdy songs in their heads, then realize I might be able to hear the rowdy songs, and I might not approve of rowdy songs, then they get really uncomfortable, and start doing multiplication tables or stuff like that._

Rey mentally sniggers a little at that. _You'll have to sing one for me._

Kylo doesn't chuckle. He can once again feel the curiosity of Sirreths behind him. This is, also, apparently not how Kress spouses greet each other, or… no… He's fine with what Kylo's doing with Rey, though he's assuming they're newlyweds and still in the touchy-feely phase of things. He's not sure why he's not hugging Jon the same way, and…

After all, he's not showing proper affection to his concubine. And if you want a happy home, you've got to be careful about things like that.

Well, introduction time, maybe do a little more to hammer home the idea that this is his wife and their friend, not his two spouses, or whatever. (He's a little fuzzy on the difference between a wife and concubine, and hasn't been willing to ask. Maybe, if this concubine thing doesn't get better, he'll bring it up at dinner. In his mind he feels Rey think: _Oh, that'll be a fun conversation._ She's only being a little sarcastic.)

He steps back from Rey, still holding her hand, and says, "Sirreths, Sub Prince of the Kress, this is my wife, Rey, and our _friend_ , the Grand Marshall of the Order Diplomatic Corps, Jon Frakes."

Rey offers her hand, and the Sub Prince stares at it for a moment, before he remembers that human do that little hand squeezy thing, and he, very tentatively, takes her hand in his and barely touches it, looking at Kylo like he's expecting the man to whip his lightsaber out on him. When Kylo doesn't even twitch, and is still smiling, he gives Rey's hand a little grasp and then drops it like it's made of liquid nitrogen.

Rey smiles up at him, and he relaxes a bit, and smiles back. (Both of them can feel that he's under the impression that humans are amazingly reckless with their women. He glances up at Kylo's ship, klick upon klick of black metal blocking out the view of the entire sky. But, maybe if you command a ship like that, you can afford to let another man touch your wife's hand. Kylo makes a mental note to _not_ offer to shake hands with any of the Kress ladies, assuming that, at some point, he'll get to meet one.)

Jon watches with a very amused attitude, and then does a perfect nod and kneel, and accepts the same from the Sub Prince.

The walk from the hanger to their suite goes about the same as before. This time, Kylo can feel the Kress around them staring at Rey's saberstaff in her hand, but they're not saying anything about it. He's fairly sure that if Jon were carrying it, they'd be peppering him with questions right and left, but Rey's got it, and they don't know what to do about it.

Meanwhile, if Jon's got a weapon, Kylo doesn't see it, but the stormtroopers behind them are carrying what looks like a lot of luggage for one night's stay.

He mentally rolls his eyes. Sirreths is looking from Rey's weapon, to Jon's lack of weapon, and he's absolutely convinced that not only is Jon the concubine, but Jon's the female one, and obviously they must have misunderstood what was going on with the wife/concubine thing. Apparently, in their native language wife is a gendered term, and maybe it didn't translate properly by the time it got through the droids.

Sirreths is feeling pretty satisfied with that, and suddenly the lack of hand squeeze with Jon is making him feel a lot better about the proper behavior of the thing.

Kylo's doing his best not to rub his temples in frustration. Rey's smirking a bit. And Jon, luckily not a mind-reader, is just strolling along, taking in the view and getting a feel for the place.

As they're walking, a Kress runs up, with a sword in hand, and skids to a halt. He's out of breath, and panting as he says, "I'm sorry, sir. It took a while to find one."

Rey and Jon look curiously at the blade, as Sirreths takes it and waves his servant away.

Kylo says, "We were killing time by playing with our blades a bit." (Jon does not laugh. He does smile, _very_ amused. He also, clearly, thinks to Rey and Kylo, _I told you he'd like it here._ She also looks very amused by that.) "And the Sub Prince thought it might be a good idea if I were to work with a sword more my size."

"Using the lightsaber was quite gratifying. I'm sorry we do not have time to truly test out the hrthisst." Though he does hand it to Kylo, who pauses to pull it from its scabbard. It's a different sort of blade from the one Sirreths has. This is shorter, thinner, built similarly to an actual saber. Kylo's fairly sure that he'd be very good with it.

It's got a very nice balance, and a good feel to it. Heavier than his training blade, but not the sort of thing that'd sprain his wrist.

He sort of wants to take the time to really pet it. It's so… bright and shiny, and it just about sings to him, and he can… really see enjoying using something like this. "It's beautiful." He slides it back into his scabbard. "Next time. You'll come visit us, and bring your weapon. We'll play with both. I think we'd enjoy testing them against my training droids. All the fun of the fight, no risk of accidentally hurting someone who matters."

Sirreths looks very pleased by that.

* * *

Once again, they get to the "suite." And once again, there's a very similar conversation about where everyone is supposed to be sleeping. It goes like this: The Seneschal says, "Master, dinner is set for an hour from now. Is that sufficient time for you, your Spouse, and Concubine to prepare yourselves?"

Jon sniggers. He looks like this is the funniest thing he's heard all day. "That the mix-up Threepio was fretting about?"

Kylo nods. Then he turns to the Seneschal. "An hour is enough time for my wife, and our friend, The Grand Marshall, who is supposed to have his own rooms, and would like to be shown to them, to prepare for tonight."

The Kress can't blush, but Kylo has the sense that if he could, he would. "Right, yes. I'm terribly sorry. Grand Marshall Frakes… If it's not too much trouble, intruding upon your Master… We have rooms… Somewhere, I'm sure."

Kylo nods. "Go talk to whichever higher up is in charge, and get it sorted." He looks at Jon and says to him, "It's up to you, you can take the playroom, or we'll take it, and you can use the bedroom," as the Kress leaves, looking to 'sort things out,' which at this point Kylo is sure means, ignore the problem or maybe report back about it to Sirreths, and then he'll ignore it.

Once the Kress is out, Jon says, as he unclasps the collar on his jacket, takes it off, and lays it on the sofa. Unlike Rey, who is not in an Order uniform, he's got too many layers on for this sort of heat. "You're here for six hours and you go native?"

Kylo looks at his sleeveless tunic and loose trousers. "It's fucking hot out there. Did I screw the diplomacy or something?"

Jon shakes his head. "Nah. Even I read people well enough to tell they like you."

Rey's looking him up and down. "Looks good on you."

"Thanks."

"Okay, come on, show us." Jon's got a dirty grin on his face. "We read up on the way here, and apparently the Kress _really_ know how to party, so…"

"Oh, it's a party all right," Kylo leads them across 'his' suite, and opens the door to the one his 'pets' are supposed to share. "So, anyway, this is supposed to be for you two."

Rey looks around the room, and her jaw drops.

Jon steps in, looks very much like he's trying extremely hard not to bust out laughing, and isn't sure if he's going to be able to avoid it. (A second later, he gives up, and just howls with laughter.)

Rey starts to laugh with him, and with both of them cackling away, Kylo decides this is pretty damn funny, too. Once everyone is calmed down, Rey and Kylo step in, too, and begin to 'explore' a bit.

"So, this is the room we're," she gestures to Jon and her, "supposed to share?" Rey finally says, standing in front of a shelf that's holding a wide and imaginative collection of what Kylo's assuming are dildos, though, made for Kress specifications and anatomy.

Kylo holds his hands out wide in a gesture of surrender. "Apparently."

Rey's turning in a circle, just staring. Jon's chuckling quietly, shaking his head. "So… What are we expected to do here?" He wanders over to the… Kylo's just going to call it a sex couch. He's sure it's got a real name, but… It's a couch, one made of three soft curves that, from the looks of it- Jon leans against it in a manner that would likely make Poe's head explode-are designed to support bodies in a wide array of comfortable and accessible positions. Of all the stuff in here, that's the one that he's most interested in playing with.

"Apparently, me, a lot, in many different positions," Kylo replies.

Jon shifts from how he draped himself over the one side of the sofa, and actually settles onto the middle curve. He certainly looks comfortable there. And, so, likely would anyone who felt a desire to be in his lap, or over his face, or… Yes, Kylo wants to _play_ with this thing. Or at least play with Rey while they're on the thing.

"Okay, that one, we might try out, but…" he says, as Rey also leans against the edge of it, a bit behind Jon, and Kylo's suddenly got a few more ideas of things he might like to do with that sofa. He makes himself stop thinking about that, looks around the rest of the room, and nods to the contraption of what appears to be loops of silky black fabric hanging from the ceiling, "I'm not even sure what you do with one of those."

Jon gets up, steps over to it, wraps his forearms in some of the loops, and does something that Kylo could have never anticipated. He pulls himself up, so he's hanging inverted, and then loops the fabric around his thighs. Then he just dangles, supported by the web of fabric. He grins at Kylo, "I know."

Kylo and Rey stare at each other, and then at Jon, and then back at each other. Kylo's not sure if he should say that he's still not sure what the hell to do with the black fabric concoction, because… Well… he or Rey just dangling, and how that might be erotic, just broke his brain. Hell, upside down, it's not even like you'd have a good view of what anyone else in the room might be doing.

"I don't think I need to."

Jon untangles himself and drops to the floor. "Don't say I didn't try to explain."

"Uh…" Rey says. (He's pleased that she's also not immediately seeing what to do with the black fabrics, or hanging upside down, either.)

"And…" Kylo barrels on, he can't even name the thing in the corner, though he points at it. "I'm not even going to try and guess with that one." Jon and Rey both look at it, too. Jon shrugs, and Rey moves a little closer to poke it, but even with her mechanical engineering background, and her ability to figure out how things work just by being near them, she's got no ideas. "Threepio told me, when I asked, that it's common for men to bring their wives and companions to things like this for… Stress relief or something."

Rey steps closer to Kylo and puts her hands on his shoulders. "Poor, Opal. Has it been a long day?"

He grins. "Terribly. Let's skip supper and see if that sofa's as comfy as it looks."

Jon rolls his eyes. "And what am I supposed to do?"

And more of those thoughts he probably shouldn't be having come running through his head. "Uh, take pictures?"

Jon looks quite amused by that. "You're getting better at this."

He's fine with Jon thinking he's just improving his banter skills. He looks around the room, hoping there's a chrono somewhere among the naked, gyrating, fucking Kress imagery, and doesn't see one. "We need to be getting ready, right?"

Jon and Rey nod, and Jon says, "There's got to be a bathroom or something around here. I'll grab this one and leave you two the 'real bedroom.'"

"What could you possibly do in here?" Kylo asks.

"Among other things, not get so distracted by the options that I end up running late," Jon says with a wink as he heads to the main room to grab his kit. "Don't have to be a mind reader to see you two cataloging the potential in here. If they can't find a place for me, I'll take the real bedroom for sleeping, but Kylo's right, we're on the chrono, so…"

"And that's that," Rey replies, heading toward the 'real' room with Kylo.

* * *

 _Take pictures?_ Rey thinks to Kylo as they're getting changed.

He shrugs a little, pulling the loose tunic over his head. _I don't know… It's… Something about this place. They all sort of expect me to be fucking both of you, and it's getting into my head. In a few ways I wasn't expecting._

Rey nods at that. Then she smirks. _Empath. How many other brains have you been steeping in all day?_

He sighs a bit. She's likely flopped right into the issue. He's kept his sensitivity to what's going on around him on high, which is great for figuring out what people around him expect, or if he's going the wrong way. It's not so good for keeping himself… well… _himself._

She grins at him. _So… if we do end up sleeping in the playroom… Do you want to_ play?

He closes his eyes, a _lot_ of images spiking behind those lids. _That sofa looked… intriguing._

She sidles up closer to him, her lips a breath away from his. _It really did. I was thinking, if you were to sort of straddle it and lean against the side…_

She hits him with a mental image that makes his breath speed up and his trousers go tight.

He yanks her closer, and kisses her _hard._ If he's got to go to this thing distracted as fuck, she does, too.

 _I'm not distracted at all,_ Rey thinks to him, as she deepens the kiss. _I'm_ extremely _focused._

 _Did you…_ That image she hit him with would require some props from home.

 _Yeah, I brought them. You were not thinking quietly the first time you got in that room._

He laughs at that, kissing his good mood to her. "I love you."

"I know." She nips his lower lip, and sucks it between hers. "And we really do need to get ready."

"Right."

* * *

So, apparently, these days, his formal blacks are awfully similar to his command blacks. The detailing is a little different, and he's got his cloak but… It's the same basic shape.

Kylo's okay with that.

What's really interesting him on this one is Rey's outfit for the night, and not just because he's always vastly more interested in anything Rey's got on compared to his own clothing.

It actually looks a lot like his formal blacks, except her colors are warm golds and creams and browns. (And, unlike his formal blacks which do include an Order Hex, she's currently not wearing any badge of alliance.) And while his jacket closes on his right shoulder, hers closes down the middle.

And, she's got her lightstaff.

So, it's not particularly frilly or femme, but it's certainly not a standard Order uniform, either. It just… looks a lot like one.

He's about to ask Jon, who just came into the main room from the Room Of Sex what the point of this outfit is, but then he really looks at Jon.

Or the sniper rifle he's casually carrying propped against his shoulder.

Right. Because _men_ carry their weapon. He's never seen Jon carry a weapon, and honestly, hasn't much contemplated what, if any sort, Jon would prefer. Because he doesn't think of Jon as a fighter. But now he is, and Jon's weapon is a… sniper rifle.

Jon can see the way he's watching, and shrugs a bit. "Like every officer, I have a service blaster, but I'm better with this."

Kylo blinks.

"I do keep telling you, I am actually an officer. I didn't just stumble in one morning and start reorganizing the uniforms. I'm combat rated in hand to hand, blaster, and with an honors specialization on sniper rifle. Just because I don't enjoy this sort of thing doesn't mean I didn't have to learn how to do it." He pats the stock of his rifle. "Or that I didn't learn how to do at least some of it, well."

Rey's staring at the long expanse of black metal in Jon's hands. "Is that a little black skull?" She asks as she sees the tiny black skull on the… middle part… she doesn't know what that part of the rifle is called.

He nods. "Means my range is over two klicks."

Kylo just blinks.

"It's not my full kit. But I didn't think lugging the entire case full of scopes, barrels, bullets, or the traj computer, was a good plan."

Kylo shakes his head a bit, and then says, "Have you ever… shot anyone?"

"Sims for the training, targets for the next level, got my cert and bumped over to my real job before there was a need for any killing on my part." He turns to Rey. "With the way the officer's tracks work, a LOT of people have to die before they'll call me up and put a weapon in my hand. Plus…" he shrugs a bit, "When sniper school was built, under Palpatine, he used to do things like assassinate political rivals. In the old days, my skills would have been used for something like that. Under Snoke…" He shrugs at that, again. "The old fucker didn't bother with stuff like that. I'm not a sharpshooter. That's a combat position. Run in, find a position on the fly, shoot, move again. That's not what I do." He pats his rifle. "I show up three days ahead of time, scout every angle, find a place to hole up, wait for the target, do the math, take them out, and then head off. Not the same thing, at all." He thinks about it. "Hell, the only reason it's likely still on the books as an option for organics is that Palpatine wanted humans, lots and lots of human, and wasn't so keen on droids, and Snoke likely never bothered to shift the training paths. I don't imagine many organics do this sort of work anymore."

Kylo and Rey both think about that for a moment.

Finally, Rey says, "What's your targeting range?"

He shrugs. "On a sim, I can hit something person-sized ten out of ten times at two point three four klicks. Got to have the right wind and scope, but… It's doable. Take the range further out and my success rate starts to drop, fast."

Kylo's still staring at the rifle. "Jon…"

"Yeah."

Kylo's staring at the little cartridges in the metal… thing… that's jutting partially out of the rifle. "Does that thing shoot projectiles?"

"It can. They're called bullets, Kylo. Gravity effects bullets. It doesn't effect light. Depending on your range, and how high you are, you might need an actual bullet to hit someone."

Rey blinks.

"If you're at the extreme end of my range, and the guys who are really good at this can get up to four klicks, and the planet is the right size, what _looks_ like a straight shot, isn't. So, with a bullet, you aim up a bit, and gravity takes the bullet down, and my traj computer tells me exactly what degree to shoot at, and boom, end of target. With a laser, the shot goes straight, often over the head of whatever it is you aimed at. So, for extreme shots, bullets. Closer range, laser." He touches, but does not move, a tiny switch near the trigger on his rifle. "Flick the switch and I can go from full automatic laser fire to bullets and back again. Though, again, I should never need to do more than two or three shots at a go."

"My ship…" Because the only guns Kylo ever uses are attached to a ship.

"Is in space, shooting at other things in space, all it needs are straight lines, Kylo. On terra firma, sometimes you need a shot that can curve."

"Right…" He stares at the rifle. "Neat."

"Neat?" Jon and Rey ask.

He shrugs a little. "No?"

Jon shakes his head a bit. "No one's ever told me that's _neat_ before."

* * *

"So, what does, 'really knows how to party' mean?" Kylo asks as they're heading, amid a pile of Stormtroopers, toward tonight's dinner.

"I don't think we'll get into it tonight," Jon says, aware of the pile of stormtroopers around them.

"But, apparently, at the right time of year, they have a massive week-long fertility festival, and… things get… wild," Rey says, not aware of the stormtroopers the same way Jon is.

"Wild?" Kylo asks with a brow raised.

"Imagine a whole planet of the fun zone on F-deck, for a week. Non-service businesses close down. Schools close. Non-essential military personnel are on leave. Everyone who can be off, is. And then they have a huge, planet wide, street party. Parades, live music, bonfires, dancing, food, costumes. They'll take months to prepare for it, and once Carnivale time hits, it's a free for all," Rey says. "Even the women are allowed out to frolic in the streets."

"And then a year and a half later, there's a crop of new baby Kress," Jon says.

"Are all Kress born…" Kylo asks.

"Then? Actually, yes, apparently," Jon says. "Somewhere along the line of their history making babies and fucking got divorced from each other, so…"

"Huge, massive party to celebrate the next crop of babies," Rey says.

"Huh…" Kylo thinks about the cold-blooded aspect. "Do they lay eggs?"

Jon nods. "Yep. Somewhere in each home, there's a climate-controlled room with their babies gently cooking away. A _long_ time ago, raids to steal fertilized eggs and breeding women were a thing. That's part of why men carry weapons all the time, and you rarely see their women outside of their homes."

"Women who can make eggs are rare here?" Kylo's thinking that might suggest why he hasn't seen any.

"Something like one for every six men," Rey says.

And that comment about 'things we do with our brothers' is also making more sense to him.

"The briefing Threepio sent said there should be female Kress at tonight's party, though," Rey adds. "Apparently, the ability to attract and keep women who can make eggs is a _major_ status symbol here. There's an intricate series of requirements for each additional wife, and…"

"It's complicated. Threepio basically told us to just nod and smile at whatever we ran into," Jon adds. "Apparently, nothing we'll see is… he chose the word… actionable."

"Ah…" Kylo says, wondering what the fuck _actionable_ means.

 _Worth ditching a 500 billion credit contract,_ Rey thinks back to him.

He nods. _Yes, there is that._

* * *

 _Nod and smile._ Okay…

So, as nodding and smiling goes...

First of all, they have, indeed, located the Kress women. And… they're… well… Um… _Nodding and smiling._

It's a very elegant dining situation. At least to Kylo's taste. Low sofas surround the main tables, set with food and drink and sparkly shiny tableware and… Apparently, the plan is to lounge on the sofas, and eat with company.

And for everyone who isn't his part of the party, that company is Kress ladies.

 _Status, huh?_ Jon thinks to him.

 _Apparently,_ Kylo thinks back.

They both look at Rey, who's just staring. At each of the sofas, there's a male Kress, who is apparently the main guest, and sitting… next to, near, on, or at the feet of him, are at least two, and at two the sofas, three Kress ladies in… very… small outfits, that appear to be comprised of mostly chains of rare and sparkly metals, set with shimmery gems.

 _You've worn bandages that covered more skin than that._ Rey thinks to him.

He nods slowly. _I know you're exaggerating, but I also think you're right._

"Ah, good!" Sirreths comes up to them. "I see you found the festivities. Kylo, you'll be sitting at my grandfather's table, and Grand Marshall Frakes, you'll be with my uncle." He looks at Rey, clearly panics for a second, and chokes out, "Lady Ren, you'll be seated with my father…" But she won't, not the way he understands that, so he shifts it to, "At my father's table."

"Excellent," Kylo says.

And everyone freezes. And unfreezes because Kylo and Rey can feel the problem is that Sirreths is horrified at the implications of leading a woman away from her spouse, even if they are staying in the same room.

 _Will it annoy you if I offer to escort you to your seat?_ Kylo thinks to Rey.

 _I have the feeling they're going to start passing out from the stress if you don't._

 _Yes, but I'm more concerned about your sense of propriety than theirs._

 _And I'm thinking_ 'five years, five hundred billion credits' _so my sense of propriety appears to be feeling rather flexible right now._

Kylo bites his lip to keep himself from laughing. He takes Rey's hand in his, and, once it's clear that he's more than willing to escort her to her seat, Sirreths relaxes.

When Rey's settled onto her own sofa, staff at her feet. Kylo bends down to kiss her, and then goes to his own sofa, next to the Primo.

He feels the eyes of every Kress in the room on him as he does that, and the wave of _Holy shit, he did it! Now what?_ coming from the Kress at Rey's table, but…

 _I've got this. You go get your table._ Rey thinks to him.

 _Okay,_ he thinks back. _Nodding and smiling._

He glances over to Jon, who's already seated, his rifle propped next to him, drink in hand, smiling widely, and looking like he's having the best time ever.

Well… If Jon can do it, he can, too, _right?_

He feels Rey's voice in the back of his head. _Right._

* * *

Status… Jon's mentioned that to him. And, of course, Ellie and Mirina have been working on those angles with Rey, so he's heard about it from that side, too. So, he's aware it's a thing, and how from system to system and culture to culture the rules of the game changes, but… This is just… fucking stupid.

Actually, no. It's likely set up just to make him feel a bit off.

Kylo looks around. A _lot_ off.

He's the only one at his table on a sofa by himself. It's clear where Rey and Jon are supposed to be. Here, at his feet, draped over his knees, hovering behind him, or something like that. The other 'men' here have their pets with them, a collection of what he assumes are extremely attractive examples of the Kress race in what appear to be as little clothing as their culture and climate allows. (And, honestly, from some of the thoughts he's catching, he's thinking that it's possible the women are wearing more clothing than usual, in an attempt to begin to try and cater some to Order mores. Apparently, the little panty-things they're all wearing are last minute additions.)

He did remember to _not_ offer his hand to any of the ladies. That worked out fine. He felt the _massive_ wave of appalled Kress emotions when he spoke directly to one without her husband starting the conversation first, and went leaping, mid-sentence to including her spouse into the conversation. They all relaxed when he did it, though half of them looked at Rey, sitting all by herself on the far side of the room, and then looked at all that empty space around Kylo on his sofa, and decided _humans are weird._

But, he is, slowly, with a lot of smiling and nodding, feeling like he's starting to understand how this works. Once one of the husbands starts a conversation, and includes the woman in it, he can speak directly to her, but only _once_ the husband has started the conversation, and each time the subject changes, they've got to go through this dance again.

He can feel that just because it's been a few hundred years since woman/child stealing was common, does not mean that the menfolk have let up on what constitutes 'polite' interactions. And, _anything,_ that might be considered getting to know a woman well enough to decide you might want to grab her, is _dangerous_ territory.

(He's not sure how to indicate that even if he did find Kress attractive, which he doesn't, he's _beyond_ happy with his own spouse and has _no interest whatsoever_ in grabbing a few Kress ladies. He's also not sure if that would help to relax things, or if they'd consider it an insult.)

But that's not the point.

The pre-supper chatting wanders on, and the conversation is, for the most part, pleasant, and the Primo, who's name appears to be Grytts, but no one other than his ladies use it, seems to be the kind of person that his dad would tell stories about working long cons with. He's a craggy old booger with more tricks up his sleeves than sleeves on his arms. So… He can sort of feel a kind of kinship, even if it is removed to arm length.

And then… status… The first course is settled in front of them.

The pets go from sitting with their men to _feeding_ them.

The ladies are draped around their men, feeding them little nibbles of the banquet laid out around them, rubbing their shoulders, petting their thighs… It's just… Either the Kress are vastly more sexually aggressive than he is, or they got some sort of rumor that he's something of a prude and are doing this just to annoy him, but…

Well, it's actually working.

It's not that he's bothered by the men around him enjoying their pets. It's mostly them looking at him like he's some sort of pitiful creature who can't afford his own pets. He's got pets. (Pets?… Shit, he doesn't like how he's starting to think about this. There's _way too much_ Kress in his head right now. He pulls his empathy back, and then forgets the stupid bloody rule about which of the women he can talk to when and… _Fuck!_ )

His pets are so good at what they do they're off at their own tables (Also all on their own, and he can feel Rey's table is genuinely confused with what to do with her, because she's supposed to be a pet, not her own person, and… She's taking care of that on her own. And there's some recognition that, at least with Jon, they're just messing with him, because no one at his table seems to be confused as to why he's there.) taking care of business.

His shoulders droop a bit as he gets it. All of the 'men' around him not only have extremely attractive people who do nothing but tend to their physical wants and pleasures, but they also have extremely sharp people who tend to the needs of their states.

Apparently, this is a world where pleasure may be part of doing business, but…

Or not. As he keeps smiling and nodding, and slowly eating each bit of food laid in front of him, he's noticing how some of the pets are watching him and the world around them. Interesting. Some of them are here just as decorations. Some are spies. Some of them are the brains behind the operation, and the 'man' they're tending to is actually the decoration.

He remembers something Ellie? Pat? He doesn't remember which one said it, but he's sure the other would agree, _By the time you get to this level, the spouses are not just fluff. And if you find one that is, something's_ wrong.

No one at this table is a decoration. Not really. Even if the man who's being doted on isn't aware of that.

But they likely wouldn't mind if he thought they were.

He sighs again, and takes a bite, that he feeds himself, (and gets some vaguely pitying looks aimed at him, any Kress of status considers a man feeding himself at a dinner like this unseemly. Even the pets do.) and tries to focus on the business at hand.

* * *

Dinner starts a bit tense at Rey's table. It's not that the Kress want to be unwelcoming, but…

It's the _height_ of rude for a man to start a conversation with a married woman. Blood has been and will again be shed for significantly smaller infractions of the laws of polite society.

And, yes, Kylo is here, but he's on the other side of the room, paying no attention to Rey. It'd be one thing if he were right next to her, monitoring and chaperoning this, but… He's in the middle of his own conversation, supremely unconcerned that his woman… (they're still not entirely sure of that) is all by herself, surrounded by strange men.

And they did sign up for this.

But… well… They were fairly sure that The Order was kidding. That they'd set this up as a test, to see how the Kress could handle things rolling in a way they weren't used to, but… They didn't expect the Master would actually _go through with it._

Actually, the whole thing has been perplexing. The repeated comments about the concubine needing his own rooms, and Rey sitting here, eating, on her own, not tending to her husband, and…

The fighting thing. Sirreths mentioned that Lady Ren and Lord Ren _fight each other._ The Prince and the Primo spent a good hour reading through everything they could find on human cultures, to see if that was common, but…

It's just _weird._ This is his _lady,_ and apparently, he's only got the one, and she's just… here… completely undefended… talking with them, or at least looking like she might attempt to do so, and…

And what man in his right mind leaves his woman out where anyone could just… grab her? (They're still not sure if this is the single biggest power move they've ever seen, or if Ren is completely insane and reckless. The ship makes them think this is a power move. He's daring them to be rude. If someone were to set a toe over the line, those Citykillers would be out and that'd be that, but… He is… young, and… His woman has her own weapon… Though it was his grandfather's so there's something, but… They don't know.)

And, of course, spontaneously starting conversation with strangers isn't exactly Rey's favorite thing, either, and on top of that, she can feel that the others at her table aren't sure what the rules are here, so…

She grits her teeth, smiles some, and then says, "I certainly heard the name of our food, but I have no idea what this is."

The men all glance at each other. She started the conversation, so they can answer, but they're still nervous, because Kylo is chatting with the Primo, and not keeping an eye on Rey, and what if he gets annoyed by this…

The Prince steels himself, takes a breath, tenses a little, and then says, "G'rllth?" (He visibly relaxes when Kylo doesn't go leaping up to tear his nose off.)

"Yes. I can see it's pink and square, but… Is it a fruit? Vegetable? Cake?" Rey picks it up and nibbles a corner off the small food. "It's tasty."

"It's a pickled root," Syrthiaa, the Prince's prime consort, says. She's visibly more comfortable with this than her man is, because she's allowed to talk to any woman, anywhere, anytime. That said, she is very uncertain about the staff, and keeps looking at it. Why would a married woman _want_ a weapon? Ren's small, but still… To Syrthiaa that looks like an insult to Kylo's skills. Rey may as well just go fuck other men in front of him. But… she glances at the concubine. Hells, Ren might like that.

It's clear The Prince is still feeling a bit off, but… It's also his favorite food, and he likes to talk about food, so… "They harvest them in the springtime, and then press them to get all the moisture out."

"It helps make them tender, too," Syrthiaa says.

The Prince nods. "They're almost rock hard right out of the ground, and so bitter they'll bring up welts on your tongue. But the press and pickling takes care of that."

"Once they're pressed, into the brine they go?" Rey asks.

"You've made pickles before?" Syrthiaa asks. She's starting to doubt that Rey is a woman. Yes, that's what they've been told, but she carries a weapon and cooks. Those are both man jobs. And she doesn't look all that different from the two men. Smaller, certainly, but men come in all sizes. But why lie about something like that. If Rey's a man… _Humans are weird!_

"Not this kind. But at home, when we'd get a good store of fresh fruit and veg in, we'd pickle what we didn't freeze or cook." She takes another bite. "This is the kind I like best, sweet sour, bright salt."

"What sort of fruit?" The Prince asks.

Rey thinks about that. "Peaches or plums. Have you ever had one of them before?"

The Prince shakes his head. "I don't even know what a peach or plum is."

"We've eaten all the plums, but I think we still have some of the pickled peaches left. If we do, I'll make sure to send you jar." Another long, quiet moment stretches out. Rey flails around, and comes up with, "If they're rock hard, and make your tongue blister, what made you decide to try and eat them?"

That pleases the Prince. He likes talking about Kress ingenuity. "Yes, most people give up when food tries to fight them back."

* * *

Rey never expected to run into a culture where martial valor extended itself to food preparation, but apparently, on Kreh, one fights to protect and hold one's home and family, _and_ to subdue one's food.

They like her stories of working on the microfarm (gardening and food cultivation are 'woman' jobs), and they're properly impressed by the fact that if cooking were to happen, Kylo will generally be the one to do it. (She sees the Prince's consort and wife share a look about that. And then glance over to Kylo, and back to her. She doesn't extend her senses enough to see what that was all about.)

She likes hearing about knife making technology, and family blades, and how fathers pass their knives down to their sons and that the first sign of being a man is the ability to catch, and then cook, the food the family lives on.

"Granted, these days, hunting down food is mostly done at the local market, but when our boys feel old enough, we go out for the ceremonial hunt, and invite all of the family and friends to partake of the meal they cook after," The Prince says.

"And, if we're lucky, said boy has paid enough attention to his lessons that we don't all get food poisoning," the Princess says.

"Been to a few exciting meals?" Rey asks.

"Danger is one of the great spices of life," The Prince says. "And it usually seasons coming of age meals, too."

* * *

Jon's having a pretty good meal. First and foremost, the Kress around him are not doing their best to walk on tiptoes, blindfolded, through shattered glass, without cutting themselves around him.

So, what, he's the concubine?

Male concubines are weird, but… Well, from everything they could find, Jon is a very pretty version of a human male, so… If Ren wants to keep him as a concubine, so be it.

(The other men at Jon's table all have _friends._ That's normal. They understand _that._ But wives and concubines are status symbols, signs of how many _women,_ who are _rare,_ you can care for. Kress men don't bring their male friends to things like this, because… Well, you bring your women to something like this to show them off, because not everyone has a _woman,_ but everyone has male friends, hell, half the men at this table have slept with the other half at least once, but… Well, humans are weird.)

Anyway, for Jon this is fairly similar to at least a few of the weddings he's attended over his years of life with his Mum. The conversation is flowing around in that small-talky sort of way of people all slapped into one place who don't much know each other but are trying to get along, and he can do that in his sleep.

The food is good. The sofa is comfortable. The drink is the first beverage he's ever had to water. (Kylo wasn't kidding about this stuff. He's fairly sure it'd strip paint if you needed it to.) And he's also wishing he'd brought wormwood tincture instead of gin, but… Well, he doubts Kylo even knows about the existence of the green fairy, let alone how much it might taste like the beverage he's sipping.

(He gets talking about wormwood tincture, and the rest of his table decides to see if the local beverage will produce a green fairy, so for a good twenty minutes, they're happily chatting away and playing with the drinks.)

The Kress are generally pleasant about the gin he brought along as a gift. It's way too soft of a beverage for them, but they seem to enjoy the flavor, and all in all, his table is having a good time.

He is not missing the fact that they do _not_ talk business with him. He can go on, at length, about potential troop deployments, or where on the border things are weakest, and tactical assessments of the Kress XO planets, but…

Pleasant small talk, some deeper and more involved conversation about how bullets work, because, like Kylo they seem a little fuzzy on how gravity and wind and atmosphere effects projectile weapons, but it's very clear in how they're steering the conversation, that they're awfully certain Jon's title is ceremonial, not functional.

He's thinking that before they do more of these, someone, and he's thinking his Mum would be the right person for it, needs to spend a bit more time with Threepio going over the concept of 'status.' He might know the protocol in the sense of which fork to use when, but he's missed the point of this meal. It's abundantly clear to Jon that for this dinner is supposed to be about pleasure, maybe with a little business thrown in around the edges, and Kylo was supposed to bring his pets, not his highest ranking officers.

This is _supposed_ to be a party.

He smirks a little when he remembers that the reason why the Kinears aren't here is because they're at a different supper. If the Kress are this confused by him and Rey, he can't imagine how they'd react to Kinear and Ellie.

* * *

It's toward the end of the meal. The alcohol has been flowing. (Though Kylo hasn't been drinking it. He'd be under the table if he attempted to finish one glass of the local 'wine.' Let alone the three or four each of his table mates have had.) The Primo, having decided he's a fairly decent person, is feeling rather brave, and secure. Getting over the 'details' of the meeting means they've actually got a decent map in place for a functional working relationship. Spending an hour talking blades and fighting technique has proven to him that Ren can handle himself. Spending two hours of dinner, watching the man navigate a culture he obviously doesn't know, but doing a good job of it tells the Primo that Kylo can pay attention and learn and adapt. All things he values.

He takes a sip of his wine, handing the cup back to his Prima, who kisses his shoulder as she takes it, as he says, "Your lady," he nods toward Rey, who is talking with one of the diplomats at her table, "what is she doing all the way over there?" He's also wondering why she's wearing so much clothing, but he's got the good sense to know that's not an appropriate question. (At least, not unless he can get more alcohol into Ren, and from the looks of it, that's not happening tonight.)

Kylo thinks for a moment how to answer that. "I've been able to feed myself since I was a toddler." He picks up another bite of… whatever this is… it's small, tasty finger food, and if he gets some time alone with Rey, he really would like to play with it and her. There is something… civilized… about having supper on a sofa with your beloved, feeding each other little nibbles, and he certainly wouldn't mind setting his life in such a way as that becomes a regular part of their rotation.

He pops the morsel in his mouth, demonstrating. "I can't run multiple conversations with several people on several topics at once. So, the two most valuable people in my life, my most beloved and trusted companions are here, doing what I need them to do, talk, listen, make deals, keep the Order moving in the direction it needs to be."

His host smiles at that. He nods to the table Rey is at. "My son is chatting with your wife. And my brother is at the table with your…"

"Grand Marshall Frakes."

"Not your concubine?" It's clear that the Primo has been told this. It's also clear he doesn't much believe it. Kylo gets a flash of how some cultures are uptight about things like concubines, and try to hide them among the powerful man's retinue. They assume that's what he's doing.

"No. My _friend_." As soon as he's said it, he knows he just tripped into some context that makes sense to them, but… shit. Yep. He can feel what the Primo does with his _friends._ That word, does not, on any level, mean the same thing to him. "The man who runs my diplomatic corps."

"Ah…" The Primo takes another sip of his drink, and leans forward, voice low, "Are you not… lonely… with them taking care of business?"

Kylo gets hit with a very vivid image of what the Primo _thinks_ his pets are supposed to be doing. It's him on the sofa, Rey in his lap, wearing what the locals consider clothing for women. He certainly wouldn't mind an almost naked Rey, glittering with chains of rare metals and gems sitting in his lap keeping him company. It's the other half of the image, the mostly naked Jon decked out in similarly sparkling chains and gems, curled into his side hand-feeding him a morsel of supper, he's got no idea what to do with.

It's a _nice_ image. Shit. He doesn't know if the part of his brain that eventually decided having Unthar rubbing on him was a good time is now thinking, well, Jon is pretty, and being petted is fun, and he likes food, and if this is how the locals do things, maybe it'd be a good time. Or if the Primo's ideas of proper behavior and how _men_ are supposed to enjoy their status is so firmly planted in his head right now that it's really messing with his sense of propriety.

He decides not to ponder that too closely. "I like… not being lonely… as much, if not more than, the next person, but… No insult or slight to your ladies, but I prefer the company of my wife, and since she's significantly more valuable to me talking over there, than she would be here, tending to me," and again he feeds himself a bite of whatever it is, "she's over there. We'll… reconnoiter after."

"But not your man?" one of the pets asks.

"I'm sure we'll talk with him, too. Probably share an after-dinner drink and chat."

He can feel they're all interested in this. "But not his bed?" one of the High Commanders asks.

"No."

"Why? He's…" The Primo's not-wife stares at Jon, who senses it, looks up, and smiles at her. "young, fertile, and attractive by human standards, correct?"

Kylo's not sure what to say to that. Finally, he comes up with, "He's young and attractive by human standards. I don't know if he's fertile, but… If he is… He… Uh… Wouldn't be with me. Human males can't make babies with other human males. And… Uh… Most humans are only or primarily attracted to one sex, and he's not the sex I find attractive."

He can feel the rest of them looking from Jon to Rey and back again, but they appear to be having a difficult time figuring out what differences Kylo sees between them. Granted, if Kylo hadn't wandered into the room of sex, he wouldn't be able to catalog the differences between Kress males and females, beyond general size, even with the ladies wearing basically nothing. (In fact, right now, the main way he's able to tell which ones are the ladies is the lack of clothing. He looks from Rey to Jon, and with Jon in his dress whites and Rey in creams and golds… They're basically wearing the same outfit.)

"But he is the sex your wife finds attractive?" The Prima asks, deciding to try it from that angle, rather than asking what exactly it is that Jon does or doesn't have that Rey doesn't or does have.

"Yes."

"And he is also your wife's friend?"

"Also, yes." He mentally winces as he remembers that they don't mean friend the way he means friend.

And they're all staring at him in wonder. And again, Kylo has no idea how to respond to this. Finally, after a few moments of just staring blankly at Rey, he comes up with, "Many, not all, but many humans prefer one mate for life."

"Oh," The Prima's eyes light up in recognition. She's heard of this before. "And you and your woman are two of them?"

"Yes."

"Ah…" The Primo says, looking toward Rey as he takes another sip of his drink. Then he says, "Does it get boring?"

"My wife and I don't find it so."

"It has to severely limit the number of children you can have," the pet chimes in.

"Most humans only have a few children. It's physically possible for a pair to have a child every year or two, but most of them don't," Kylo replies

"Why? A king should have children, many, many children. That's how he keeps his line strong," the pet says.

"We keep our lines strong by having a few children and investing a lot of time, energy, and attention in them. I've been told it also keeps the political infighting to a minimum."

The pets all glance at each other, and Kylo can feel that each one of them is backing a different one of the Primo's sons or grandsons, so… They appear to get his point.

"It cuts down on the cries of favoritism, and makes for a more harmonious home life," Kylo adds.

The Primo smirks. "There is something to be said for a home where no one is fighting."

Kylo nods, intently. "Yes, there is." He thinks about it a bit more, and then adds, "My parents tended to be quarrelsome. I have no wish to repeat that in my own home."

"Ah…" The Primo nods. "Did they… mate for life?"

Kylo blinks. Opens and closes his mouth. That's not a question he's ever contemplated. Though, especially with the idea that they may not have even married… "I… was very young when I left home. I know they often didn't live together, and I know my parents split up before they died. I don't know if they had other mates. They had different interests and goals in life. That was enough to make them quarrelsome. If there was anything else, I didn't know about it."

The Primo nods at that, too. "It is wise to keep children out of the affairs of their parents. At least, while they are children."

"I agree."

"You and your lady do not have any children?" the pet sitting on the Primo's knee says.

"Yet. We do not have any children, yet. We hope to have some soon."

The Kress all share a look. "When is soon? Our nestlings will be joining us in three months!" the Prima replies.

Kylo blinks and realizes that this is a species that doesn't do pregnancy, and he's got them thinking they've also got a climate-controlled room somewhere with their babies cooking away.

"We don't know, yet. Eventually."

"Why not?" One of the high command's women asks.

Kylo doesn't know if the Kress don't consider that a rude question, or if they just don't care. "Among other things, I've been told that it's easier, among humans, to pass down your kingdom to your children if you have a wedding with their mother before they're born." (It's after he's answered that he realizes she was asking why he didn't know when their babies would be joining them, not why didn't they have babies cooking away, yet.)

"You've not yet married your wife?" That has all of the Kress around him looking perplexed. Leaving his woman unattended where anyone could… anything… is already bizarre enough. Wandering about with a woman who isn't even his…

"We married more than a year ago. We've not had a wedding yet. But for many humans it's the wedding that makes it legal or binding or real or whatever, so…" He shrugs that off. "In our faith, we marry first, and have weddings later. How do you do it?"

The Primo smiles at him, and his Prima nuzzles against him with a fond look on her face. "Our weddings are _fun._ "

Kylo smiles and takes another bite of his supper. "I like fun. And the Maji haven't come up with a formal wedding system, yet. So, help me learn more of how people do this getting married thing." He relaxes a little. When the Kress are talking, his job is a lot easier.

The Primo begin, "The first part is waiting for the right time of year. When the Dritths star is bright in the dawn sky of Kre'Ennas, that marks the start of the wedding season. That's a few standard months from now, and two of my grandsons will be going out for their first women then. Suitors will make their plans, gather their closest friends, and strongest supporters. They then chat with the families of the ladies they are interested in, pay the bride price, and then execute the plans. One night, after the star is bright, they'll steal into her family home, fight off the other suitors, and take her to their own home. If a suitor can keep her for three days, she is his. If not, then he cannot try to take her again.

"And the bride price he'd paid her family is forfeit," the Prima adds.

"What happens to the other suitors?" Kylo asks. He's very much sure he's missed several of what are likely important details of how this woman stealing thing works, especially if this is also part of their wedding customs.

The Primo grins. "Depends on how serious they were. Many of them will run off if you show up with enough men. If they don't, usually bruises and broken bones. These days, a wedding raid rarely results in death."

"You've been living with your woman how long?" the Primo's pet asks.

"Almost two years now."

"Beyond married then. Once the suitor has kept his woman three days, he opens his home to a great party, invites her family, friends, and all of his family and friends, too. As much of the town as he can afford to fete," she replies.

Right, rules for how many women you can claim, and how much you've got to be able to afford, and… more status symbols. "We're working on getting the party set. I'm sure an invitation will be coming your way once we've got a date set. If you chose to attend, spend some time with the K'Aran delegation. They have similar traditions to yours, and I have the sense you may get on."

"Excellent." The Primo grins widely. "We shall look forward to helping you capture your bride."

Kylo grins at that, and then shakes his head a bit, "I'm thinking that's unlikely to be part of the celebration. A large number of my allies would find stealing a woman, even one who wants to be stolen, deeply distasteful. Plus, there's something… awkward about stealing a woman from your own home."

"Return her to her father's home for a night?" The Primo suggest, and then looks slightly abashed as he remembers Rey's an orphan.

"That's no longer an option," Kylo says, voice flat, killing the subject.

"Ah." The Primo says, looking a little disappointed at the lack of a good wedding raid.

"You bow to the tastes of others?" the pet asks, having noticed what Kylo said about his allies.

Kylo smirks at that, too. Then he takes another bite of dinner, with his own fingers, and pops it into his own mouth. "I do whatever the hell I want when I want." He nods to Rey off on her own. "Especially in private. But, for show, I've been known to bend to make things easier for all involved." He looks to Rey, who seems to have her dinner companions well in hand. He gently strokes the scar on his face, very much aware of the fact that he carried Rey off on literally his first meeting with her. Though he didn't keep her for three days. "That said, the man who thinks I, or anyone else, is going to carry that woman off and just keep her, is the man who's never met her."

The Primo laughs at that. "Well, it's true that, generally, successful wedding raids involve women who don't exactly _struggle_ when you come for them."

"In the sense that when you came, I lept into your arms, Grytts, and giggled the whole way out of my father's palace."

He gently boops her on the nose. "Hush woman, I carried you off with great bravery and risk to my skin as tradition demands."

"Of course, dear."

* * *

As they're breaking up for the night, The Primo pulls Kylo aside. "Just you and I, no one else listening, no one judging. We don't deal with humans much, but… We've had other visitors who are… reticent about taking advantage of our… permissive hospitality. Afraid whispers will get back to their home worlds of… unseemly behavior. I can promise you; we are sensitive to the need for secrecy. All just a mix-up. Your Concubine…"

Kylo rubs his forehead. "Is really just a very close friend." Kylo purses his lips, suddenly understanding the foot dragging on getting Jon his own rooms. Then he gets another layer of it. If the Kress read up on human cultures and paid attention to the mores of the Empire… Of course he'd be keeping anything with Jon quiet. "If a suite of rooms for him doesn't appear between now and us retiring to bed, he'll take my suite, and Rey and I will avail ourselves of the play room."

"Really?" The Primo is literally flatfooted by that. He just… can't imagine it.

"Really."

"Why?" The Primo is staring at Jon, who's walking next to Rey, both of them talking to another Kress. He has his hand on Rey's wrist, and Kylo has very obviously not removed the offending appendage from Jon's body, so… It's clear to the Primo that Jon and Rey have to have a deeply intimate relationship, one that Kylo allows and likely encourages.

The Primo keeps watching them, and Kylo can feel that by dressing Rey in a very similar option to what both he and Jon are wearing, and by carrying her weapon, she's ticking all of the Primo's ideals of male, so he can't for the life of him figure out what the problem with Jon is.

A deeper layer hits. This is not a human. He can't, just by a casual glance, tell the difference between human males and females. The only way he knows to categorize them is by clothing and hair, and right now, Rey's hair is basically indistinguishable from Kylo's, and the outfit she's in looks a whole lot like his and Jon's, and… They've done such a good job making her 'male' by Kress standards, so she'd have the right status here to be understood as her own person, that they've completely borked any ability of the Kress to understand why Kylo isn't into _men._

"I'm aware of the fact that Jon is very… pretty… by human male standards, but I'm not interested in him beyond as a very good friend. And, no, I don't know why I don't find human males attractive. I just don't."

The Primo keeps looking between Jon and Rey, and is slowly starting to see the differences. Though mostly he seems to think females are just smaller males. They don't seem _that_ different to him. "We've read… It's a primarily visual attraction, no? It's not a scent thing or something like that."

Kylo doesn't laugh. "Scent can be part of it, but it's primarily, at least at first, a visual attraction. Personality comes into play, as well."

The Primo exudes a sense of feeling like he might be getting a handle on this. "You like your blonde's personality, just not his looks?"

Kylo tries to thread his way through that and fails spectacularly. He can't imagine what his relationship with Jon would look like if Jon were female. He'd like to believe they'd still be warm and close friends if Jon were Jane, but he just has no idea. (Actually, he's got the sense that they wouldn't be close or warm friends because the guilt of genuinely liking someone he might have been attracted to, especially when he and Rey were new, would have just about killed him. And, of course, beyond and above all of that, if Jon had been Jane, they'd have never met because she'd be off working for the House of Frakes making pretty dresses…) Finally, he says, "Yes, I genuinely like Jon. I enjoy being around him. He… doesn't look right to me. Do you… not have friends? People you like being near and spending time with but don't want to have sex with?"

The Primo genuinely considers that for a while, and then says, "I… don't think we do this the same way you do. Usually, if we enjoy each other's personalities, we enjoy each other's bodies, too."

Kylo thinks about that. "That's… as best I know… not how most human cultures work."

The Primo nods; he smiles. (It feels a little odd, and somewhat comforting that this is just as weird to him as it is to Kylo.) Then he looks at Jon and Rey some more. "Just women seems limiting."

"It probably is, but…" He shrugs again, watching Jon and Rey amble along, well aware that just _anything_ isn't how either of them work. And, after a moment, somewhat aware that, if human females were very rare, maybe they'd also adapt to be less interested in looks. But they aren't. And he isn't, so… "I don't feel any issues with it. It's not a source of displeasure or discontent. It just is how I am. I like female humans, and Rey above all others."

"Humans are weird about sex."

"You'd be amazed at how often I hear variations on that sentiment."

The Primo laughs at that. "We'll take care of your arrangements. Have that after-dinner drink and reconnoiter. By the time you're ready for bed, your Grand Marshall will have rooms commiserate with his rank."

"Thank you."


	65. Pleasure

5/20/2

Once back in their rooms, settled in on the sofas in the living room, and 'having that drink,' Jon says to Rey and Kylo, "Did I ever tell you about Tasha's first solo wedding?"

Both of them shake their heads.

"Yeah, I can't see why I would have, but it's feeling relevant now." He takes a sip of his tea. "So, in a lot of cultures, weddings involve travel. Often a lot of it. So, usually, if you've got people who are going to be staying overnight, especially a few overnights, it's considered polite to have something for them to do in the nights before and after the wedding.

"And, in many cultures, that pre-wedding party will be… rambunctious. And in many cultures, it will be a solemn evening of prayer and contemplation." He takes another sip. "Likewise, there are some cultures where one marries for status and wealth, and has mistresses for romance and fun. Basically husband and wife are… business or political partners, who share a bank account, property, and some children, and they'll have some sort of arrangement for romantic/sexual adventures with someone else."

Rey's starting to grin, and Kylo can feel how this is going to work out.

"So, Tasha's on her own for the first time. We, meaning my family, I was maybe two at the time, made the dresses for the wedding, the pre-wedding parties, and the after party, so, she's on for any last-minute fixes or whatnot. The other catch on this one is that this is a royal wedding between two houses that between them control about two thirds of the planet they were on. Now, neither house is particularly friendly or familiar with the other one, but they want to make sure the third house, which is bigger and better armed than either of them are, but not both together, doesn't overpower them, so… wedding time."

"So," Rey says, looking very amused, reaching for her own tea.

"So," and Jon grins. "The bride's family shows up for the night before party with their wives and prayer books. The groom's family shows up with their mistresses and the recreational pharmaceuticals. They had _radically_ different ideas of what the night before party was going to entail. Both sides were pissed at the other one, though the wedding did go off, but only because everyone'd already spent too much money to call it off."

"And, you think something similar just happened?" Kylo says.

"It looked like that to me. I don't know if Threepio doesn't know that some parties are business and some are pleasure, but…"

"But that was supposed to be a pleasure party?" Rey asks.

"I think so," Jon says. "I mean, they weren't talking business with me. They weren't even in danger of getting close to talking business with me."

Rey nods. "We just did cultural stuff. Food… Getting homes set up. I started talking about moving soon, and the ladies liked that. Apparently, setting up a home is a proper girl thing to do here. They had a lot of ideas about colors and textures and architecture."

Jon nods. "It makes sense, they want to 'get to know' Kylo, so an evening of good food, relaxing with his pets… That's probably what they were expecting."

"And we showed up with the wives and prayer books instead of the mistresses and recreational pharmaceuticals?" Kylo says.

"That's my read on it. I'm sure Threepio knows which words to say, and what fork to use, but my guess is he's probably a little fuzzy on when to party, and when to _party,_ and what the differences between the two might be."

Kylo sighs, nods, sips his drink, and says, "Well, breakfast tomorrow, and the signing. What do you think that's supposed to be?"

"Who's coming?" Jon asks.

Kylo thinks. "Rey's the only woman going."

"Business, not pleasure," Jon says.

"Any ideas on how to figure this out ahead of time?" Kylo asks. He's thinking maybe things would have been awkward with the three of them on the sofa, too, but a different, and likely more fun, sort of awkward.

"Right now, I'm thinking we can stick with flat out asking. Eventually, Threepio will have enough data about this sort of thing to figure it out correctly," Jon says. "I'm also thinking that it's likely a good plan to indicate that the wedding invitation is for a fun gathering."

"Maybe not. I talked with them a little about Kress weddings—"

There's a soft knock at the door, and the sound of one of the stormtroopers opening it.

The Seneschal, who's name went galloping out of Kylo's mind less than a minute after he heard it the first time, is standing there, looking a little embarrassed. "Master Ren. We have found a room for your… the Grand Marshall."

 _Was that ten whole minutes?_ Jon thinks to Kylo.

Kylo doesn't laugh.

"Wonderful. Let me grab my kit, and…" And one of the stormtroopers from outside comes in, apparently under the impression that just standing around is rather boring, so he might as well pretend to be useful.

Jon directs him (her?) to his kit, and then waits for the Seneschall to lead the way. He just turns around and Jon says, "Oh."

It's the room directly across the hall from Kylo and Rey's.

Fortunately, the Seneschal goes blind to anything not directly in front of him when he gestures to the door. That way he misses the sniggering and eye rolling, and the fact that the two stormtroopers stationed at Kylo and Rey's door are also giving each other looks.

Jon nods to the Kress, presses his hand to the pad, and opens the door. He glances around. From what he can see, the room is identical to Kylo and Reys. "Keyed to my palm now?"

"Yes, sir. Just press your hand and it will open."

"Lovely. I'm sure it's fine. When we finish our conversation, I'll head over."

"Ah, yes, of course." Kylo can feel that the Kress is firmly convinced that Jon will do no such thing, but that doesn't much matter.

Jon waves the Kress off, waits a beat for the stormtrooper to drop his stuff in the room, and then return to his post, this time outside of his door, and returns to the central seating in the living room with Kylo and Rey. When the door to Kylo and Rey's room slides shut he says, "So, what did you say to the Primo that finally got me a room?"

"I told him that: No, we're not having sex. No, I'm not attracted to other men. No, you aren't sleeping with Rey, either. No, we aren't the Empire so I don't need to hide a male lover if I had one, but I don't. Really, you're here as a professional and my friend. No, I mean it, for real this time, swear to the Force, I'm really only fucking my wife. No, it's not boring. Really, _just a friend._ Yes, humans have friends they don't have sex with. Wait, you guys fuck all of your friends… Okay, he's my… adviser. Yes, I've been told humans are weird about sex a lot."

Jon and Rey are both laughing at this recital.

"And after I did that about six more times, he finally decided that I probably was telling the truth, and, boom, you've got a room."

Jon looks amused by that. He sips his tea. "I've stunned them all with my charm and beauty, so they can't figure out how I didn't woo you to my bed?"

Kylo laughs at that. "Apparently fucking your friends is just how it works here. Not enough ladies to go around, so…" He snuggles in with Rey, "How'd your table go?"

"Tense." She takes a gulp of her drink. "They… I half want to see about getting some of the ladies alone, and just… sort of… maybe slap them a little. I mean, not for real, but…" She sighs. "Okay, no, I could feel it, at least for the ladies at the table. Just being female makes you… important. Male Kress will literally die just to call you theirs, and the more of them that do, the bigger the deal you are. Those bride prices… A family has a girl, twenty-years later, when she's an adult, they never have to worry about money again. Every suitor pays. The money goes to her family, no matter what, and whoever manages to grab her, and keep her, gets to keep her, and… Back in the day, armed guards were often part of keeping her, but these days it's more about making sure she wants to stay." She takes another drink. "Houses, I mentioned that. So, part of making sure your lady wants to stay is that she's got free range to do whatever it is she likes with her home."

"Her home?" Jon asks.

"Yeah, each wife/concubine gets her own home, and inside that home, her word is law. Apparently, you do _not_ fuck with a woman in her own home. You know how they got all nervous about being near me. In my own home… Any infraction can get you killed, and major ones, that'll bring out the entire clan against your whole clan for revenge. A slighted mother-in-law wields a LOT of power, if that slight happened in her home. Likewise, until they become adults, the children, and any eggs she lays, are hers, too. And women can sell unfertilized eggs, as they see fit. There's a decent number of men here who don't have a woman, but do have a son or two."

"So, to get a woman… A man needs…" Kylo leads.

"Enough money for a dwelling of his own. A home for her, because if she doesn't want him in her home, he doesn't get to live there. He can only visit. Enough friends to set up a functional raid. And the money for a bride price, and the party that comes after. Women are _expensive_ here," Rey says. "And… I didn't get explicit confirmation, but if they decide to leave, you're out a lot of money, and have no woman."

Kylo inclines his head. "I could feel some of that. Part of why they get so nervous about any other man getting too close to one of their women. They don't want to lose one."

Rey nods. "Still… Feels…" She's not sure what the word for what she's feeling is. "Pets. You were thinking that a lot. The male Kress have their pets. And they… seem to like being pets."

"Icky territory?" Jon asks.

Rey likes that word for this feeling. "Yeah. Feels… squirmy."

Kylo's stroking the back of her neck, not commenting on that, at all.

Jon nods at that. "I spent a lot of time making dresses for girls whose whole lives, birth to death, were about which man she could attract, and which men she would raise. Of course, some of them, like Ellie, turned that into a partnership that changes galaxies. And some went on to be pretty, pretty pets. Like everything else, it's probably all about what you're willing to do with it, and what you can."

"And if the man in question is worth a bucket of warm spit?" Kylo adds.

"Interesting turn of phrase," Jon replies, wondering where he could have possibly gotten that bit of verbiage.

"Do we have recruiting stations here as part of the deal?" Rey asks, distracting Jon from where buckets of warm spit may exist.

"Not sure." Kylo didn't real the whole contract. It's six hundred pages long, and for all he knows it's got a clause in there allowing the Kress to raid his ship for women. He's just trusting that Threepio wouldn't let that happen.

"Maybe…" Rey start.

Jon's shaking his head. "I get where you're going with that, but it'll be trouble."

Rey raises a skeptical brow at him.

Jon rolls his eyes a bit. "I mean, no, we won't ban them from joining us, but best I can tell, if we put recruiting stations here, we don't have a way to only get female Kress. The male ones will break the contract if we try that. If we set up recruiting stations in general, on the idea that maybe some females will get to us, we'll end up with a lot of male Kress, and people who think it's appropriate to just grab women are likely to be… troublesome in any territory we're going to claim as ours. If we're going to recruit here, we're going to need something outside of our basic specs to…" Jon looks in his cup, arranges his thoughts a bit more, "Like Kylo was saying to me, we've got to get a culture into place, and it probably starts with the idea that any member of the Order is a member of the Order. We're all… people. No pets."

"And until we've got that hammered into their heads, we'll have a hard time with anyone who gets to one of our main stations and starts trying to grab his own pets?" Kylo asks.

"That's my thought. I don't know if they'd try it with non-Kress women, but… We don't want to find out the hard way. Especially while the treaties are still new," Jon says.

All three of them think _Five hundred billion credits over five years._

Rey doesn't love that, but she can also see the idea that importing a lot of new troubles likely isn't exactly what they're hoping for. And the easiest way to keep those down is by not sticking recruiting stations all over this system.

Jon takes one last sip of his tea, and then glances around a bit. "So, breakfast tomorrow?"

"That's the plan. Breakfast, signing the contract, and then back to the _Supremacy,_ " Kylo says.

"Okay. Then I'm going to turn in. Be fresh and pretty for tomorrow," Jon says with a wink and a smirk. He stands up, stretches a bit, and finishes with, "Wouldn't do for you to turn up to one of these with a droopy concubine."

Rey snerks at that. "Like you're ever droopy."

His smile's blasterproof. "I'm just really good at faking it."

She stands up, takes both of his hands in hers, and kisses his cheek. "We'll talk more about that later?"

Jon rolls his eyes a bit, and both Kylo and Rey can feel him mentally sigh. He appreciates they're concerned for him, but he'd rather be getting less attention along those lines.

"Or not," Rey says, and he flashes her a real smile, before squeezing her hands, letting go, flipping Kylo a lazy salute, and heading to his own room.

* * *

When Jon leaves, Kylo looks to Rey, a lot of hope in his gaze.

She smiles back at him. Jon's been gone for approximately 30 seconds and Kylo's already thinking about that little fantasy she dropped into his head earlier.

"How about you go and get cleaned up, and I'll get things ready?" she asks.

He's more or less leaping toward that. "Let me know when you're ready?"

"I'll probably be ready before you are, but, sure."

He stands and pulls her close, kissing her deeply. There's a lot in that kiss right now. One layer, the top and fullest of them is just sex. Pleasure and want and joy. Through it, concern about Jon. Deeper, underneath, pets, belonging, care, and all the layers of that.

She nips his lip. "Get cleaned up, Opal."

That hisses through him. Opal is _her pet._ And he likes that _very_ much.

* * *

Once Kylo's more or less sprinted off to the refresher attached to the main bedroom, Rey fetches her own bag. There are a few goodies in there.

She'd been asleep, mostly. She kept waking up through the night, her body looking for Kylo's and finding just cold bed next to her. It was easier in New Alderaan. Strange place, strange bed, her sleeping mind didn't expect him to be near. But in their own bed, under their own blankets, with the pillows that smell like them… Every time she rolled over, she'd wake a bit, and reach out. She could feel him, awake, but resting deeply, as his ship hurtled toward Kreh.

She'd been drifting, not really awake, not really asleep when a bright spark of deeply active sexual interest went zinging through her mind. It took her a moment to figure out why she was dreaming of an oddly shaped sofa, let alone why it was so erotically charged, and then she realized it was Kylo's mind. He was awake and looking at the piece of furniture, and very… interested… in the options it presented.

Ever since that first video they watched, the one with the "physical therapist," there's been this fantasy in his head. She hasn't unraveled all the ins and outs of it… Well, all the ins and outs... The _ins and outs_ aren't too complicated. But maybe not all the details or needs. But in the video, the woman was bigger, she was able to pin her man, and… Rey just _can't_ do that for Kylo. He's just too bloody big for it.

But he likes the idea of it. Not Rey being larger than him. That's not the important part. Being held down, surrendering, completely, to someone who'll just… take care of him and make him feel good. Giving himself over to someone's who values him, as he is, not as he could be for them. Someone who cares for his needs, his pleasures, _him._

And then there was this sofa… She opens the door to the playroom and looks at the thing. Three curves, two convex, one concave between the convex curves, and… He can sort of drape himself over it, and… The fact that he's got twenty-five centimeters on her, at least fifteen of them in his legs, just… Doesn't matter all of a sudden.

Her torso is still too short to really… drape herself over him, but… With the sofa doing the heavy lifting as it were, he can drape himself over it, and she can kneel behind him, line up properly, and grab his wrists, and really _fuck him,_ and she knows he _wants_ that.

Wants it hard and steady and real.

Being a pet might be squirmy territory for her, but he'd fall into it in a heartbeat, assuming someone actually treated him like he was _valuable._ He'd be her crown jewel, adored and cherished and petted, dwelling in a soft-focus world of easy options, kind words, and soft touches without a second thought, and not even the hint of a vaguely squirmy sensation in his mind.

If all he had to do was _exist_ and be adored for it, that's all Kylo would need.

Rey surveys the sofa a bit more. It does look comfortable and likely very good for anything they might want to do. She heads over and sits on it. Kneels on it. Wiggles around to see how stable it is. (Maybe a human-sized one would be better, but… There are advantages to something that's just a bit too big.)

It's… good.

She keeps looking away from the sofa. Distracted from what she may do on or with it. It's the room. It's… not good.

There's just… so many naked, fucking Kress all over the place, and… It's not that she finds them ugly or wrong or whatever, it's just… They're distracting. And not in a good, 'this is making me excited' sort of way, but in a, 'What could they possibly be doing? How do those things even fit together? Can that really feel good? Probably not for humans…' sort of way.

She eyes the door.

She eyes the sofa.

She's about to measure the sofa with her hands, thinking it's got to be close, when it occurs to her that they got the sofa _into_ the room, so it's got to fit.

Rey opens the door, uses her Force to grab the sofa, and gently hovers it out of the room of sex and into the living room. Maybe it's not as aesthetically pleasing stuffed between the living room chairs and the wall, but the plain room is a lot _less_ distracting, and hopefully a lot more conductive to happy human sex.

The rest of getting ready…

She opens her bag and then takes her uniform off.

She didn't bring a whole lot to play with. Just the strap-on, several blister packs of lube, and something pretty. She's never tried the belt on, but it can't be that complicated, and it's not. Mostly like stepping into very snug panties. Having the dildo protruding out from her hips feels… weird.

She's not sure if it's sexy. Her first reaction, looking down at it, is mostly wanting to giggle. She wiggles her hips a bit, and since it's not fully inflated it flops around a little. (Sometimes, when Kylo's feeling really playful, he'll do that after a bath, shimmy around for her, shaft flopping about, and it always makes her laugh. Apparently, it works with a fake shaft, too.)

There's another fantasy in his head. He's shared this one with her when they went shopping for this. It's her, wearing this thing, with it inflated and full, stroking lube onto it, staring at him, knowing what she's going to do with it. That one's very bright in his mind.

That she's going to own him, love him, take him, wrap him inside and out around her, and… It's bright and hot and sexual, but it's also deep and dark and needy. It's all of those cold sluggish places inside him craving to be filled with her warmth and light, literally and metaphorically.

She hits the little controller that goes with it, and pumps it up. They've played with the plugs enough that she knows he can handle about two of her fingers worth. She sets this at more than that, closer to the size of his shaft, knowing he likes the visual of more. Likes the idea of it full and hard and firm, and… well, if reality isn't quite that big, it's not like he'll be in a good position to really see the difference.

She lays the lube packs on the edge of the sofa, within easy reach.

The last bit is entirely her doing, her idea of sexy. She was on F-deck, on her own, strolling around, going under the scanners, and saw it. It just… tickled her fancy. It's the first piece of clothing she's ever bought for herself, by herself. It's completely impractical, would never do at their home on Lirium, but… She just… _likes_ it.

She pulls on the soft silky robe. It's short, only coming to mid thigh. And the fabric is so thin she can practically see the goosebumps rising on her skin at the slither of it across her flesh. She doesn't have Jon's eye for colors so she's not sure if the soft, blushed pink is a good color on her skin, but she likes it. Likes all of this, soft and silky and pretty. She looks down, hard, black, leather and plexiplast.

Soft and hard, silk and… well, it's not steel, but it might as well be…

 _Come out, Opal._ Rey thinks to him, and a second later, Kylo, naked and eager, is all but leaping out of the bedroom to her.

* * *

He's going to die.

She knew he had this idea in his mind, and she took it right out, and… Holy fucking shit! This is even better.

Except, of course, for the fact that it's going to kill him. She's standing there, grinning at him, dildo on, gleaming in the soft light, stroking… (whimper, moan) _stroking_ it, and…

Oh Force, her hair and the… robe… is soft and loose, and he can just see the shape of her nipples rising high and full against the fabric, and her hand is just slipping back and forth over the dildo, and… She slips one hand to her breast, teasing her nipple… She's so soft and pretty and… _Fuck…_ He's just…

This is it. His heart is beating too fast, and he feels like he can't get enough air into his lungs, and too much blood has dropped away from his brain. Any second now, he's going to hit the floor and have to face his ghosts and explain how they all died in glorious combat or some shit like that, and he got fucked to death by his wife.

Actually, the idea of that is so perversely pleasurable that the stricken dumb look of pure sexual shock is replaced by a wide, happy grin.

"I love you so fucking much."

She grinning right back at him. "I know." He steps closer to her, and leans in for a kiss.

It's desperate. A full lip, full mouth, suffocating, wrecking kiss. He's putting everything he's feeling right now into it, and Rey's taking it, allowing the flood to fill her.

Kylo can see it in his mind, feel the hints of it as her shaft rubs slick against his thigh, how this is going to work. He has her image of it, him sprawled out along the sofa, as she holds him down and fills him up and takes him over and…

They're barely started and just the idea of it and the feel of her lips on his, her tongue on his, her skin on his has him leaking.

He pulls back. Rey looks a little confused, because him pulling back isn't part of the plan.

He takes a few breaths, calming himself down, slowing himself down.

"Can you take it off?"

She looks really confused. "Kylo?"

"I like it. I…" he shudders a little, looking at it, knowing what she's going to do with it, feeling his body throb at just the idea, "really like it. But…" He doesn't say it, but they both know he's not been in danger of setting any endurance records when they've played with the plugs. (He has been in danger of setting some speed records, though.) He does say, "I want to be good for you, too. Not just take you over with how hard I get off." Because that's also part of playing with the plugs. He usually spurts hard enough that all she's got to do is be near him, and they're both good to go.

He reaches for her, brushing the robe out of the way, and traces a nipple with his index finger, watching, feeling her arch into his touch. "This makes me feel… Amazing." That's probably a good word for it. She knows what he's trying to convey. "I want you to feel that way, too. I want to _make_ you feel that way."

Rey nods. She traces her fingers over the dildo. He swallows, hard, watching it. "You want to play with this, too, right?"

He grins, feeling his mouth go dry. "Force, yes! Very, very much. After..."

She starts to shimmy it off. "After what?"

He waits for her to finish taking it off, and place it on the central curve of the sofa. Then he lifts her, resting her butt on the lower of the two outer curves. He stands in front of her, and her legs wrap around his hips.

"This is a really convenient height," Rey says, feeling him nudge against her. The thick blunt press of the crown of his shaft, and the wet slip of it looking for somewhere snug and warm, and then him shifting back a little, adjusting, so it rests against her thigh.

(His plans may be forming, but he does know they're not going there, yet.)

He kisses her, easily. She's high enough he doesn't have to bend. "It really is." Then he drops to his knees, and kisses the instep of her right foot. Then her ankle. His fingers trace up the inside of her left leg, and his lips work their way up her right. He bites gently on her calf, and licks the bite. From here, on the floor, looking up, he's got a perfect view. Soft, wet pink, glinting at him from among dark curls. For as much that this… her, the dildo, her using it on him is his fantasy, it's certainly doing good things for her, too.

He lets his eyes linger, lets his mind focus on where he intends to end this line of kisses, and thinks to her _After that._

She purrs at him. "I suppose I can be delayed a bit."

He bites a little harder, and she makes a surprised squeak. Then another soft, wet lick over her nipped skin. That gets another purr.

 _For someone who thinks being a pet is squirmy, you do seem to like it._

She looks down at him, mouthing her knee, stroking her thigh. _I like being petted. Not quite the same thing._

His lips slip further up her leg, trailing wet kisses and warm sucks, pausing to kiss each mole. _What if I like the idea? Keeping you in silks and jewels, with a nice safe home, never having to want or need for anything_ he leans up a little closer, nose grazing the inside of her thigh, _belly full of my babies._ His hands come to her hips, and he kisses small and dry a bit further up. _My beautiful, beautiful woman, love of my life, light of my existence, my future and salvation?_ His lips meet hers, and he pauses there, just to touch, smell, and _feel_ her against him. His tongue starts to just barely ghost over her maomao. _Would you like that, just as a fantasy maybe? As a dream for moments like this, when I just…_ And he lets the feelings pour through him, how much he adores all of this. And how much, for him, these ideas of adoration also have physical, tangible, and often material ideas attached to them.

Her fingers curl in his hair, pulling him closer to her. "Kylo!"

For a fantasy, for a dream… The way he imagines her, glowing, wrapped in ethereal gossamer, warm and light and ripe with their future… It's heady the way it pours out of him and fills her up, growing more golden and rich with each touch of his tongue, his fingers, his mind.

His tongue darts out, slipping between her lips. She tastes like sex. Like love, affection, and fucking, and it settles into his bones and shaft, deep and wanting and needy. He wants to stroke himself with his free hand, but decides not to. Decides to just feel this, here, now. Decides to focus in on his tongue, and the wet slick glide of it over her sex.

His hands find her hips, tugging her forward and down a little. He can feel her lay back against the sofa, feel her legs find purchase on his shoulders. It's good. Easier position, more access. Legs wide, hips comfortable, body wet and pliant and so, so, so delicious.

 _Maybe I'll be your pet. You'll dress me in soft shimmery silks, call me Opal, and I'll be there at your beck and call, filling any need you might express._

He licks a little deeper, little firmer, and she groans to him, "You'd like that."

 _So much! Fuck the rest of this, I'll be your kept man._

 _Fucking's what you'd do as my kept man._

He rests his right hand over her belly, right thumb on her pearl, and licks deep and steady as his thumb grinds against her. _And I'd love every second of it._ He kisses, and then sucks each lip into his mouth, tugging gently as he works his way to her pearl, fitting his lips to it, and flicking it with his tongue. _And I'd make you love every second, too._

She groans, arching up into his touch, and there are things she could think, or might think, or would think, but the part of the brain that does that is swamped in wet friction, and pulsing sucks, and it can't be bothered to put together anything beyond the _feel_ of Kylo's mouth against her skin.

 _That's it, love. Let me worship this gorgeous pussy._

She can feel his tongue, his mouth, and how much he loves saying, or at least, thinking things like that. How much pleasure bleeds off at him at just being able to want and express that want and then be able to _do_ what he wants.

 _Good, Opal… So Good…_ And it is. She's not close. Not yet, but she can feel the build, feel how this will lead there, feel how much he wants to make her whole body sing his praises. "What if I want more?"

He lights up at that. Talking with their minds is good, but he loves her voice. He strokes a finger between her lips. _How much more?_ He gently worms it into her, feeling the wet and slick and her body pulse around him, reveling in the sound of her moans as he curls it against that spot she likes. He closes his eyes and pulls his mind back. Get too into that, and he'll take both of them over.

"More!" Her voice is soft, intense. Everything beyond pleasure is starting to drop away from her mind. There's his skin and hers and the need growing between them.

 _Two fingers?_ He's teasing, stroking the one in and out, just the tip of his finger, before allowing a second one to join in. Just the tips at first. No real stretch, not after one finger deep and steady, but then slow, and firm, and easy until he's filling her deep as he can go with his fingers.

He's not using his mouth, though he is still kneeling, face a few centimeters from her pussy, so he says with his voice, "Looks so good, you wrapped around me like this." Then he flicks his tongue against her pearl as he thrusts deep.

She arches her back, thrusting into his touch, and tugs his hair again. His eyes meet hers. His are sparking with pleasure, hers are glassy, pupils blown. "More Kylo!"

He knows _exactly_ what more is. All he's got to do is give it to her.

And not go over the edge, too.

Her wet, pink, glistening body. All open and begging for him. And all he's got to do is just slide on it, and he does, with a groan, because she feels _so fucking good_ and…

He makes himself think about how much he likes the sofa. How really convenient it is to be able to just stand up, knees comfortable, and slip his body into hers.

That's an entire two seconds worth of distraction.

But he's in her and she's wet and hot and snug. Not tight. His fists are tight. His thighs are tight as he thrusts into her, looking to take her over the edge, but not himself. But she's not tight. She's plush and snug, rippling, and wrapped around him perfectly. "Good?" chokes out of him.

"Force!"

It's good. He knows it's good. All he has to do is open his mind, and he can feel from both his side and hers how good it is. Kylo shuts that down, fast. Feeling it from her side means they never get to the dildo, at least not tonight, because he'll go over the edge with her.

He looks at it, on the lower curve, thinks about how it'll feel, and very quickly stops that, because that is not, on any level, slowing him down.

Deep, in and out, swift. Focusing on his breath, and the wall behind her, and not on how Rey is tight now. How she's gripping him like a fist. Like the best fist ever. Like his best dream, ever, of what his fist should have felt like, but never did, through all those years when his fist was his only company.

That thought actually does tone him down enough that he can go back to focusing on Rey, and how she's doing. Focus on her breasts, so high and ripe and... He bends, mouthing at her nipple, sucking it, feeling the wash of it flow through her to him... That's good. Too good. He pulls his mind away from that to his thumb, on her hip, not doing her much good there. He shifts, resting it against her pearl, rocking it back and forth, moving it faster and her body getting tighter against him, on the breathy little moans that ease out of her on the exhales, and deep shuddering inhales, when she gasps for more air, more touch, more him.

There, right… there… He feels her body crest, feels the twitch and pulse, feels… himself pulling out and back, fast, so he doesn't follow her over the edge, because his empathy is always more… everything… in moments like this.

He drops back to the floor, cuddles against her legs, nuzzling her knee. Keeping up contact, but not _that much._

He feels her laying there, spent and twitching a little, brain peaceful and blank.

It feels good. He did this. His body, his love, his touch. He's made her so happy she's just floating.

He's grinning as he kisses the inside of her knee.

* * *

Rey comes back to herself a centimeter at a time. She purrs a little, stretches, and feels the ball of bright, eager _need_ at her feet.

Waiting.

She sits up a little so she can look down at Kylo. He's comfortably kneeling, nuzzling against her knee. She knows that it'd be easy to assume that he's waiting patiently. He looks relaxed and content, and it's true there's not a lot of muscle tension in his posture, and he is content… or at least pleased. And he's not doing anything outwardly visible to indicate a desire for her to hurry up.

He looks patient.

He's not. She knows that. She can feel that the only reason he's not already on the far side of the sofa, draped across it, wiggling his arse at her, trying to get her to move faster is that he's got literal decades of pushing his own needs and wants to the background while he _waits_ for whatever his master wants.

Rey smiles down at him. Time to give him what he wants. What he needs.

He grins up at her, feeling the shift in his mind, how she's slipped out of floating space and back into fucking space.

She strokes his face and hair. "That was perfect, Opal."

Oh, he likes that. It's all over his face. He's done something well, something perfectly, for the person he adores, and she's visibly, audibly appreciating it, and… "So, perfectly, love. You made me feel amazing," he's glowing at her praise. "Stand up, baby," she's not sure where baby came from, but he's leaping to his feet, and it doesn't feel bad or wrong, so…

He's between her legs, and she's stroking his face and throat and chest. "Look at you, so lovely." Her fingers trail down his chest, down his belly, and ghost over his shaft, hard and eager for her. "You deserve to be rewarded, my Opal, deserve to feel just as good as I did."

Kylo groans at just the words and the idea.

"Go kneel against the higher side, and get comfortable. I'm going to get ready for you," she says with a kiss, and a gentle squeeze to his shaft.

As soon as she lets go, he's on the other side of the sofa. It's entirely possible he ported from the one side to the other, or he just moved _very_ fast. He's laying against it, torso draped over the curved bit at the top, a tempting morsel.

She's stepping over to the belt, pulling it to hand, getting ready to step into it when he says, "Can I watch?"

"Oh, love, you can do whatever makes you feel good. That's the _point_ of this."

Another warm flush of… all the good things… crests through him, and Rey can feel his eyes on her as he shifts a bit to get a view of her getting ready.

She takes off the robe, and stands before, him, cracking open one of the lube packs, dripping it over the dildo, before slicking it up. "This is what you wanted to see, right?" Her hand gliding over the thick black plastic. Her eyes sparking at him. Her lips curved into a smile, ready to do this for him and enjoy every second of it.

 _"Yes!_ " It hisses out of him, just as much voice as thought.

She pumps the cock again, before stepping away from his view, heading to the sofa. "The only downside of having moved this, is we don't have the mirrors from the other room."

He's almost with it enough to asked why she moved, but… She's behind him, hand trailing gently, so gently down his back, and all other thoughts are gone.

Rey's watching the path of her hand against his skin. Tracing the curve of his back, of the dip of his spine, the width of his shoulders, and the narrow hips. "You're so beautiful, Opal."

He's in the moment enough, and she's filling him with enough of her ideal of him, that he doesn't scoff or argue, he just feels it, feels her love.

Her lips trace from the top of his neck to between his shoulder blades. "So strong."

(He flexes a little, showing off. She nips his shoulder for that, and he purrs.)

She kisses further down his back, hands tracing the curve of his waist, settling at his hips. She sits back a little, pulling his arse apart. He wriggles at it, half trying to hide, half displaying himself for her.

"Do you like this, being all naked and open for me?"

He squirms a little at the sound of those words, thrills and flushes, too.

"I do." A breath, a little cock to his hips, a slight drag, feeling his shaft brush against the sofa. "So much." And he does. Adores it. Needs it. Lives in the love of this. Open, and naked, and free, and _seen._

Every inch of him, for who and what he is, adored and cherished, and… He groans, loud. Her fingers trail up his shaft. _Pleasured._

Her lips trace the path up his spine. "Beautiful opal. Lovely sparkle." Soft, wet little kisses, then her tongue, wet and slick and sliding down his spine and… "Up baby. Move up a bit."

His eyes go wide as he complies, lifting himself further up the sofa, understanding what she's going to do to and with him. His breath is coming fast and he's feeling shaky. "Rey…"

She's just staring at him spread open and laid out before her. Her hand finds his stones, pulling them back a little, before she bends to lay her tongue on them, licking wet and eager before pulling one into her mouth. _Kylo…_

He's got nothing. There may have been a thought in his head, but it's gone now, completely replaced by the wet suck of her mouth on his stones. A long, eager moan bleeds into a ragged "FUCK!"

She noses against the sensitive skin behind his stones, and thinks, _Exactly._ Then her tongue follows her nose.

" _Oh Gods!"_

It's wet and slick and squirmy in the best possible way, and he feels so good he doesn't know what to do with himself.

 _That's it my Opal, sing for me, love._

He moans, loud and hard, and then up an octave as her tongue moves _up._ There. His hips press to her mouth and he groans, loud at it.

While Kylo's well and truly distracted, Rey adjusts the dildo, making it smaller, bringing the size down closer to two of her fingers. Slow and easy, and that'll work just fine. If he wants more, they can make it bigger, but for now, for getting it worked into him, that'll do just fine.

 _More?_ She thinks at him.

"Please!" It's a choked sound, cut short as he feels her shift, feels her hands on his hips, and he slides down the sofa a bit.

"There, just right, baby," Rey says when he's right where she can comfortably kneel behind him and get started. Shallow, slick little thrusts, gentle steady pressure, letting him submit himself to her, in his own speed, by his own needs.

This part usually takes a while, because she won't just pound into him. It'd be… easy enough, everything is so slick that if she just leaned into him, the dildo would just push right in. But that would burn, and hurt and…

No. None of that. Just slow and easy, little motions, back and forth. She knows from the plugs that if she takes her time his body will welcome her in. Go nice and easy and it will start to pull her in.

And it does. There's a shift where his body stops fighting, stops trying to stay closed, where he just melts around her, and… "There," she says and gives him a gentle slide.

He groans at that, too.

Groans as her hips start to move. This part is… different. It's not how they play with the plugs. Get one of them set, and it's pretty much done. And this isn't how she fucks. This… isn't her part of the dance, usually, but…

"You're glowing, my darkling." It looks like she's doing good things for him.

He doubts that's literally true.

Her lips fall between his shoulder blades, and her hands stroke over his hips and back. "It is. Open your eyes and look."

He shouldn't glow. There shouldn't be enough light in him to glow. But he does. He feels it, thrumming thick and rich through his veins and in his skin and through his Force. Her light fed his, let it thrive, nourished it in a way no one, no thing, ever had before.

 _Love you so much._ He pushes the feel of it, the all encompassing glow of it, to her, surrounding her with it.

"Good Opal. So good…" She focuses in further, feeling it from his side, getting a better sense of how to move and what he wants from this. Her hands grasp his hips, good firm hold, and she shifts her aim, pushing more forward than up, and he all but yells at it.

He's shaking at that stroke. Beyond words at the next one. Mind starting to white out by the third. There's pleasure and need and desire and the _feel_ of Rey and her light…

"Oh baby, you're doing so well for me. I love you, and this, and how you look right now." He looks exquisite, ecstatic, balanced on a knife's edge of pleasure so sharp it's almost pain.

"More?"

He grunts, and she knows it's ascent. A few quick pumps and the dildo's wider, firmer, and Kylo's keening at the feel of it, a sharp high-pitched sound of _almost_ release on each exhale.

"Shall I stroke your shaft, or try to take you over like this?"

He just moans. He doesn't know. She can feel that. Doesn't know if he wants to finish like this. Doesn't know if he can. Doesn't much care, not right now. Here is good. Here is better than good.

"Don't stop," grates out of him.

She kisses his spine, and shifts her hands. She can't get a grip on his wrists, and really, she needs a hand on his hip to keep the aim and rhythm right, but she can get his shoulder, so that's good enough. "Never. Going to make you spurt so hard you forget your name."

He arches back to meet her strokes, grunting with each one. She grounds him with the grasp on his shoulder, and sets him flying with the prod of the dildo against his prostate.

Harder. She can feel that. If she touches his shaft, he'll be done. Just the heat of her hand will likely take him over, but he's not asking for that, so... Harder. More pressure, more speed, more friction. More of that sparking second where the press of the dildo lights him up from toes to scalp and flushes through him in a pulsing rush. Harder, faster, _more._ Her hips and ass are burning. This is very much _not_ one of her usual exercises, but he's so close… She pulls back, snapping her hips against his ass, hauling him back with each thrust, pulling from her own strength and the Force to pound him, and he howls, shuddering, twitching and panting as his release hits.

She goes still, holding him, stroking his back and hips, cuddling behind him as he shakes, shaft throbbing, spurt dribbling down the sofa in wet pulse after wet pulse.

She kisses his back, keeping her hands soft and gentle as he comes down.

Eventually, they're both quiet, breathing slowed down, basking in the glow.

After a few more quiet moments, Kylo says, "Squats. There's a reason I do a lot of them. Way more than I used to. Have to be able to keep going as long as you like."

Rey laughs at that. "I'll remember that. I'm going to go get some towels. Then sleeping?" She pulls back gently, and he shivers a bit, but relaxes once she kisses his back again. Her hand slips down his back, cradling his bum.

"So beautiful, Kylo."

His head turns and he smiles at her.

* * *

In his own room, Jon spends a few moments roaming around.

He inspects behind each door and finds that, yes, he's got a room of sex, too. (He snaps a few picture on his personal datapad, and then sends them to Poe.)

A moment later, his comm buzzes and the first thing Poe says is, "His head exploded when he saw that, didn't it? I don't know which one did, but at least one of them."

Jon just laughs. "You're filthy."

"And you're encouraging me. So, beyond being stuck in a bordello, how's it going?"

They talk for about an hour, mostly visiting the Kress, a little about Poe, Chewie, and Finn and their most recent herbalogical extraction scouting mission.

"Your being really vague," Jon says after another deeply non-informative comment from Poe.

He doesn't so much hear as feel the sigh, and it crashes into him a second before Poe says it, "You're still in their rooms, right? Not on the shuttle or back on the _Supremacy._ "

"Fuck," he rolls his eyes and mentally kicks himself in the ass.

"I worked security for almost a decade, once you do that, it never leaves. Don't worry, I'd have stopped you if it looked like you were going to say something too incriminating."

"Lovely." Jon checks his chrono. "Fuck."

"What?"

"Who do you think's been alone, in their own room, for about an hour now, and is also likely completely unaware that they're likely being listened in on."

Poe laughs and laughs and laughs. "Well… Don't suppose you're going to go bursting in and remind them."

"I'd imagine that whatever damage could have been done, is."

"And if it's not, they're happily in the middle of it, and _really_ do not want you traipsing in now."

Jon doesn't imagine what they're up to. He intentionally makes his mind not put Rey and Kylo and that sofa both of them were eyeing together. "Yeah."

* * *

And, it is true that the Kress are indeed watching and listening. Granted, nothing they don't expect is happening.

That's not quite true. Once they stopped gaping about the sofa floating out of the room, nothing they weren't expecting happened. A man will often, relaxed and happy, talk to his pets about important things he'd might rather not have others hear. But he's also just as likely to settle down and snuggle in. And for as much as they may have hoped Kylo and Rey would talk about important and interesting things, settle down and snuggle in appears to be the correct answer.

They just cleaned up, crashed into bed, and a moment later the only thing the Kress had to listen to was gentle, dull snoring.

And it's true that the Sub Prince is starting to get a better idea of why human males are not human females, though he's still _beyond_ confused as to why Kylo has not invited Jon along to the party, especially if he wanted _that._ As best he can tell, Jon should naturally come equipped for _that…_ But, humans are weird.

And, well, if that one spouse, mate for life thing is real… Then he guesses you've got to creatively make-do if that spouse doesn't have all the bits you're craving. After all, it's not like there aren't toys in his playroom.

He's more confused by the gaps in the conversation. He could swear there were parts where Rey or Kylo _should_ have said something, but it really doesn't look like they did. The other one responded, but…

But, as he knows with his own wife and concubine, sometimes the words don't quite get out of the mouth, but usually after a while, they don't necessarily have to.

All in all, the report he writes up for his grandfather is fairly boring. He knows the only area anyone will be particularly interested in is the moving sofa. Granted, they actually said in the interview that Rey had some Force skills, so apparently, moving things is one of hers, as well.


	66. This Is A Dream

5/21/2

Kylo's tired. Not sleepy, not too much, though his limbs feel heavy, and his mind blurry.

The kind of tired where he just wants to pull off his blacks and collapse.

He hears soft laughter from the far side of his suite. That's where it really hits Kylo that this is a dream. His mind has this labeled as 'his home' but it's not his rooms on the _Supremacy_ nor is it their home on Lirium.

There aren't too many details, actually. Just a cracked door bleeding soft light into the dim room he's in right now, and the soft, wet sounds of kissing, interspersed with soft laughs and gentle words.

Home. Home is on the other side of that door, and he's moving toward it, so whatever is in this area around him is moot. Dream Kylo doesn't need details here. Just the feel of getting closer to the door.

His pets are home, and it sounds like they've gotten started without him.

He pushes the door all the way open, and is greeted by a sight that takes his breath away. The room is bright, warm golds and pinks, sunrise, the way he thinks sunrise is supposed to look, and in the center of it is the sofa with Jon and Rey on it.

They're naked, golden, so fucking beautiful it _hurts._

His pets.

His beautiful loves.

Jon's lounging back against the sofa, and she's on her knees between his legs, cupping her hand behind his neck as they kiss.

It's a good kiss. Wet, deep, soft pink lips slipping over each other, little glimpses of wet tongue licking shiver inducing patterns upon each other.

He's dead still, standing in the doorway, watching.

Rey breaks the kiss, looking to him, and Jon turns to him, too. They're both grinning.

"Decided to join the fun," Jon starts.

"Finally," Rey finishes, gesturing to him.

Kylo licks his lips. He undoes the collar on his blacks, and begins to unfasten his belt. But with each move he just feels _heavy._ Tired of limb if not mind.

"Fuck."

"Love?" Jon asks.

"Opal?" Rey calls him.

He's so tired he can barely push himself away from the doorway he's leaning against. Just the idea of it seems like too much effort. "Just tired. Not sure how much fun I'll be tonight."

"Oh…" Rey's pouting at him.

Jon gets up, leaving Rey kneeling on the bed, looking up at him, hopefully. He crosses the room, gives Kylo a quick, dry kiss on the cheek, before pulling a chair over, and leading him to it. "Sit, rest, get comfortable. Enjoy the show. Then we'll tuck you in for a good long cuddle and sleep."

That sounds stupidly good to Kylo. He sinks bonelessly into the chair.

It's a dream. He just _knows_ it. Nothing is ever this… good… in the real world. He adores real world Rey and Jon beyond all reason, but the rational, somewhat awake part of his brain knows that they just aren't this… _this._

They don't literally glow golden in soft pinky-gold light. They just, don't.

But right now, they do. Jon especially is so _warm._ All yellows and golds and blushed sunshine. And Rey's succulent, juicy pinky-peaches, and flushed roses, and… And… flushed skin, and gold hair, and dark brown hair, cast almost black in this light, and pink, wet lips, and pink, hard nipples, and pink…pink… glistening… wet… pink…

Slow kissing. Jon's mouth all over Rey, in deep, wet, sucking kisses. His tongue on her skin in long wet strokes. His hand cupping her breast as his lips caress her nipples, and so much _fucking sex._

Kylo's skin feels hot, heavy. Languid, like everything is shot through with a hazy wet heat, settling into skin and joints and his shaft. It's filled with that same golden heat, feeling constrained in his trousers.

Wanting… He _wants_ right now, watching them cuddle and pet.

Wanting to leap in and join the fun. Wanting to… Gods… What? Rey's kneeling in front of Jon right now, and his hand is in her hair, lips against her head, murmuring something, as she gently slicks back the cap of his shaft, and now it's her, soft, wet, pink tongue on his wet, pink tip.

His hand is on his thigh and he's biting his lip… It's…

Gods… He's panting lightly as he watches her pull Jon's shaft between her lips, and Jon _groans._ His head is back, his hand fisted in Rey's hair, his hips are still, not looking to gag her or force her down on him.

Jon's stroking her face as she sucks him. He's touching her lips, and saying… The words don't matter. They might not even exist beyond his brain filling in the idea that Jon's talking to Rey.

Then the words do matter. Jon's talking to him. Looking at him. "She's gorgeous like this, isn't she? Her lips wrapped around me."

Kylo groans. "Yes."

"She feels even better than she looks." Jon's hips flex a little, slipping just a bit deeper inside Rey's mouth, as he strokes her face, smiling down at her. "You like doing it, beautiful? Sucking my—" she pulls him deeper and his voice jumps an octave on the next word, "cock!" before slurring into a low groan.

She pulls back, shifting so she can face Kylo, the tip of Jon's cock on her tongue, and she meets Kylo's eyes with hers. She grins at him, kisses the tip of Jon, shifts again, facing Jon, and then cups his ass with her hand, pulling him closer, deeper, as Jon's eyes slide shut and he groans at the feel of it.

She's wiggling her hips at Kylo, and… He can see it. He could just get up, kneel behind her, slip his cock into her wet, swollen, pink pussy, and… the image of Rey between him and Jon floods through his mind, making him harder, hotter, _wanting._

But he's so _tired._

Getting up feel _impossible._

 _Touch yourself then._ Her voice in his head. _Enjoy it with us._

He groans at that. His hand lands on his shaft. Naked. He's naked now, stroking, desperate, but slow. So slow. His arm feels like it weighs a million pounds. _Dreaming._ He suddenly gets it. He's asleep; his body is doing nothing right now, but his brain…

Oh, Force, his brain!

"Watch me," he says.

Rey pulls back from Jon, kneeling up to kiss him, and then gives him a little tug, so he's further down, in the curve of the sofa, and a little shove so he's on his back. As Kylo takes his cock in hand, she's staring at him, and at Jon, and back to him.

Jon's watching him, too. Eyes warm, body hot, his gaze is laser focused on Kylo's shaft. Jon licks his lips, and Kylo's very aware that Jon'd just as happily have him in his lap as Rey.

"Same time?" Rey asks, and Kylo nods. Jon's focus shifts to Rey as she starts a slow easy slide down Jon's shaft. Kylo pulls his fist down his own shaft.

Kylo and Jon groan at the same time. Jon gets his brain back, first. Rey's fully settled in his lap, and he's kissing her, wet and open, as she slips up and down on him, and Kylo watches, matching his strokes to her. After a few strokes, Jon looks to him, and says, "Once you've had a good long nap, how about we do this together?" He kisses Rey again, his hand on her face, his lips to hers, as he says, "How about it, beautiful, you want both of us at the same time? Fill you all the way up?"

Kylo's whole body twitches at that idea. He can see it, and for a second the dream almost shifts to the image of him on the sofa with Jon, pelvis to pelvis, legs tangled, Rey riding them together but the the dream snaps back, sharp focus, to him in the chair, and Rey and Jon on the sofa, and…

Rey's moving on Jon's shaft, and… It's so… fucking _gorgeous._ All wet and slick and pink and sex… So much sex.

His hand moves a bit faster on his shaft, matching their pace.

She sinks down on Jon, eyes half lidded, lips a soft o of delight, and then begins a slow up…

And stops.

And there's a moment where Rey looks _startled_. And then she's looking around, first at Jon, with surprise, and then at Kylo, and then…

He feels it flush through him in a wave of insane excitement, blurred over with shame, and a tinge of fear. Fear growing strong and sharp and sick making, as Rey looks down at Jon, shocked. Fear tearing through everything else, curdling his stomach. He's stock still, hand on his shaft, mouth hanging open, terrified that he just fucked, literally, everything sideways, because Rey, _real Rey,_ sleeping next to him Rey, just fell into his dream of her fucking their best friend and he's _wanking to it_.

And then Rey smiles at him. Real Rey. Rey who is sleeping next to him and apparently got pulled into this dream, and she's grinning at him and, then glancing back to Jon who is… Thank the Force, not real, and she starts to glide up and down him and Kylo doesn't know if he needs to spurt _now,_ or curl into a little ball and die of shame.

They're still golden and perfect and Rey's making all of his favorite noises, and she's having a _really_ good time and his body is on fire he's so turned on. He can feel his blood pulsing in his ears, his shaft, his body too tight with too much… everything… right now.

She's showing off for him. She's… riding Jon, and letting him watch. Because he likes it. Because he wants to watch. Because…

Jon's stroking her thighs, her back and buttocks. He leans up and whispers in her ear, then she slips off of him, and turns around, so she's facing Kylo, and Jon's sitting behind her, pulling her to him, as he slides on in, slow and sweet, his legs holding Rey's apart, so Kylo can _watch_ everything as he fucks her.

He feels like he's going to die. Like his heart is beating so fast it can't keep this up, like is body is so filled with pleasure he can't _take_ it. It's so…

Rey's grinding on Jon, and he's kissing her shoulders and neck. His hands are on her breasts, thumbs rubbing over her nipples. Her fingers slip down to her maomao, and begin a fast, tight circle on her pearl.

He's leaking. He can feel the slow drip, and how his hand glides more easily with it.

"Watch me," Rey says, and he couldn't look away if his life depended on it.

Rey's back arches and her hips move faster. He can see the tension in her legs, and the way she's flushing from cheeks to boobs, and Jon looks up, his lips on her shoulder, his hands on Rey's hips, his eyes on Kylo, and as soon as she begins to make that soft, high pitched _ungh…_ Her spurt cry, Kylo's gone, body thrilling, he's spurting over his hand, onto his leg and the chair and doesn't care at all because he feels so fucking _good._

And then he's in bed, naked, blinking his eyes awake, under sheets… wet sheets.

Rey's next to him. She shudders, a soft, sleep-dampened moan easing from her lips, and then she's back to dreamless sleep.

Kylo's heart is pounding, his skin is slick with sweat, and… "Shit," he mutters it quietly. Not just sweat. Force, he doesn't even remember the last time a dream took him over the edge. Years ago. Before Rey. Before Supreme Leader…

Before he stopped wearing pajamas.

Now he's got a mess he doesn't want to think about and a mostly sleeping woman who's going to cuddle into him any moment now, and while she may have slept mostly through the dream, she's not about to miss the big wet patch on his belly, and…

"Fuck." He mouths it, laying on his back, staring at the ceiling, no idea what to do about this.

The ceiling that isn't black.

 _Shit!_ He's not in the bed he normally shares with Rey, either of them.

On the upside, the Kress will likely consider multiple stains of his DNA all over as a sign of… Virility or something. Proof he wasn't kidding about only being into his wife.

He thought.

Right?

"Shit."

"Mmmm?" And Rey does what she always does when she senses he's not sleeping all that well, she snuggles up close, wrapping around him, her hand landing right into the wet, slick spot on his belly, and now she's fully awake. "Kylo?"

And confused.

He gets hit with a wave of embarrassment. This time it's not his.

"I guess you remember that dream, too?"

She burrows her face against his neck, and he can feel her blushing. "I… Shit… Sorry?"

He kisses the top of her head, and then nudges her so that she's lip to lip with him. "I'm pretty sure it started in my head, so nothing for you to be sorry for."

More confusion. She slips back a little to look at him. "Yours first?"

"I think so. I… felt when you joined the party." Though, if it had been her dream first… That'd be… better, right?

Her eyebrows are high. And he can feel a bit of relief on her part. "Oh."

"Yeah."

They lay there next to each other. Then Rey wriggles against him a bit, her belly slipping against his. "I liked it, too."

He nods, understanding what she's doing. "Uh… good?"

"Maybe?"

Because they don't know.


	67. Aftermath

There's a moment where his brain shifts out of asleep, and into awake, and everything is good. He's in bed, with Rey, and it's… morning… apparently, and…

And the dream goes crashing back into his head and now he's awake and…

Kylo rolls onto his back, palm over his face, sighs loudly (mentally kicks himself in the ass for that, too, because he sees Rey twitch a bit at his dramatics), sighs quietly, and then mentally, with his walls as high as he can make them, screams, because not only does he have to deal with Rey this morning, but he's got to go to a contract signing, with Jon, and act like a functional human being instead of some sort of deranged pervert who gets off watching his wife fuck his best friend.

He hates the Kress, he hates the room of sex, he hates how his empathy let too many other damn minds into his head, he hates the fact that Rey's going to wake up and maybe last night she was too sleepy to get pissed at him, but he's sure it's going to happen soon and…

"You're spiraling," Rey's voice, and her hand on his shoulder.

He grunts a little at that.

"Stop it." She kisses his shoulder, leans up, looks at the chrono. "We've got ten minutes before we've got to get up," Rey rolls onto her side, and he knows his job is to follow her, snuggle up, and spoon in. "Resting."

He grunts at that, too, though he does snuggle up.

He can feel she's not angry with him, and that's almost worse. She should be angry with him. She should be hateful and enraged and…

"I told you to stop spiraling. You didn't do anything wrong, you're not in trouble, and I refuse to be angry with you because you want to beat yourself up." She puts some Force command into her voice, and he doesn't fight it. He lets her voice soothe him.

His face is pressed to the back of her neck. I'm sorry.

He can feel the eyeroll. You're allowed your fantasies, Kylo.

* * *

Okay, you can do this. He's saying that to himself as he brushes his hair. Breakfast. You know how to do breakfast. Show up, sit down, eat, smile and nod, and don't stare at Jon like you got off to him fucking your wife last night.

He puts the brush down.

I can't do this.

Rey's hand on his shoulder, her fingers twined with his. Yes, you can.

How can you possibly be this calm? He thinks to her as she takes the brush and begins to run it through her hair.

Rey shrugs. Then she turns him to face her. No one spent decades telling me that sex was bad or wrong, or that anything or one I may desire is somehow wrong.

He takes a deep breath, about to argue. He was watching her like a holo, like an object for his pleasure, like-

It's not wrong, Kylo.

And another deep breath. You don't hate me for that. I can feel it, but you sh-

Do not finish that sentence. She kisses him. Then she strokes his face. I didn't hate you when you were killing people, I'm not going to hate you for having a wank. I could have wandered into a dream of you riding him, and only thing I'd be is surprised. She cups him through his trousers. I love this. Love you. And I, and our life together, is not, in any way, threatened by your fantasies.

His Order hex isn't in place yet, so she does it up, and then pulls his Maji token out so it's visible. She kisses him again with her finger on the token.

It balances, love. None of that, set one toe out of line and everything's broken forever, you can never go back, and the rest of that bantha shit they pounded into your head.

He rests his finger on hers on the token, and his forehead against hers and takes a deep breath. I can do this.

Yes, you can. And if you need to curl up into a ball of panic as soon as you're in the Silencer, that's just fine. But keep it together for breakfast.

He takes a deep breath. Just get through breakfast.

Just get through breakfast.

* * *

He doesn't break into a cold sweat when he sees Jon. He's stiff as a board, jonesing for his mask in a way he hasn't in… years probably, and is doing the trick he used to with Snoke where he'd look just between his eyes so it looked like eye contact but wasn't, but…

Are you okay? Jon thinks into his head.

But he's fooling absolutely no one. Great.

Apparently, Jon doesn't have the mental control to just think to the one of them, at least when they're standing right next to each other, because Rey thinks back to Jon, Unsettling dreams. He'll be okay.

Jon offers him a kind smile, and squeezes his hand. "Yeah, I know all about that. Give it a day, and it'll fade. Okay, kids, slap those happy smiles on your face, it's show time." He shoulders his rifle, and off they go for breakfast and the signing.

* * *

Breakfast is business.

That's settling.

If breakfast were pleasure, especially now that he's got an idea of how pleasure on this planet is supposed to work… Kylo makes himself not think about that, because he really does not need the combination of mortified embarrassment and an erection to go with trying to sign this bloody thing.

There's one long table with traditional chairs, and beyond feeling a little small for them, that goes well. The Primo looks a little nervous, but he decides to talk directly to Rey, on a topic Kylo didn't start, and when no one smacks him, he smiles widely, and the two of them get talking about her saber staff.

The Kress don't do much with blunt weapons, but hers isn't precisely a blunt weapon, though it can be used that way, and he's intrigued by that. The idea of a weapon that's lethal on one side but not on the other has advantages he can imagine.

As they finish eating, the Prince goes over the main tenants of the treaty.

That's an hour of things that Threepio agreed to, most of which he's at least aware of. It all sounds right, and as the Prince reads, he and the Primo both nod and at the end of each main point, they sign the treaty. He's pleased, and a bit surprised to see that the Primo also signs the treaty.

Rey and Jon, as witnesses, use the keyboard to type their names, and so does the Prince and Sub Prince. Rey doesn't write because she's still learning, and doesn't like anyone, beside him (including him, really), to see her shaky loops. Jon… he just assumed because Jon can draw that he can write, but… apparently, not. Like Rey, though for completely different reasons, he likely just never learned how to do it.

As they're going through it, the Primo smirks a little, handing Kylo the pen, and says quietly, "My children tell me I'm a relic because I can still write. It's nice to see I'm not the only one."

Kylo, voice low, adds, "The only reason I can write is because I was schooled by people who thought it was valuable to learn the old disciplines. A way for a young man to calm his mind and learn to control his body."

The Primo smiles a that. "I'll have to try that the next time I attempt to make the argument that the children need to learn how to do this."

He wonders idly as the Prince gets reading the next bit that if he asked C8 there would be some paper waiting in his office when he got there. Getting to work on his calligraphy might be a good way for a somewhat older man to slip back into his old discipline of calming his mind and body.

If he can't find it, you can use mine.

Rey… That's your paper. He did get some for her to practice her letters on.

No. It's ours. And if you need it, you can use it. He squeezes her hand, and they move onto the next bit of the contract.

* * *

Getting the contract signed feels good. The fact that basically everyone around him is genuinely pleased just because he exists, and by being himself he's… somehow managed to seal the deal is good, and… He can go entire minutes at a time without thinking about the dream.

Apparently, it's clear enough that he's off that at one point, as they are heading toward his ship, and Rey and Jon's transport, the Primo walks slower and slower, allowing the two of them to fall behind the rest of the group.

Kylo can feel the older man wants to talk, so he slows, too.

Unfortunately, he can also feel what he wants to talk about, but he's got to wait for the Primo to bring it up.

He does, sounding a little tentative. "I didn't… insult you, this morning, when I spoke to your wife."

"Not at all," and he truly means that, so that makes the Primo relax.

"Good, good. I was fairly sure that was allowable, but… You seem… uncomfortable in your skin."

"Unsettled sleep."

"Oh…" The Primo was expecting that he'd had a good night. Kylo gets an extremely vivid mental flash of the report that the Primo got on what he and Rey were up to last night. Someone is always watching. Fuck. He knew that. He just… didn't. He blushes from his collar bone to his hairline.

"Are you…" The Primo looks very alarmed at his guest suddenly turning pink, and is on the border of calling for medical help.

Kylo waves that away. "It's…" Shit. The Primo just thought about it. He didn't say anything. "human. Just… Everything is fine. Not… Fuck. Uh… I'm blushing. Humans do that sometimes when we're embarrassed." Kylo can feel the Primo's panic start to fade. He was terrified that someone might claim they tried to poison Ren or something like that.

"It looks like more than your sleep was unsettled."

Kylo rolls his eyes. He glances around, notices that no one is watching them too closely. He subtly waves his hand as if gesturing to the ships, while looking the Primo in the eyes and saying, "Everything is fine. I had a lovely time at your home, enjoyed your hospitality immensely, and am deeply pleased with the results of our negotiations."

The Primo smirks at him. "I'm glad to hear that, Master Ren who claims not to be a Jedi, but that trick's not going to work on me."

"Fuck."

"Seriously, are you okay? Your lady and concubine…"

Kylo glares at him.

"And I'll just stop talking and be pleased that we've got a signed contract?"

"I'd appreciate that."

The Primo stares at him, and then nods slowly. Kylo's got the sense that the Primo's thinking of him as one of his grandsons. "You look like you want to talk to someone, maybe not me, but if you ever want to sit down to a drink and a chat, I'm sure it can be arranged."

Kylo manages a half smile. "You've been kind, and I appreciate it. And I did genuinely enjoy your hospitality, and am very glad with the results of our negotiations. Absolutely nothing going on with me right now, is any reflection on this." Beyond the fact that I don't know how much of what's in my head is me anymore.

"Good." The Primo claps a hand on Kylo's shoulder. "It's good to have friends my lad, and right now, you look lonely. And not how I meant it last night."

"I have friends…" And it's something of a shock, but he realizes he does have friends, and for that matter, there is someone he could talk to… Someone he actually… wants… to talk to.

If he can make himself form the words.

* * *

On the shuttle, back toward the Supremacy Jon glances around at the stormtroopers, who are, supposedly, not paying much attention to them. He decides that he'd like it to stay that way, so this conversation doesn't need a voice.

He gently kicks Rey's foot, and then thinks to her: He's a shit liar. What's going on?

She rolls her eyes a little and shakes her head. He's just a little embarrassed about something. It'll pass.

Anything I can help with?

Not sure. She tries to think through that. Uh… Something that seemed sexy at the time, then wasn't after.

Jon smirks a bit. Happens to everyone, usually a lot. Most of us manage to work it out by the time were through our mid-twenties, but… Yeah… Okay.

She raises a brow at him, clearly wondering about what might have bit him.

Jon's turn to roll his eyes a little. Okay. So… you know what nipple clamps are?

Rey just stares at him in horror.

I'll take that as a yes, but you're wrong because they're not that far out. He tries picturing the image of them clearly, and Rey nods at him. He's right, they're not what she was thinking of. She pulls the image of the clamps they use to control the flow of liquids through hydraulic lines that need repair, and Jon winces. Yeah, really not what I'm thinking of.

She nods back. Great. So…

Anyway, like every other human, I've got nipples, but mine are mostly just decorative.

Rey thinks that's a funny way to put it and snerks a quick laugh.

Jon chuckles a bit, too. Yeah. Okay, decorative like eyebrows, you know? It's not like anyone's gazing at my chest thinking, 'Wow! Those are amazing nipples!' Let alone thinking, 'You know what would brighten up this place, some pictures of Jon's nipples!' If there weren't a lot of other people on this ship, Rey would be absolutely howling with laughter at that. As it is, she's sniggering and vibrating quietly. Jon waits for her to stop before adding, But if they're not there, it looks really wrong!

Rey's face is very expressive as she nods at him. Holy Force! Okay, none of the Kress had shirts on, and it was just…

Jon's nodding, too. Exactly. I know they're reptoids, and I know they don't nurse babies, so no need for them, but… That was just WEIRD!

Rey's grinning at that, and at Jon, So, nipple clamps?

Like I was saying… thinking… this part is weird, too.

Rey nods again.

Anyway. Mine are mostly just decorative. They're not particularly sensitive. Obviously, I'm not feeding kids with them. So, they're just there.

And the clamps… make them look prettier?

Jon snerks at that. Uh… Maybe from some people's perspectives. If I was trying to make them look prettier, I'd go for rouge. Maybe a beaded clip. Some people pierce them, but these days I'm under the impression that I came with all the holes my body needed, so I'm not adding any more.

Rey contemplates that for a moment. Do… people do that? Rouge… clips… I mean.

At some parties. Jon thinks with a smile. But the idea is, if they're not really sensitive, you can put the clamps on, and sort of tug them or play with them, and the pressure adds to the experience.

Oh! Like a cockstrap.

That makes Jon blink. That's not anything he'd think Rey would know. Actually, uh… Sort of, yeah. It's not quite the same thing, but… He nods along.

But it didn't work that way? Rey thinks.

Yeah. I mean, I was game to try. The idea seemed sexy. It actually did look nice, but… Instead of warm-tinglies and orgasms, I ended up with two nasty bruises, and having to figure out how to protect my tits from clothing for a week because the clamps certainly took care of the not sensitive issue, but not, on any level, in a good way.

Rey winces.

Jon squeezes her hand. Anyway, just about everyone's got a story like that. So… wouldn't be the first time someone tried something and ended up blushing about it after and putting it on the 'nope, not again' list. That's how you learn if you like things or not.

Rey thinks about that for a bit. What if you liked it, but you feel off about liking it?

Jon puts an arm around her and gives her a little squeeze. That's the first few years after I figured out I liked boys in a way that most everyone else around me didn't. He realizes that's wrong. Or, well, since they were mostly women, did, but I wasn't, at least according to my Mum and most of my family, supposed to.

What'd you do about it? Rey thinks.

I was still too young to be playing with real people at that point, so… Had some drives on my datapad that weren't supposed to be there. Wanked a lot and felt guilty about it after. Tried to focus on girls, which… I mean, I like girls, too, so that worked some. Pretty, young brides kept walking into our shop all the time, so it's not like there weren't a lot of them all around me. And it's not like it's hard to find pictures of naked girls on the holonets.

Rey squeezes Jon's hand.

I was fourteen. One of those pretty, young girls had a younger brother, and he was tagging along. Bored. Probably fifteen or so. He showed up with her for several fittings, so it's not like we only saw each other once. Mum found us snogging behind the shop. Got yelled at, a lot, for that. Then she started sending me to weddings, hoping to dangle me in front of the right girl.

And you dangled yourself in front of a lot of boys, too? Rey thinks.

Yeah. I got over feeling bad about it by the third or fourth of the weddings. The wider world showed me that Mum may be an Imperial relic, but outside of her circles, most people weren't.

Didn't hurt that you were in the teenage rebellion phase, either?

Jon shakes his head. Not at all. He thinks about it a bit, and it's clear that he decides not to ask specifically what's got Kylo's head in a twist. The man won't look him in the eye, so he's got a fairly good idea. If Kylo wants to talk about it, he will. Basically, eventually, you'll sit your arse down, figure out why it feels bad, and if it feels bad because it's a genuine problem. You're actually doing something wrong. Either wrong for you or wrong for the situation. Or if it feels bad because the people around you have expectations for you, and you're violating those expectations.

Thank you. Rey thinks.

Jon nods at her. He's still fighting with the expectations of the ghosts in his head, isn't he?

Rey sighs at that and give Jon a look that he has no problem understanding.

Another quiet moment.

Thanks for not asking exactly what it was, Rey thinks.

For a second, Jon's tempted to leave it there, but… She'll know. Maybe she doesn't now, but she will. Oh, honey. He won't look me in the eye. My answer to two plus two may not be four in this case, but I'm somewhere between 3.9 and 4.1.

Oh.

Whatever variation of me and sex went dancing through his mind and maybe yours… He shrugs. It's okay. Not like he hasn't been in my wank bank a few times, too. It's… completely normal to be attracted to pretty people you genuinely enjoy being around. I mean… that's how it's supposed to work, you know?

Rey wonders if she should be shocked by that, but… She's not. Maybe not today. But at some point, mentioning that might be a good thing.

Jon's turn to look a bit surprised. I'd assumed he already knew that, but… Yeah, if you think it'll help. Otherwise, just let it sit for a few days, and it'll blow over. Again, speaking of things that happen to just about everyone…

Rey nods at him, and squeezes his hand. You're a good friend.

Well, I'm trying.

* * *

"Ah, good, you're back," Threepio says a moment after Kylo's out of his ship. He sees Rey waiting for him, but doesn't see Jon. He's not sure if he's relieved or not by that.

He had a billion meetings and figured you could handle debriefing Threepio, Rey thinks to him.

I can do that. "Yes, obviously," he says to Threepio as he take Rey's hand.

Threepio tilts his head a bit, indicating that he sort of expected a response like that. "Good news, sir. While you were in transit, we received both the copy of the treaty, and the Primo was so impressed with you he sent both a gift and an invitation."

Rey looks pleased, and Kylo's so surprised it's visible on his face.

"Did you not think the meeting went well?" Threepio asks.

Kylo shakes his head a bit. "Actually, no. As best I could tell, it went fine. The Kress seemed to like what they found when they 'got to know me.'"

"Wonderful." And, for once Kylo doesn't get any sense of sarcasm off of Threepio. Maybe… fuck, he got sent off to do a job, he did it, he didn't screw it up, and the droid is now pleased with him. It can't really be that bloody easy, can it?

"What's the invitation?" Rey asks.

"Apparently, Master Ren got into a conversation about wedding traditions. He's been invited to join in the bridal raid for two of the Primo's grandsons, and our contingent has been invited to the weddings to follow."

Kylo blinks a bit, and rubs his lips together, and then nods. "That will be… interesting." Part of him is really looking forward to it. Run around and smack the shit out of people for a night might be a really good time. Part of him is worried about spending more time steeped in Kress culture and picking up the local mores.

Rey squeezes his hand. "What was the gift?"

"It appears to be a piece of furniture. Some sort of sofa. We took it to be scanned, make sure there's no bugs on it, and then it'll be transferred to your rooms, or perhaps to the courtyard. I wouldn't know personally, but I have the sense that it'd be rather comfortable, and possibly good for the seating area near the reflecting pools."

Rey closes her eyes slowly, and Kylo bites his lip, hard. "I… think that sofa will come home with us," he says.

What, you don't want everyone in our courtyard to enjoy the sex sofa? Rey teases.

Kylo bites his lip again. Then he makes himself stop. "Threepio, I'd like it if we'd offer an invitation to the Sub Prince and whichever of his friends he'd like to bring, to come here and join me for a training meelee. We'll… show them a good time, Order style."

Threepio nods at that. "Excellent. I think warm relations with our nearest neighbors is a good plan. It will certainly make for more ease along our borders."

"Yes," Rey replies. Though she's looking at Kylo a little curiously. You really want to do that?

He doesn't shrug, though she can sense he's feeling shruggish. What he does think is The part of me that understands this politics thing is under the impression it's a wise move.

She smiles at that.

* * *

The rest of the day is long. Get home, get changed, get more reports read, talk to more people, go to meetings, it's just… a day. And, for… oh, entire quarters of an hour at a go, he manages to not think about the dream, or about Rey, or Jon, or… Rey and Jon, and… shit… Rey and Jon… and… And then a few of the maintenance guys wheeled the sex sofa into his rooms and… Well, that completely blew his focus for a good ten minutes, and…

Sigh.

Toward the end of it, he's ready to go home, and then remembers that Rey's got supper duty with the kids, because Rose was, on her own, riding herd on them yesterday, so… Right. They need more adults. Or more droids. Or a place where the kids won't freeze if they go outside.

Moving… that's on the list, too.

The never-ending list. Are you eating with the kids, or should I just bring home supper late?

There's a few moments where he can sense Rey's focus is elsewhere, and then… I'll probably eat with them. If you don't mind. Maybe you might catch a meal with Jon?

I don't… Uh… mind. I don't mind. And he doesn't. Because… Okay, well, he's not about to have a meal with Jon. Not now. Tomorrow, or the next day, or when he can look the man in the face and not blush. But… Maybe I'll catch up with Poe.

He feels a wave of relief from Rey. That sounds like a good plan.

* * *

Lucky for Kylo, Poe's not only got free time, but he's also in his flat on the Supremacy.

Kylo finds his way there, and Poe's taking advantage of the free space that most people would have furniture in by filling it with what appears to be a scale model of some sort of farming complex.

Kylo walks around it, and says… "Uh…"

"Don't ask. It's called plausible deniability. If we somehow get caught and Jacen can't talk us out, you don't know what we were doing."

"If you get caught… You don't think I'd just leave you, right?"

"Of course not. You'll port our sorry asses out of there when you get a chance. But, if it ever gets traced back, you'll be able to honestly say you've got no idea what shit we were pulling. We'll be your wayward friends and not part of your plan for galactic domination."

Kylo keeps eyeing the model. "Okay." He looks around the rest of the apartment. "You're decorating."

Poe shrugs a bit. "I may be a man of simple tastes, but even I want a bit more than one table with two chairs and a charging port for BB." There is the table with the two chairs, and two more chairs. And there's a bar. And, though they're pushed against the far wall to make more space for the model, there's a sofa and… two… square somewhat sofa-like things that Kylo doesn't know the name of, and a stand with what Kylo thinks is a full-sized entertainment pad on it.

Kylo looks around and doesn't see the droid. "Where is BB?"

"Should be with Micha right now. Sometimes he wanders about and hangs out with R2."

Kylo puts the dinner he brought with him on the table, and begins opening it up.

"Are you just being… social?" Poe asks.

"If I am?"

"I'd be surprised. I've probably been spending too much time with you little Force sensitive boogers because I can feel... Or, wait, you're just projecting all over the place, aren't you?" Kylo shrugs at that. "You don't feel… social. And you don't feel like you want something. You feel… confused? Upset? Upset because you're confused?"

Kylo rolls his eyes, suddenly feeling a lot of sympathy for Jon's comment about how sorting through the feelings works better when you're doing it yourself, not having someone else barging around in your head. "Yeah. All of the above. Just…"

Poe sits on the sofa, grins up at him, and pats his lap. "Dinner'll hold. Come on, tell big brother all about it."

Kylo rolls his eyes and growls softly. He does sit next to Poe. "You're not my big brother."

"And yet I am. You need one, you're here, get talking."

Kylo sighs, opens his mouth, blushes, and closes it. "What do you have to drink?"

That gets Poe's attention. Last he heard was from Jon last night, and it sounded like everything was just fine. Then he remembers the last thing he and Jon were talking about. What the fuck did those two get caught doing last night? "Holy hell, this one's a doozy, isn't it?"

Kylo nod.

A moment later, Poe's at his bar, with a big glass, and is pouring a lot of things into it. A moment after that, he's added another glass to the top of the first one and is sloshing it around, before pouring it into yet another glass over ice, and handing it to Kylo before dragging the table over to the sofa. "Take it slow. This tastes like nothing, but there's more than enough vodka in there to lube your brain into next week."

"Good!" Kylo says and gulps down the top quarter of it, while Poe stares at him in a mixture of curiosity and fear. He takes the glass away from Kylo because slow is not how Kylo's drinking it.

Kylo waits a few moments, willing the alcohol to, as Poe put is, lube his brain into next week. He feels the hit all at once, knees and elbows going soft and loose.

Poe's staring at him, really looking, and then says, "All right, your eyes aren't focusing anymore. Let's try again, what's up?"

Kylo closes his eyes and gives the alcohol another moment. "I had a dream."

Poe's up and on that, because it's not, at all what he was expecting. "What sort of dream? Future stuff? Bad stuff? Taking care of you stuff?"

Kylo blinks. "Oh. No. Nothing like that. I don't think." He's got to think now. He's had dreams of the future, visions, but… "No. Just a dream."

Poe nods, and then takes a drink, and cracks a grin. "Okay, you didn't call it a nightmare, but you still want to be halfway to unconscious before talking about it, so I'm guessing it was a sex dream."

Kylo feels himself relax, judging by what he can feel off of Poe, this is really common. "Uh, yeah."

"Other than, once again, wanting to slap Luke Skywalker up the back of the head, this is just… Completely normal. Everyone has them." He's just looking at Kylo. "Wait… Wake up sticky. You mentioned that to us when we were talking with the kids. You've had sex dreams before. What's going on with this?"

Kylo blushes, pulls the glass to him with his Force, doesn't slosh the liquid out of it when it meets his palm, and is pleased to see he can still do that. He drinks a bit more, but his mouth does not appear to be adding any details to the situation.

Poe gently prods, because it's clear Kylo wants to talk about this, but just, for the moment, can't. "Dreaming about someone who isn't Rey?"

Kylo nods, just a tiny bit.

"Also, completely normal." Poe grins at him. "Who was it? Do I know her? Rose? Wait, don't answer that, if I know I might let it slip, and Finn'll kill you."

That gets a massive eyeroll, a very rude gesture that Poe didn't know Kylo knew, and then Poe elbows him while grinning.

"Seriously, totally normal. If that's the first time that's happened since you and Rey have been together, that's…" He shrugs. "Okay, you're you and Rey, so… Wait… Does she know?"

Another tiny nod and bigger sip of drink.

Poe looks worried again. "Is she pissed? Is that why you're here?"

Kylo sighs. "Might be easier if she were. She enjoyed it, too."

Poe thinks about that. "Too?"

A tiny quirk of a lip indicates that at least some part of Kylo isn't totally mortified by this. "Well, it was good while it was happening."

"And… Rey… got to ride along?"

"Yeah." One more sip. "And… uh… actively participate."

Poe swallows and then nods, and then says, "So… I'm… not immediately seeing why you're so… this. You had fun. She had fun. The third person was imaginary. But, even if they weren't, assuming all three of you had a good time, and everyone's happy with each other, after… No harm, no foul."

Kylo takes another gulp. "In the dream… It… didn't happen to me."

Poe blinks. "Uh?"

"I was watching. Her… and…" he mumbles the rest so quietly he might have just as well not said it.

Poe leans in closer. "I know you said something after 'and,' but damned if I could hear it."

"…"

"You can't just think the words to me." Poe stops. "Well, you can, but you didn't. You've got to communicate a name to me, or don't, but…"

"Jon."

Poe stops to think about that for a moment, and then nods. "I can see why she liked that."

Kylo looks like the seat he's on just got yanked out from under him. "Shouldn't you be… Something other than that?"

Poe shrugs. "Don't see why I should. I mean, it's Jon. The man's sex on legs. Dreaming about him just means you've got a pulse. Anyone even vaguely interested in m—" Poe brain catches up to his mouth, and his eyes go wide, and his jaw drops, and then he says, "OH!"

Kylo takes another gulp, draining the cup to slightly past half, and Poe pulls it away.

"Slow down. In five minutes, you're going to be on the floor at the rate you're going. And I don't want to try and pick you up. So, you were dreaming about Jon and Rey and… too… she liked it, too. Oh my! Are we indeed in for a late in life surprise?"

Kylo glares a little bit, but mostly just looks confused. "I…Don't know. I mean… How did you know you liked boys?"

"Probably the same way you knew you liked girls. Got crushes on them when you were young. Dreamed about marrying one. Puberty hit and even hearing the name of the one you liked got you hard."

"Find yourself lingering in places, hoping to catch a glimpse-"

"What the hell were you getting glimpses of at Jedi school?"

"We had a swimming hole." And, sometimes, if the light was right, and she didn't dry off well enough after, M'Gll's tunic would cling just a bit more than it normally did, and… She'd catch him and glare daggers at him.

Poe grins. "Yeah. So that's how I knew I liked boys. I never didn't like boys. I was five and told my parents I was going to marry Luke Corgan." Poe sips his drink. "Just for the record, I don't think you like boys."

"I don't think I do, either, but…" He rolls his eyes again. "I woke up in a wet spot, and that was after Rey and I had sex that night. Like… amazing, epic sex. The kind of sex where you're fairly sure your shaft is just… done… after. All fucked out for the foreseeable future."

Poe looks impressed by that. He knows that kind of sex. "That's a hell of a dream, then."

"Yeah. And… I mean. Jon. Who, I work with. Who, I genuinely love, but previous to two nights ago had never, on any level, contemplated in that direction. Who, I'm trying very hard to not be weird about."

"Well, that's the important part. Don't be a shaft to him. So, you had a dream. Not like anything changed. Your brain decided to take him out for a test fly or something, had a good time, and that was that. I mean, other than you appear to be a bit on the kinky side, it's still really normal to have sex dreams about people you know. Even ones who aren't part of your normal narrow."

"Kinky?"

"You like adventurous sex. Like… watching. Or more than one person. Or… well, Rey using her fingers on you. That's… uh… Stuff a lot of narrow guys who like women never wander into."

"Oh." He thinks about that. "Really?"

"Yeah."

"Why? I mean… it feels good…"

Poe's gesture eloquently sums up the idea of no clue. "I think it's part of drinking paint thinner. Some guys get really weird about being 'men.'"

"And men don't do certain things?"

"I think. I mean, you and I got the advantage of not being raised to be good Imperials, so..."

"Oh, right. Yeah. Jon talks about that some."

"Right. Apparently, way back in the day…" Poe smirks a bit, "at least according to Dad, part of why you'd try to date rebel girls is because they didn't demand a wedding date to get them into bed."

Kylo half-sniggers at that, and then says, "Wait… My mom…"

Poe looks a little uncomfortable. "Yeah, and mine, too. Let's just abandon that line of thought, okay?"

Kylo nods loose and sloppy, very much agreeing. "Good plan. Mine weren't married though. Dad told me that. Celebrating the battle of Endor, and then I was along for the ride."

Poe laughs at that. "Fuck. You're the end of the war. I'm battle of Yavin IV. She survived the fight against the first Death Star, and…"

"Your dad had a good night."

"I like to think they both did. After all, they got me out of it." Huge, cocky smile.

Kylo laughs at that. "They love each other?"

"Yeah," Poe says, voice soft. "That's uh… Micha. I've told you about him, right?"

"Not so much. Your first man?"

"Right. Uh…" He shows the ring on the chain next to his Maji pendent. "I was raring to get married. And Dad said to me, 'Look, if it's real, he's not going anywhere. And if it's not… What your Mom and I had was the most precious thing in the world to me, except for you, and… I want you to have that. I want you to adore your husband. So, take your time. Make sure you two really know each other, and… You're really young, so give it time."

"And then time ran out."

"And then time ran out. He… told me he was sorry, later. He didn't want me to get hurt, and…"

"And you got hurt."

"Yeah, but I'd have been just as hurt if we'd been married. Nothing would have changed about it, the… relationship is real, it's either a marriage or it's not. That's what we tell the kids, right?" He smiles again, though this one isn't as bright. "Like you and Rey. We hadn't gotten around to having a wedding, but that was it."

Kylo pulls his drink back to him, but just to fiddle with the glass. His knees are feeling too loose to make pacing a good idea, and he wants to fidgit some. "Did you and Micah… How did you… Shit. It was Jon and Rey in the dream, and… It looked fucking good, you know? I liked it. And… how the hell do I deal with that? I mean… I know… sometimes the shaft wants what it wants, and you go and flick it upside the head, and that's it, but… She liked it, too, and… Fuck. I don't…"

Poe smiles a little a him, half proud, and a bit sheepish because he knows he's going to blow Kylo's brain with this. "Uh… Micah and I, we'd just sleep with other people. Well, not sleep, not too much."

Kylo's eyes are about to fall out of his head.

"You just told me you liked the idea of it."

"Yeah, but… Really?"

"Yeah. We both liked sex. We liked it with each other, and sometimes we liked it with other people, and… If you're wired anything like how I am, watching your mate get off is hot." Kylo nods. That's a lot of what he liked about the dream, Rey and Jon were both having a really excellent time, and as an empath that was amazing for him. "Yeah, well, it's still hot even if you aren't the one doing it. Live action porn with your absolute favorite person, or I guess in your dream, people, and they're genuinely having a good time. That's excellent wank fodder."

That's a lot of information for Kylo to digest. And, unfortunately, the alcohol which did lube his brain enough to get him talking isn't exactly speeding up his mental processing right now. Finally, he blinks a few times and says, "Did you just watch?"

"Sometimes. Played along most of the times. I'm not saying it was something we did a lot, but… Ten times? Twelve? It had to be a guy we both liked, and one who was safe."

"What's safe mean?"

"Someone we both liked, were both attracted to, but wasn't going to try to get in between us or our relationship. Friendly, but stationed on the other side of the galaxy mostly. Guys like that. Good for a few one offs, maybe a fun long weekend, a decent conversation, and good dinner, but they wouldn't try to move in with us later."

"Oh. Jon's not safe."

"Drunk you seems to be thinking about this somewhat seriously."

"Drunk me is eighty percent shaft. And it had a good time."

Poe sniggers at that. "Yeah, well, if sober you is still interested… I mean, look, nothing's going to fuck up you and Rey. You're way too… attached… for that. You'd cut your stones off rather than hurt her, and vice versa, and on top of that, you know well enough, ahead of time, what'd hurt, so you won't fall into that trap." Poe takes a long sip of his own. His voice is mild, but his eyes aren't as he says, "But sober you might fuck up Jon, or my chances with him, if you move on that."

"I'm not… not really… I…"

"Got your panties wet and don't quiet know what to do with yourself. Yeah, that's coming through loud and clear."

"Can't help projecting right now."

"Drinks with the mindreader, yeah." Poe shakes his head a bit. "He'd probably take you up on it."

Kylo doesn't know what to do with that, either. "He… he said he misses his own love, and… Being near us would probably be fun while it happened, but wouldn't be what he's looking for."

Poe blinks at that, and then nods, and says, "See, that's the kind of conversation that makes me think this is more than just out of the blue."

Kylo shrugs. "Maybe it's not. I… Want to help him. He's… sad. And I don't want him to be sad. He's… deep and lovely, and should be happy, you know? Of course, you know. You're just about killing yourself trying to get to the point where he and you can be happy together." Poe raises a brow, thinking about how soft Kylo is under all of that black, but Kylo keeps barreling on, more visibly drunk by the word. "I don't want to fuck him, though. Probably. Even in the dream I wasn't fucking him. He kissed my cheek. But that was it. But I really liked watching him and Rey. I liked the sex, and I liked them being happy together, and I liked… shit… I liked showing her off and sharing her with him. I liked… him getting to taste my happy, and… It's confusing."

Poe thinks about it. He rubs his forehead. "In your wildest, dirtiest, most uncensored fantasy, he kisses your cheek, and then fools around with Rey. Congrats, you really don't want to fuck the guy.

"Onto real life, and real Jon. He'll fuck anything that looks interesting, which you and Rey are, because that's a way to not be lonely for a little while. Sounds like he knows that. On the other hand, you and Rey are safe for him. You'll treat him right, make him happy, give him a good set of shoulders to cry on, and… I don't know, could be good. Or it could be just another way he avoids doing what he needs to do to not be lonely long term, because that means changing, and he's not there, yet. Granted, lonely'll crush a person, so maybe a few hours of not lonely with someone who does love him is what he needs."

Kylo blinks at that, too. "I have a feeling sober me'd be impressed by that."

"Yeah, well, I'm not a mind reader, but I am paying attention to him, and I kind of know the terrain he's moving through right now. It's not a fun ride, and sometimes you'll hop on anything that eases the pain for a little while."

"Oh." A wash of shame hits Kylo. "Shit. I…"

"Oh, holy Force, don't get mopey over that! You're allowed to have fantasies. Everyone wants their wants, that's just normal."

Kylo rolls his eyes. "Fine. It'd be easier to just… want Rey."

Poe chuckles at that. "I'm sorry. I know you skip Maji lessons, but I assumed they were like, ingrained or something for you. I didn't think you actually needed to attend. Light side, even, steady, likes the same thing over and over. Sets a course and stays on it. Darklings," he gestures to the two of them, "passionate and likes variety. We're hardwired for lots of wanting. Just got to do a good job of managing it."

"That's the truth."

Kylo's still looking mopey. And after a minute Poe figures it out.

"I really do think our wants are hardwired. That was Jedi training for you, right? Give up your wants? Be passionless?"

"Yeah."

Poe shakes his head. "I'm almost certain it doesn't work that way. You want what you want and that's just that. What you do about it is under your control, but you can't make yourself not want."

Kylo snorts at that. "Yeah, try telling that to my family."

"Oh, please. I didn't know Luke or your Dad well, but if your mom ever gave up a want in her life, I never saw her do it. I feel like Chewie and I get on pretty well now, and speaking of not giving up wants… I mean, okay, there are things you want you just can't have, and in those cases it's probably better to figure out how to give up on them, but… From everything I can see, you do not come from a long line of ascetics who dwelled in comfort with nothing."

"Thanks." He reaches for his cup to fiddle with it and misses the first time. "What was in that?"

"A lot of vodka, some rum, a bit of gin, flavored vodka, some sweet fizz, and some juice."

Kylo blinks slowly. "That's what Jon meant by it doesn't taste like anything."

"Yeah, mix it into something with some real flavor, and it'll blend pretty well. Also, you looked like you wanted a pretty hard hit, so that'll numb the taste buds some."

He nods, but it's sloppy. "Jon says wanting a lot of people is normal, too."

"From everything I can tell, yes."

"Rey doesn't. She says she has, but I've never felt it."

Poe sighs. "Kylo." He rubs his hand over his face, not sure how Kylo got this old without having noticed this, but… Jedi education. Poe realizes he's got no idea if Kylo ever got a basic biology class. "Two things are in play here. First of all, Rey is light. We know this about her. She gets on one thing and tends to stick there. Lucky for you, you're one of her one things. Second of all, she's a woman. And, again, speaking of things we're hardwired for… This is basic biology… For us, lots of partners means lots of babies. That's… you know… why we've got stones. For them, finding one good partner means babies have a better chance of growing up fat and happy, and they have a better chance of surviving cooking them. We're quantity, they're quality."

Kylo thinks about that for a moment, too. He can feel his brain turning that over and over, slowly dissecting it. "It's funny. I can actually feel my brain slow down."

"Welcome to being drunk. A lot of us do that on purpose."

He blinks again, slowly. "Yep. I can see that. This is kind of nice. I'm going to hate myself when I sober up."

"Yeah, that's the downside."

Finally, Kylo's brain lands where he was aiming it. "You and Micah… No babies at all, so… quantity?"

Poe shrugs. "Maybe just young and horny." Poe smirks. "Okay, no, with the right partner I'd be back there again. Just… sharing our favorite hobby with each other and some other people we enjoyed." Poe sighs. "I don't know. To me… this is like… a hobby, really. I love sex. I love getting sex. The whole thing… It makes me feel good, makes me happy, relaxes me, it's… good. I think most people agree with that. But… A lot of people seem to get really tetchy about doing it with a lot of people. Or, like, it's okay to do it with a lot of people if you just hop from person to person, but if you stay with one, you've got to stop with the others and… I know they feel that, but I don't."

"You and Micah didn't do it with a lot of other people, though?"

"No, part of it was we really did prefer each other. Sort of like, some nights you want to go out and have a good time, but most nights you want to go home, have a good meal, and spend some quiet time with your sweetie. And part of it was finding other guys who wanted both of us. And part of it was finding guys who weren't going to have problems that we were just a good time."

"But Jon was just with Lane. He told me that."

"That's how being married works for a lot of people. I don't know if that's biologically ingrained for humans, but a lot of them seem to prefer that plan."

"But you and Jon…"

"Are still very slowly feeling things out. Look, there are a lot of things I adore about that man, but the fact that he's still married to Lane is not helping the situation out."

Kylo blinks very slowly at that, too. Poe can literally see the moment the light turns on in his head. "You're right!"

"Of course, I'm right. Oh, and speaking of dark and light. And our pet lightlings…"

Kylo just about gives himself whiplash he nods so hard. "Jon's still on his one thing."

"Yeah, and he's working on coping with the fact that his one thing isn't there. And I can't be his next one thing until he can get off of his current one thing, so, here we are. If and when he's ready to start moving on, then I'll cross the one person for the rest of my life bridge. Given what Jon's up to these days, I'm going to guess he's game to play, and who knows, maybe one day all four of us'll have a good time together, but if he's not… Then he's not, and I can probably meet him there."

Kylo blinks at that, too. And thinks, and Poe does his best not to laugh because he can see Kylo's brain going through the permutations. Finally, "I like Rey. And Rey likes… well all of us. And Jon likes all of us. And you like Jon and I… And… what would the four of us do?"

Poe shrugs. "I don't know? Whatever you're comfortable with. Dive in, or settle back and watch and wank?"

"How would that even work for you? I mean, Jon and Rey?"

"That man is fucking sex on legs reading a report or getting a drink or… whatever. Can you imagine him actually fucking? Well, fuck, obviously, you can, and if you hadn't enjoyed it, we wouldn't be having this conversation. Shit, I'm halfway to chub just thinking about it, even if it is with a woman. And… I mean, okay, Rey does nothing for me when it comes to hot and tinglies, but I genuinely like her, so… She'd be having a really good time, and he would, too, and… Even watching, that sounds like a good time."

"Just watch?"

"Isn't that what you did in the dream?"

Kylo nods.

"And you enjoyed it?"

He nods again, head loose and wobbly. "Maybe too much."

Poe shrugs. "I'd probably want to play instead of just wank. Especially with your eyes closed, skin is skin, but… Whatever it is, Jon and Rey likely end up in the middle because they've got the most options."

Kylo nods slowly at that, too. "You really don't like women? I mean… just… nothing?"

"You really don't like men? I mean… just… nothing?"

"I thought I didn't, but… Jon with Rey is hot." Kylo's fairly sure that his shaft would twitch or something at that idea again, but it's just sleeping in his shorts right now. "Alcohol puts your shaft to sleep, doesn't it?"

Poe snorts a quick laugh. "Yeah, it does. And yes, Jon with Rey is hot, but that's because you like sex and Rey. Hell, I think Jon and Rey is hot, too. Doesn't mean I'm into women all of a sudden. Just means I like sex and Jon. Jon on his own does nothing for you, right?"

Kylo thinks about that. Tries to imagine it. Has a hard time imagining it, and doesn't feel much of anything when he does. "Yeah."

"And that's the point. If Jon on his own does nothing for you, you don't like men. Anything even vaguely into men likes Jon. He's fucking canashish for people who like men."

"I don't know what that is."

"It's a drug that makes you feel really good, and most people who try it once want to do it again, a lot."

"Oh. Would I like it?"

"Probably. I don't know if you've got the temperament to stop taking it if you tried it, though."

"Why would you want to stop?"

"What's seven times eleven minus six?"

Kylo blinks, slowly. He can't even begin to make his brain shift gears to get into the mode where he could begin to try to answer that.

"Exactly. You feel good, but the parts of the brain that can really think shut down, and most people need those parts in day to day life."

"Oh."

"And sometimes the parts of the brain that keep your heart beating and your lungs inhaling and exhaling shut down, too, and everyone needs them."

"Ah." Another quiet beat. "Thirty-five."

Poe raises a brow at him. "Seventy-one." He feels Kylo starting to focus on that. "We're not going to argue math, especially right now. When you're sober, if you remember that, we can talk about it, but not now."

"I hate math."

"Yeah, that's why you're not a pilot."

"I'm a great pilot."

"Yeah, right. When was the last time you flew?"

"Uh…" He blinks. It wasn't that long ago. Really wasn't that long. And he really feels like he should know this, but…

"Exactly. I'm a pilot. You're someone who can fly a ship. Hell, you're probably good at it, too, but that's not being a pilot."

"I like flying."

"I know. I love flying. I go too long without flying, my head starts to get tangled. You go too long without fighting your head gets tangled. I'm a pilot. You're a fighter. Good?"

"Right." Kylo blinks at his half-drunk glass, almost reaches for it, and decides that his brain is already so well lubed it's in danger of slipping out of his head. He puts his hand down.

"Good decision." Poe picks up the glass, takes a sip, and then crosses to his sink and pours the rest out.

"Yeah…" He blinks again. Why was he here? Jon… Right. "How do I not be weird about it?"

"Well, when you're with Jon next, you've got two options." Poe sits back down. "You can just act like you always do, and not overthink it. Or you can just flat out tell him what happened, and that if you're off for a few days it's not his fault. I'd recommend just being your normal, hanging-out-with-Jon self, and not overthinking it, but if you can't, then tell him what happened. I'm sure he's got half a dozen similar stories just like that, and'll have a laugh with you about them. That is one man who does not take poorly to being desired."

Kylo nods at that. "He really likes it when you call him Pretty Boy or Gorgeous."

"Yeah, I know. That's why I do it."

"When we were talking to Kinear, he also really liked it when you reminded them he was smart. I don't think a lot of people do that."

Poe smiles. "I'll keep that one in mind."

"He thinks you've got a really nice ass."

"He's right about that."

"He was wondering if you're a grower and a shower, but I don't actually know what that means."

Poe looks amused by that. "It means it's time for you to go home to Rey because you're spilling secrets you likely weren't supposed to know in the first place."

"Rey…" He smiles happily at the idea of going home to her. "We were at the room of sex, and they kept referring to Jon as my concubine, and set it up for the two of them to sleep in there, together, I had my own room, and Rey and I were playing with the idea of what I was supposed to be doing in there with my wife and concubine, and at one point Jon asked what he'd do, and I told him he could take pictures. I really liked that idea. Is that normal?"

Poe nods, and thinks as loudly as he can Rey, come get your man! "Normal enough."

Rey appears next to them, and takes one look at the exceedingly obviously drunk Kylo. "What is—"

"He was feeling squirmy about the dream situation, and wanted to talk, but was having a hard time doing it. I needed to loosen him up to get it out of him. He's… uh… loosened."

Kylo's sprawled out on the sofa, grinning up at her. "Poe thinks he'd like to see you and Jon have sex."

Rey blinks very slowly, raises a brow at Poe, who just shrugs, and then looks to Kylo, who is still grinning at her like this is the best idea he's ever had. "That's… good to know."

"He doesn't like girls, so he doesn't want to do you himself, but Jon does."

"Uh huh. And what are you doing in this situation?"

"I haven't figured that out, yet. What would you like me to do?"

She takes his hands in hers, gives him a little tug, and he lurches up to standing, almost overbalances, but catches himself, and nods to Poe. "Let's go home." Then she looks at Poe. "How much did you give him? Actually… I don't need to know. Half. Whatever it was, start at half of that next time."

Poe decides not to tell her that Kylo only drank slightly more than half of what he offered up. "I really will. I keep forgetting that he doesn't have any practice at this. By size alone, he should have a hell of a lot more tolerance than he does."

Rey's not sure about that, but she's got a suspicion that if Kylo wants to be 'loosened' anything he consumes is going to hit him hard and fast.

"Come, on, Love."

"I like it when you call me that."

"I know, Opal."

"That one's good, too." And she ports them back to their bedroom.

He grabs his head and curls in on himself, flopping onto their bed. "Oh, gods." He breathes slow and steady. After a moment, he uncurls. "Okay, I'm not going to throw up."

She sits next to him, gently stroking his forehead. He nestles into her hand.

"I don't usually feel the move when I do it myself, but…" He makes a slight gagging sound. "Oh, I felt that!"

She strokes his head a little more. He rolls onto his side to wrap his body around hers. "So, the dream really got to you."

He doesn't blush, but there is a sort of mental flush of embarrassment, and he's got himself so thoroughly curled around her, his forehead is tucked against her knee. "I feel really stupid about it."

"Enough to talk to Poe about it?" And not me.

"You aren't a guy."

Her eyebrow raises.

"I don't know why that matters, but for some reason it does." He takes her hand from the back of his head to his lips and kisses her palm.

She can feel it. He needed another man to tell him it was okay. He doesn't know why, but he did.

"And, yes, that feels stupid, too."

She strokes his forehead again.

"And having to chemically shut my brain down to be able to do it feels stupid, too."

She pets his head a little more. "That's a lot of stupid."

He flops over a bit to get himself so it's easier to look up at her. "You're not constantly roaming around needing approval from other people." That's all Ben, and then Jedi Killer, and then Supreme Leader, and now Kylo ever really wanted. It's hitting him that a big chunk of being able to even out and be more… functional, or himself, or whatever, comes from the fact that there's finally someone who matters to him, who he's also good enough for. "Needing it feels stupid to me. I shouldn't have to need this."

She shrugs at that. "I'm not as much of an empath as you are. So, my sense of self isn't tied into everyone else's sense of me. And I'm also not constantly being bombarded by everyone else's thoughts about me."

He rolls his eyes at that. But it's true. She's got to actively focus to get other people's feelings and thoughts, unless they're very intently focusing on her. And he's just got to be nearby.

"We're okay." She can feel that. He's not fussed at or by her on this one.

"I think okay is my default setting for you. I'm annoyed or fussed at me and my subconscious. Not you. You're not the one who set up the sex with Jon dream."

"I didn't stop it."

His eyebrows furrow a bit at that. He sits up, and sways a bit. "Could you have?"

"I don't see why I couldn't have. Obviously, not when I wasn't really in the dream, but once I was…"

He thinks about that, and for a moment really wishes he were a lot closer to sober because this is taking much too long to thread through. "Huh." He blinks.

"Are you upset that I didn't?" He doesn't feel upset, not as far as she can tell, but… Again, there's the sensation that actually talking about stuff like this matters. That putting it into words is… important.

His eyes squint. "No?" He thinks some more. "No. Not… no."

"But you're upset at you? But not me? Why?"

He's got nothing for that. He's thinking that maybe a little less loosened he might, but right here, right now, he's coming up blank. "Why didn't you stop it?"

Now she's thinking. It takes her a while, but he's okay to wait. He may not be thinking quick right now, but his patience is higher than usual. "Probably a few things. Uh…" she's blushing a little. "Well, it was fun. And… you know when I popped in, right?"

He nods.

"Right, so… Uh… you were… obviously enjoying it."

Since he was already stroking himself in the dream as he watched when Real Rey joined the party, apparently that was pretty obvious, so… "Yeah… I… liked seeing it."

"So… that kind of felt like permission for me to enjoy it, too, you know? If you'd been angry or sad, I couldn't have had a good time. But you were having fun, so I could, too. And I liked you enjoying it. It… felt good to show off like that. To have you watch me like that." She kisses his forehead. "You looked like you wanted to eat both of us alive, and that was… good."

He smiles a little. "That was good." His lips find hers. "I did like watching it. Kind of wanted to hop in, too, but watching was good."

"But you're upset."

"Confused… maybe? I…" It rushes out of him and he hides his face against her hip. "I'm pretty sure I didn't want to eat him, too. I wanted to eat you with him… Share the… meal… Maybe. Uh…" He's blushing high and pretty, and she can feel the heat of his blush against her leg. Then she feels the image he's got of… sharing the meal. Of her on Jon's shaft as he licks her maomao. The way she'd taste and sound and the feel of her leg over his shoulder and the crest of everyone's pleasure.

Rey nudges him to look at her. "And that's… squirmy… for you?"

"Some of it. You're my wife, not my toy, and… At least at first… It was all about me and what I wanted and…" He knows that's not all of it, but that's there, and… Listening is easier than thinking right now. "You said a few things," he shifts back to her, where he can sort of just listen and absorb, and less try to figure things out.

Rey looks a little embarrassed, but… "I… uh… You remember asking me if I'd ever done this with anyone else? Had fun?"

He's got to think about it for a moment, but eventually remembers, and nods. "Yeah. Long time ago."

"Well, you know. I didn't." She kisses him again, and offers him a little smile.

It takes a second for him to get what she didn't say. "Do you… want to try other people?" He's not sure how to process that, so he just waits for her to answer.

Another somewhat embarrassed look. "I… don't know. Sort of. Sometimes. You do, too. I know that."

"I feel bad about it."

"Yeah, but… I don't want you to feel bad about it." Unspoken, unthought I don't want to feel bad about it, either.

"I don't like wanting other women. I want to just… be yours. I want to want to just be yours."

"Do you want me to just be yours?"

He doesn't know the answer to that. There's a growly under bit that very much feels yes. There are other parts, parts that were never enough for anyone, and they'll take anything she'll give him. And if that means she goes out and tries other people, then that's that. (That thought makes him sad.) There's the part of him that just can't bear to be mad at her. Not for something like this. There's the part that wants to say as long as I get to watch, you can play with anyone I like. (That one embarrasses him.)

And there's a heart next to his, a life that makes his whole, and all the little niggly bits that she keeps under her glow of a light personality. The girl her parents abandoned. He didn't feel like he was enough for his parents. She literally wasn't. And… Until it was the two of them, literally no one ever put aside even the most trivial want to put her needs first.

"I love you," he says it, kissing her hip. "And… I'm… a shitty person. And… I don't want to share you with anyone I don't love. I love you. I love Jon. You and Jon and I'm hard as a rock. And… if you wanted to fool around with Finn it wouldn't work that way. And I don't like that about me, because… That's about my pleasure, and not yours. And… I hate you didn't get to have a good time with anyone else. And… If you do… I'll… make myself be okay with it. You're my heart. You're happy, and my heart is happy, so I'm happy. And… it feels like… wrong… to want to stick my shaft in other women, because they aren't my heart, and…"

Shit, that was part of the dream, too. He got to watch really, amazingly hot sex with people he loves. But he wasn't sticking his shaft into anyone else. And there was no temptation for that, either. The only person he wanted to have sex with was Rey.

She bends and kisses him. "I love you, too. And you're not a shitty person. We've both been working awfully hard to make that true. I… like that this… sex… is for us, you know? Something that's ours. Especially as more of our life gets public, the idea that there are things just for us is good. But… I'm not blind or dead, so… I wonder… sometimes. And I don't feel bad about it. And I don't want you to feel bad about it."

He smiles a little at that. "And Jon is sex on legs."

"He really is! I hadn't thought of him like that before, but… One moment, I'm in my own dreams happily doing… Whatever, I don't remember, and the next I'm having sex, which I generally expect to be doing with you, but I'm watching you, and you're not under me, and then, oh, there's Jon, and… That was… Good. You were enjoying it. Dream Jon was having a great time. Dream Jon is really good at sex. It was… good. But now you're… upset, unhappy, drinking to the point where your brain is mush, and if that's just a dream… Well, real other people are likely even more troubling than imaginary ones, so…"

Kylo sighs and burrows in closer to her. He pulls himself into as small a package as he can get, and lets her be the big spoon. "I think part of upset is… Us… This is for us. My pleasure serves yours and vice versa. And… The dream, at least at first, wasn't together. And… you were sucking him, and we were talking about how beautiful you are and how good you feel, and you couldn't talk, and… And getting off on all of it, and… My shaft was having a very good time. And in the moment my head was, too, because everyone was happy and enjoying it, and… empath… that's likely a situation I'll have a difficult time not being in a good mood, but… After. I wake up, wet and slippery, and you're snuggled in close and warm, and… Everything is weird and confusing and I feel like I did something wrong with my best friend, even though he wasn't actually there and… And… I feel like I was using you for his and my pleasure… And…." He's shaking his head.

Rey kisses his forehead again. And for a very brief moment she feels genuinely pleased that Unkar did as little as possible to raise her, because she can feel the muck in Kylo's brain, the decades of 'don't want,' and 'pleasure is dangerous,' and 'attachment leads to fear leads to the dark side,' and thousands of Jedi voices calling out over the millennia trying to cut Ben off from his own basic, human needs, and… She kisses him again. "It wasn't real, but even if it had been… You wouldn't have been doing anything wrong. Nothing about that dream was wrong. It was pleasure and sex and joy and love and that's not wrong, Kylo. It's not. You're allowed pleasure, and… well… I like being a source of pleasure for you."

He snugs in closer with her. "You glow when you're happy. You glow when you're certain. And when you talk about love. You go all light and warm and glow."

She doesn't know if that's literal. Probably not. But it also doesn't matter. She nudges him to face her, and kisses him, deep and warm, tasting the sweet-tart ghost of his drink on his tongue.

His hand curls to her shoulder, and drags up to the back of her neck, threading through her hair in a soft combing gesture. "My Rey of light."

She takes her time, touching and kissing each bit of him, shedding his and her clothing, feeling the echos of denial and asceticism that he tries to keep buried, tries to block out of his current life, but they're still there, hiding in the background, biting him when, and in ways, he doesn't expect it. She wishes, in the back of her head, that she had access to the memories of the Old Jedi, because there's a sort of sick curiosity that begs to know what happened, what went so wrong, that they decided no attachments, no desires, no needs, or emotions, or… any of it, made sense.

Probably some proto-Emperor, dark mad and power hungry…

He shivers a bit under her, turning in toward an especially arousing caress.

It doesn't matter.

This, here, between them, does.

She's in his lap, riding him, slow up and down, easy. Touching and feeling and sparking together.

Tonight's going to be slow. Between the alcohol and the emotions, he's not getting off anytime soon, and she's not in any rush, either. So, she sets a slow pace, easy ups and downs with long lingering kisses, and quiet, still moments of holding each other.

Be here, now, with each other.

He's looking up at her, eyes wide and pupils shot, black into deep brown, taking her in and basking in her glow. She feels so… complete, and full, of him, of light and life, adoration and succor.

He's mirroring it back to her. Taking it into himself, multiplying and refracting it, and sending it back, and she presses it into his skin with kisses, and he sings it back to her with words in her head, words in her ears, and it's this cocoon of emotions and touches and soft, whispery flows of good that she knows she doesn't want to share this.

She wants to be the only person who makes him feel this way. And she wants him to be the only one who makes her feel this way, and…

He's more than close enough that she doesn't need to say it.

He can feel it bubbling through her, that this, him, here, now in her body and mind and soul, and her, here, now wrapped around him, cradling him with her body, and mind, and soul, both of them twining love and pleasure into each other… This is theirs and theirs alone.

* * *

After, in the warmth of their bed, and the glow in their skin, she says, "It's not about sex. This…" And he knows she means all of these variations on sex. "Is good. It just is. There's no bad in this. No wrong. It's the stuff around it where bad or wrong might come in. And… Not…" She's having a hard time sorting out the thoughts.

"Wrong would be breaking the promises around this," Kylo says, feeling light and comfortable, and much less sleepy (or for that matter hung over) than he was expecting to be. "Wrong is making the promise of one and only one, and then breaking it. Not the sex itself."

She's nodding against his chest, but she thinks he's getting to the idea of it, but not on it, not yet. "It's… not setting up the rules together. Or it's trying to shove people into molds they don't want to go into."

He likes that, and it's beaming through him. He strokes his hand through her hair. "And… maybe rules change, or circumstances do, but… You make the rules, or the changes, together. The bad is in not sharing that. In just one of you demanding the power to make all the rules."

She kisses his nipple. "I like that. Together. We make the rules together."

Her hand is on his heart. He can see a dull glint of her marriage band. "Only yours," he says.

She nods at that, and kisses his chest. She scoots up a bit. "That doesn't mean I want you moping if you see someone pretty and get stiff. That's not what I want you to mean by only yours."

"Noted," he says, voice dry.

"Good." She kisses him again. "Because this…" And he knows she means this little world of love and touch and trust, "is not that."

He nods again. "Okay."

* * *

There's a thought that goes winding through his head. Later. Almost asleep. Curled around Rey, warm and content, he's drifting in a muzzy sort of way through the day and its conversations, and…

'How many other thoughts are in your head?' she'd asked him that, or something like it when they were still on Kreh.

He's never much thought about that before. How many other thoughts, other opinions, other ideas always have been in his head?

There was always some awareness of that. Of his disappointed parents, and his fearful classmates, and…

He never made the leap though.

He's an empath. He's not just aware of the emotions of the people around them, he feels them. How much of the hate he held and cherished and flared into violence was Snoke? How much of his self-loathing wasn't his… self? How much of the fears inside, of his self-concept as a monster was… not him?

He slows his mind down, matches his breath to Rey, how much of this, right here, right now, able to love and be loved and nurture as well as destroy is her?

He doesn't know. And he thinks of Jon, who isn't sleeping next to Lane right now…

Thinks of Jon… his lonely, droopy concubine… Yearning for his own man. Wanting his love back.

He thinks of all of those moments, of trying to figure out how to be good for Jon, how to help, how to… make him happy. He didn't want to be next to Kylo's love. He wanted his own love back.

Even in his dreams, Kylo couldn't do that. But… he could get close… Maybe. He could drop Jon into his love, let him be part of it. He wasn't next to it. He wasn't a toy for him and Rey to play with it. He was interacting with Jon more than he was Rey, until Rey got into the dream… Because…

Because sex isn't love. But love is often expressed as sex. Because, especially with Rey, they're so tightly wound into each other, that Kylo's got a bugger of a time untwining them, which is probably a whole lot of why he feels so off when his body takes a liking to someone else.

He loves Jon. And he wants Jon to be happy. So, he gave Jon his love in a… probably twisted sort of way…

Or maybe an honest one.

The idea still turns him on. His loves loving on each other. Thinking about it further, he even likes the idea of it with Poe in the group. Poe would make Jon extra happy. Or Jon would make Poe happy. Between the lingering effects of the alcohol and the sex with Rey, his shaft is in a coma, but the idea of it is still there. His loves all golden and pink and together and happy and…

And Rey is in his arms, and he's her one thing, and she doesn't want to share him, so…

He'll be her one thing. No one ever gave anything up for her, and he'll be damned for all eternity if he can't do this for her.

And maybe one day they'll revisit that. If she wants to. Or maybe they won't.

And it'll be okay, because they'll figure it out together.


	68. Naboo

5/24/02

"Could I go along on this?" Kylo asks as Mirina, Rey, and Ellie are chatting about the Naboo trip tomorrow.

He and Rey are 'changing things up a bit' mainly, they're in the courtyard. He's 'working,' meaning he's found himself a comfy sofa (not the sex sofa, that's home) and not exactly paying attention to Rey and the ladies as they chat. (Though Rey's sitting next to him, her back to his side, resting against his shoulder, as they 'have tea, and discuss the next outing.') This lets him nod to her in the direction of things that pass under his eye he'd like her to see, and she can talk about more of her adventures in being the Pretty Lady, and he's nearby to get an idea of what's going on.

As they see this, the biggest advantage is that instead of running into stuff, and then using their off time to talk about it, they can just talk about it as it comes up.

Mirina and Ellie are irked but doing their best not to let it become too visible on either their faces or minds. They do, after all, approve of taking meetings in the courtyard.

They don't exactly approve of the idea of him crashing this meeting, though. The Ladies look at him, and he feels the exasperation, the purse of the lips as they sip their tea, though neither of them says anything. It's clear he's not supposed to be lounging around reading his reports _here._

"Fine." He says, responding to what they're feeling and not saying, "I don't see—"

"That's part of why you aren't going on this tip," Mirina says, staring at Kylo, his legs stretched in front of him, feet bare, sleeves rolled up as he reads on the sofa next to Rey, being very present and very male. "You don't see the point of any place you can't go."

He shrugs at that. He's been shut out of enough shit in his life, he's not about to go tiptoeing around now.

Rey's looking curiously between the two of them.

Mirina says, "Part of the idea of this is to help Rey get a better grasp of traditionally _feminine_ power. Part of why we're hoping you'll bring your girls along, too. Like you saw among the Kress, female power is often superficially hemmed in, hidden, kept behind and away from where the men can see."

"And you don't want me learning all the secrets?" Kylo says.

Ellie sighs. "No. But, unless you want to use your magic and appear to not be there, if you go along, we won't be able to demonstrate, by literally showing your girls, how women act among other women. You show up, and the behavior _shifts._ "

"Oh." Kylo thinks about that. _Shall I go cloaked?_ he asks Rey. He glances at the two older ladies. _Not mention it to them, either. See how they shift on their own._

Rey sips her tea. She tries to look like she's not responding, and if she weren't with Ellie and Mirina, she might have pulled it off. _They'll notice the Kylo-shaped hole in the space around them._

"Yeah, they probably would," he says out loud. "And I'm much too… male… to pass as anything other than myself?"

"Unless you have a set of Captain Phasma's armor lying about?" Ellie says, voice wry. "Not that that'd help. She shows up and the same shift will happen. For the purposes of our discussion, Captain Phasma was male."

That does make him wonder a bit; what happened to Phasma's stuff? Did she share chambers with Hux? He realizes he doesn't know the answer to that. Whatever happened to their stuff happened on the _Finalizer,_ which is well outside his worldview these days.

He does wonder if Hux ever kept any momentos of Phasma.

"There is another complication of bringing you along, Kylo," Mirina says.

"Amidala," Ellie adds.

"Yes, since we haven't exactly decided when, or if, you're ever mentioning who your grandmother was, keeping you, at least officially, off of Naboo, is probably a good idea," Mirina says. "Since, I'm the designer on record for several of the outfits in the museum, we're going to get a bit more access and information than would generally be available to the public, even very important public, but we don't need to complicate that by having people suggest that you went along, decided you liked the look of the place, and went to make a play for it."

Kylo's eyes narrow slightly at that. "Well, this would be a play I can back up with a genetics test, no?"

"Yes, you have extended blood family you could match up with still on Naboo," Ellie says. "Still, until you can find an angle beyond, 'The ghost of my dead grandfather told me that his wife was Padme Amidala' I'm thinking we're keeping you off of Naboo."

"Does it really matter that much?" Rey asks.

Mirina shrugs. "Honestly, in the long term, probably not. But, given how we're more or less moving through the Alderaan angle on brass stones and no shame, not bringing up any other royal antecedents without a really solid grounding makes sense."

Ellie's thinking. "The only person who really knows the kind of terms you were on with your Mum is Commander Poe?"

Kylo's got to think about that. He comes up with, "That's likely true." Then he stops. "No. No, it's not. General Threepio."

That gets a moment of silence, and Ellie and Mirina decide to just leap right over that complication and leave it for later.

"Who got her personal effects when she passed?" Ellie asks.

Kylo doesn't know the answer to that.

Rey does, though. "Chewie, and then Poe. And Chewie was around for most of the last year, so he knew the two of you weren't on good terms, too. Why?"

Ellie doesn't shrug, though her voice indicates that fixing something like this isn't that big of a deal. "We could," she gestures a bit with her hand, "create… some personal effects. Like a note from Organa to his daughter about her real mother. Or a journal. Or," she waves her hand, "something. A locket with a picture in it. It's not like it'd be hard to get images of her."

Mirina smiles. "I'd have to look, but I should have some images. Especially when I'm getting to know a client, I'll take pictures of her in the colors she likes. It's much easier to get the right fabrics and flow if you've got an image of the person."

Ellie lights up at that. She's spinning the story, "And, of course, we're seeing the exhibits. And Rey's seen the image. You or Leia would have showed it to her. She recognizes the face… If… You want to claim Amidala, that's probably a good way to do it."

Rey and Kylo share a look.

 _Do you, Prince Ben?_

He sighs. "Would it be a… kindness to give Heloise a heads up before we do it if we're going to move in this direction?"

Ellie smiles at that. "I imagine Organa would like that. It burnishes _his_ line by tying it to another royal family."

"But not hers?" Rey asks.

"It doesn't hurt her, but it doesn't improve her situation, either," Mirina says. "Granted, both systems get on well enough. They have similar political codes and leaders of companionable temperaments. And, just to gild the lily, it's not like Naboo will, upon learning that Leia was one of their own, demand a place in the New Alderaanian succession. That said, if we're going to make this play, I suggest that our group go on our visit, Rey has her 'revelation' and then we seek to set up a private appointment to have a bit of a chat with the Neberrie family. Which means, to sell the lie, you can't give House Organa a heads up."

"Since you were a designer for Amadala, will they think we're just… setting things up?" Rey asks.

"They may, but the fact that Kylo'd be willing to offer a blood sample on this one, because he's going to be curious... After all, that image in the locket won't be too sharp focus. It's old. So, he won't know who the woman in the locket is just to look at her. Not for sure, but he wants to know. Just… luck of the Force," Mirina says with a wink.

"And, if they, like I did for Alderaan, say no?" Kylo asks.

"They may choose to do so, but unlike you refusing, their royal bloodlines are in searchable databases, to help 'keep things on the up and up,'" Ellie replies. "Monarchs are elected on Naboo, but they have to come from the correct families, and those families are… proactive… in making sure their lines stay clean."

"Ah."

* * *

"Well, Prince Ben," Rey says, later that night, as they're cleaning up the last detritus left in the communal kitchen from the kids' dinner.

He sighs. "I don't know…" He puts the rag he's been wiping up the counter with away, and says, "I just want to… visit, you know? Not take over the damn place. Maybe, get a chance to talk to someone who knew her."

She could say, "It'd take you nine seconds to locate Threepio and talk to him," but she doesn't, and he appreciates it. She does say, "Find some family you don't have a history with?"

He nods a little. "Yeah."

She pushes herself up onto the counter, gestures for him to come close, and he does, and she wraps her arms and legs into a hug around him. "Find some people who don't have expectations for and of you?"

"Might be nice. Or maybe just… He said I have her eyes. I'd… just like to know more about her, you know?"

"Yeah. I know." And she does. She understands the kinship, beyond the literal genetics, that Kylo feels to a woman taken advantage of by Force users more powerful than she was. "Tomorrow, I'll notice one queen looks familiar, okay?"

"Okay."

* * *

5/25/2

"So, why do the girls get to go on this and we don't?" Critt asks, looking a little hurt.

"Because it's important for girls to have girl time," Rose shoots back. "I'm sure you'll have a good time with Poe and Finn today, and sixteen hours without your girlfriend won't kill you."

Critt rolls his eyes viciously, but Rose, damnable Rose, has absolutely nailed his complaint. Jacen's going off today doing gods alone knows what. Something involving Kylo and Chewie and the _Falcon._ He doesn't know all the details because Jacen's being _mature_ and _trustworthy_ and not spilling the secrets.

And it sounds fun and exciting and he's raring to go, too, but _noooo…_ He's _too young._ Jacen's just a hair more than two years older than he is, and _he gets to go,_ because he's been doing some shit making everyone around him think he's older than he actually is. Sometimes Critt's _really_ tempted to call him on it. Remind everyone that Jacen's _seventeen_ not _eighteen_ but he's got the sense that he can do it, and it won't matter, because Jacen'll just point out that he's been doing whatever it is he's doing, so, obviously, he's old enough to do it.

And then, on top of that, Savarah, and Magiit, and Cassie are all going off with Rose and Rey and…

It's just going to be so fucking _boring_ here. Even with Poe and Finn. Supposedly, they're going to go and figure out how much cargo space they're going to need to get all of their shit off of Lirium and onto Achc-To, assuming they ever find a place on Achc-To to land. But he knows that mostly what he's going to be doing is keeping the little guys in order with Elias while Poe and Finn try to explain how to do this. (He rolls his eyes. Math. Finn doesn't know how to do some of it, and Poe just sees the answers as soon as he's got the problem and is shit at explaining how he does it. So, Critt's not, on any level, anticipating enjoying the two of them attempting to explain how to figure out cargo tonnage.)

So, yeah, it's _important,_ and _a useful learning experience,_ and Chewie says that the quickest way to bankrupt yourself as a trader is to miscalculate how much cargo you can take, but it's not going off to do whatever it is Kylo and Jacen are going to be up to, and…

Rey's hand on his shoulder. "I promise, we'll do something fun with you guys soon, too. Okay?"

His eyes narrow, and he grudgingly says, "Okay."

He still looks pretty jealous when Rey ports off with Rose, Paige, and the older girls.

* * *

And once again, Rey's official Order of the Maji branded ship is ready and waiting for them. And once again, there's a crew of people ready to go with them. Today is just a day trip, but, apparently even day trips to a peaceful planet involve at least twenty stormtroopers and a full piloting crew.

The girls are looking _very_ wowed by this. They've never had a full military escort join them and walk them through a hanger. They've never _seen_ the way people react to Kylo and Rey when they're being Lord and Lady Ren. They're used to Rey and Master Kylo, and this is a _deeply_ different experience. People around them are leaping to attention as they pass, quivering, ready to follow any order that might come their way.

Cassie, especially, who is an Order member, is for the first time, really _seeing_ Master Ren and understanding who she, for all practical purposes, lives with. Cassie whispers to Savarah, "They feel different, don't they?"

Savarah nods. Her empathy is sharper than Cassie's and she's very aware that this is not Rey and Kylo in the communal kitchens keeping watch over supper, let alone Rey talking moral philosophy, or Kylo wiggling his fingers at them, indicating that they can all rush him at once, and see how that works.

"Lord and Lady Ren," Savarah whispers back. "In their castle."

 _In your heads, girls,_ Rey thinks to them. _Unless you're in our room or Kylo's office, assume that someone is always listening when you're on this ship._

Rose is a few steps being the girls, and she's smirking a bit as they walk toward the ship. It's… she's not sure… poetic justice, maybe. The last time she was walking through the _Supremacy_ with a twenty person military escort, they were going to try, and fail, to cut her head off. Now she's a step to the left of the people who run the whole organization, and even without Force skills she can _feel_ how ready to hop-to and do whatever she asks, immediately, anyone around her is.

Part of her wants to tell Finn about this. She thinks that… maybe, if she hit him with it correctly, he'd find it really funny. Or maybe not. The Kylo aspect of this complicates things. Still the fact that she could likely, assuming she made good eye contact and used her 'Mommy voice,' order any of the men around her to break into jumping jacks and they'd do it, does make her want to laugh.

As they draw closer to Rey's ship, it also occurs to her that part of not being unnerved by this is that _only_ the military escorts are in full stormtrooper armor. Around them, bustling about, are men and women and none of the above in _armor._ Cloth uniforms, mostly of gray, though she sees the occasional black and blue that must mean something, but she doesn't know what, faces bare, hair visible…

People.

She glances over to Kylo. He made them _people._

He catches her thought, nods once, and then goes back to chatting with Rey.

* * *

 _Go time, again._ Kylo thinks. They're standing together, his forehead to hers (Apparently, according to Ellie, the pictures of them doing that are very popular. People actually _buy_ and _collect them._ Which staggers both of them. Though, apparently, since there is a market for those pictures, the Order now has a print shop making little collectible ones for people to buy. It's not a lot of income, but it's some, and every little bit helps.) holding one another as they say their goodbyes. He thinks to her. _I didn't remember to ask last time, but did you traumatize Threepio by piloting him somewhere?_

 _I've never flown him anywhere._

 _Well, there goes that theory._

 _Kylo?_

 _I was thinking maybe he makes sure you don't fly anywhere because you scarred him for life or something._

Rey mentally snerks a laugh at that. She can imagine how easy that'd be to do. _No. According to Ellie and Threepio, me flying myself is 'not befitting my status and role.'_ She doesn't roll her eyes. They're closed. So are his. From the outside it looks like the two of them just taking a long last hug before departing. Mentally, though, it's clear she's feeling rather short about her 'status and role' in this case.

 _Oh._ They stand together, quiet, and he shifts his weight and hold so he can pull her up a little and kiss her. _Have fun out there._

He puts her down, and she smiles up at him, stroking his face. _Always._

Then Rey turns to her ship, and heads up the platform, to the gaze of three _very_ interested teen girls, a satisfied looking Mirina and Ellie, and a deeply amused Rose.

(At least Paige isn't fussed one way or the other. She's much more interested in crawling around the seats.)

* * *

Once they're on their way, there are still three sets of very curious, very amused eyes on Rey.

Magiit's the one who says it, "So… This is what you do when you're not home? Get all dressed up and have Master Kylo pet you?" Savarah and Cassie are giggling at that.

"Among other things," Rey says, voice dry. The girls are watching intently. "The petting is… part of the image."

"And, you like it," Cassie says. (Rose sniggers.)

"And, I like it. But it's also…" She looks to Ellie and Mirina for help, but they both go mute, waiting to see what she'll do with this. She glares at them, and says, "It's also about trying to make people like us, and want to work with us, and join us."

"I didn't need to see Master Kylo canoodling you to join up," Cassie says.

 _That_ gets Ellie's attention. "Are you an Order member, dear?"

Cassie nods. "Yes. Master Kylo says that my time with the Maji will also count for my Order five years."

"As well it should. Do you have your uniform, dear?"

Cassie nods at that, too. Savarah pokes her. "I do, but it's probably too small. I've grown some."

"Eminently fixable," Mirina replies. "If you come on more of these, we'll have to make sure you've got your uniform, and, maybe like Rey's ship, your kit will have Order of the Maji marks on it."

Cassie smiles at that. She loves her uniform. There's no reason to wear it at home, and it is too small, but it has a special place in her drawer, and sometimes she likes to pet it. The idea of one with Order of the Maji marks like Rey has makes her feel warm and glowy inside.

"Will we go on more of these?" Magiit asks.

"Can you keep a secret from the boys, so that if it doesn't go off right, they won't be disappointed?" Rey asks.

The girls all look at each other. It's clear they're thinking yes, but Rey adds, "Jacen, too."

They glare at her.

"Let's just say, yes, this will happen again. All of you will have the chance to be out and about more as time goes by."

"Is Jacen a good friend? A… dear friend… perhaps?" Mirina asks, wondering which of the girls he's the beau of.

The girls smirk at that, very amused, but Rose is the one who says, "Jacen's the mindreader." She shares a look with Ellie and Mirina. "In this territory, the ground doesn't always look the way you'd expect it to. That said, it's very likely that Jacen, Critt, and Elias would know what was up within an hour of leaving, either because Jacen pulled it out of their heads, or because Critt and Elias are awful secret keepers. Generally, once one of the six of them knows, it the other five do."

The girls are not impressed.

"Jacen's been keeping secrets," Savarah says. "It's pissing Critt off. He comes home, and Critt's so happy to see him, wants to hear everything they've been up to, but he's not telling everything."

"And how does Critt know that?" Rey asks.

Savarah shakes her head. "I'm not telling. You'll just tell Jacen how to do a better job covering up what's going on."

"Probably," Rey says. "But it's also important that he be able to cover up what's going on."

"You know!" Magiit says, staring at Rey.

Rey rolls her eyes. "I don't _just_ look nice and canoodle with Kylo. Yes, I know what they're talking about doing. And not only do I know, I also know that it's a good plan for Jacen to _not_ be talking about it as much as he can."

"Who on Lirium could we tell?" Savarah says, exasperated.

"Savarah…" _We are not alone._ Rey thinks it to all of them. _There are twenty-five soldiers or crew on this ship, and you just gave any of them paying attention the name of the planet we live on. And, again, the plan is to get all of you_ off _of Lirium and out and about more in the not wildly distant future. It's not good to be stuck out there all the time. But if you are out and about, and you slip up like you just did, we have no control over who gets to overhear what. You can't slip up with what you don't know._

"But they're Order members!" Cassie says out loud, scandalized that Rey doesn't, inherently, trust all of them.

 _I know, Cassie. And a lot of them will literally die for us, but maybe not_ all _of them._ "Yes, just like you, a bunch of them probably joined up, or some of them were here from before." (Like every time she gets on her ship, Rey has greeted all of them, but as of this point, the same soldiers have never escorted her twice.) "And it is their job to protect us against anything that might show up."

"Wait," Cassie says, "is this dangerous? We're going to a museum, right? We didn't bring Paige along on…"

"Hush, Cassie," Rose says. "This is about as dangerous as going to the lake in the summer time. Everything should be fine. You know the lay of the land. You know how to swim, but, just in case, it's a good idea to have someone watching your back. If I thought it might be legitimately dangerous, I would not have brought Paige along."

"Okay," Cassie says, looking calmer. "So, who does know we're going on this trip?"

"Obviously, everyone in our ship," Rey says.

"And once we land," Mirina replies, "Well be greeted by Madam Neeyutnee, who you will all be on your best behavior for."

"Why?" Magiit asks. "I mean, I'm not going to be rude, but you say something like that because the person's a big deal, and I don't know who that is."

Mirina nods. "No, I wouldn't expect you to know her. Madam Neeyutnee is the daughter of one of the former Queens of Naboo. Once upon a time, her mother was a client of mine, and so was she. These days she runs the Hall of Leaders, and will be giving us a private tour."

" _Good works_ like running historical museums, or hospitals, or charities, or universities, is considered the sort of job that's _appropriate_ for the members of royal families who didn't _quite_ manage to make it to royalty. Madam Neeyutnee was born into a royal family of Naboo, but when the time came, her name was not put forth as one of the possible ladies to rule," Ellie says.

"Why not?" Rose asks.

Mirina smiles a little. "You won't like the answer, though it is part of why we're going, and what we hope to learn. Neeyutnee is a lovely girl. She's bright, and pleasant, and makes people happy to be near her. She's also not, by the standards of the humans on Naboo, pretty. She's not grotesque, or anything like that, but she doesn't have the slim, graceful curves, or particularly symmetrical looks that the Naboon favor among their Queens."

Savarah, Magiit, Cassie, and Rose are all angry at that.

"Wait," Rose is the one who says it. "She didn't get elected because she didn't… look right? What the fuck sort of bantha shit is that?"

Ellie stifles a laugh.

Mirina smiles, a little. Then she says, "Reality. It's reality. While we're there, look at the images of the queens, and the senators, and… Pick any elected body you like. Not everyone will match human standards of beauty, but you'll never see anyone who's _ugly._ Or if they are, they're the right sort of ugly. Either they started pretty and got old enough they lost it, or they're battle scarred. Otherwise, everyone will be _attractive._ Maybe not beautiful, but they'll at least clean up nicely and be presentable. _All_ of them will have tremendous charisma. If you're conventionally unattractive and have the personality of a six days worn sock, you will _not_ be getting elected to anything anytime soon."

"Is that… what you're doing with Rey and Kylo and… canoodling in front of the cameras?" Savarah asks.

"Part of it. People like romance. They like leaders they can look at an imagine good things of. Being pretty to the eyes helps that. Being lovey and lovely helps that, too. Among other things, the man who loves his wife is a man who likely has hopes for the future. He has something to lose, so he's likely to be cautious in a good way. He's more likely to want to build a world for his children, than destroy the world of his enemies. The kind of hopes that likely translate well for everyone around him, and their families, too. It makes him seem more trustworthy."

Rose is looking at Ellie with a lot of respect right now. She nods slowly. "And you plant the seed of that idea by showing off the two of them being sweet on each other."

"Exactly," Ellie smiles a bit. "Plus, anyone who spends more than ten minutes with them sees it anyway, so it's not like trying to hide it was a plan with any chance of working."

The girls _all_ know about that. Lord and Lady Ren have stiffer posture and nicer clothing, but they still look a lot like Kylo and Rey, and Kylo and Rey like to cuddle.

Mirina continues the theme that Ellie had started. "The ugly loner on the other hand… Think of him or her. How does that work? Are people charitably inclined to the person who looks _wrong?_ " Even the girls are worldly enough to know the answer to that.

"Part of how, especially in the beginning, the Rebellion was able to raise people is that Palpatine looked like a pickled frog who'd been left in the brine too long and then bleached. It's very easy to imagine the worst of a man who looks like Palpatine did. Snoke apparently learned from that, made sure that people didn't see him. He stuck Hux in front of the cameras, because he _looked good_ and _sounded better._ "

Ellie takes over. "A good voice, posh accent, cheekbones that could cut glass, and _presence_ will get people to go along with whatever idiot plan you may have much more readily than eons of good planning and a face that looks like it was illustrated by a blind man using his off hand with a one minute time limit."

"Who were the faces of the Rebellion? Pretty blonde Luke Skywalker. Lovely, young, virginal Princess Leia. Luke Skywalker never made a single command decision through the entire war. That didn't stop them plastering the idea of the Jedi were back and were out to end the Empire all over their media. Leia Organa, her tactical role paled in comparison to what people _saw_ of her. There were generals and admirals and they made the tactical decisions, but she was the face. Because she was young, and pretty, and innocent, and passionate, and if someone like that was on their side, obviously, they had to be on the side of the angels." Mirina glances to Rose. "Who was the face of the Resistance? I know it wasn't Leia, not really. She was 'officially' the leader, but the holos and propaganda you passed around, who was on it?"

Rose winces a little. Then she says, "We teased the hell out of him, but… Poe. They put pictures of him in his flight gear, but… uh… not all of it, his helmet was under his arm, and… He… didn't hate it, because he likes being drooled over, but he was embarrassed by it, too." Then she looks sad. "My sister. Paige was a bomber pilot, and… They had pictures of her, too." She swallows. "I've still got a few of them at home. Uh, she's standing, hair loose and blowing in the breeze, one foot on a bomb, her ship in the background. RESIST! In big letters under her."

Ellie's nodding along at that. "Youth, attractiveness, strength… These send a message, one that people like. We're just… showing off that we've got a deep well of young, strong, and pretty here."

Magiit thinks about that for a moment, and then says, "He said goodbye to each of us, will there be pictures of him with you and Mistress Frakes?"

"For our internal consumption, there will likely be video of the whole thing, but there won't be images of us for sale. We don't hide, but we also don't plaster us all over the galaxy," Ellie replies.

* * *

They're about twenty minutes out from Naboo when a thought goes running through Rey's head.

They will, intentionally, see an exhibit about Padme Amidala. So, Rey can 'discover' her.

The kids and Rose all know that once upon a time, Kylo went by Master Padme.

She has not mentioned that this "coincidence" is about to fall into their laps, and she'd really appreciate it if they didn't mention it.

She closes her eyes and quiets her mind before thinking to Rose, Cassie, Magiit, and Savarah, _Remember 'Master Padme?'_

That gets some curious looks aimed at her.

 _Yeah, so. While we're there, you'll notice that one of the Queens of Naboo was Padme Amidala._

And four sets of eyes go wide.

 _And… uh… She was Leia's mother. And that's not… widely known. And… it'd be really nice if it stayed that way._

She sees the girls all look at each other, before Rose stares at her very intently, and more or less screams in her mind _HE'S THE GRANDSON OF A QUEEN?_

 _Yes, but you knew that anyway. Leia was the daughter of Breha._

 _AND PADME?_

Rey nods. _Yes. It's a long story, and when we're home, I'll be happy to tell it, but Anakin Skywalker and Padme Amidala met, married, and produced Luke and Leia. With the exception of Kylo, Threepio, and maybe three other people, everyone who knows that is in this ship, and I'd like to keep that number, for the time being, very small. So, no comments about how Kylo used to go by Padme, okay?_

 _You are so telling us that story,_ Savarah thinks to them when Rey's done.

 _I will. But not now. The tale'll go easier when we can talk with voice._

Rose nods at that. She glances at the older ladies but doesn't think her question. Rey understands it anyway. _Yes, they know. And, in a few months, Padme will be completely out, but if we're going to make it look like this is something we discovered on this trip, you can't look at her, see the name and ask about it. Okay?_

She gets four okays back, and relaxes a bit.

* * *

Ellie smiles as she watches Rey scoot across the ship, to one of the ports, looking out as soon as they get word that they're within view of Theed.

The girls are crowded around her. Rose is looking cool, but she's gazing out a different port.

Magiit's the one who says, "It's so beautiful."

Rey nods. "This is my favorite city." Her face is light, eyes bright and pleased as they look out on the capitol of Human Naboo, lovely coral colored buildings rising into delicate copper green domes, curled around the waterfalls.

* * *

Coming here as Lady Ren is very different than coming as a private citizen. Not having to wait for a place to put their ship is nice.

Greeting a full delegation of political higher ups, less so.

But, with Mirina and Ellie's words in her mind, she is _looking._ The Queen is not here, likely because this isn't an official state visit, this is… as Mirina says, "A favor from a friend to a friend. If this was an official visit and she didn't greet you, that'd be a snub, and not something anyone would tolerate. As it is though, it'd be rude to demand she pause her day to greet you."

The people who are here… They're elegant, polished. No one is beautiful, that's true, but no one is ugly, either. Or for that matter, even average looking. Ellie catches how she's looking and mentally adds, _Granted, they do have a staff of people who do nothing but make sure they look as good as they can all the time, so… Take it for what it's worth. Waking up first thing in the morning, they're not quite this pretty._

Rey makes herself not shrug. She is aware of the hour the makeup and hair droid spent on her today. She does think, _Waking up first thing in the morning, I'm not, either._

Ellie smiles at that, but there's a sharpness to her eyes. _Oh, my girl. You're close enough. Tell me about how you're not quite so fresh first thing in thirty years._

Rey doesn't have a response for that. She does clasp hands with another member of the Naboon delegation, and thanks them for their hospitality.

* * *

"It's like a dreamland," Cassie says as they meander through Theed in a scooter, heading toward the Hall of Royals.

Rey feels the same way. Everything about this city was built to be splendid.

"Why don't we live here?" Magiit asks.

 _Someone is always listening, Magiit._ Rey thinks back to her.

Magiit closes her eyes. They've found that she needs to shut out as many of her other senses as possible to think to people, but she can do it. _Then give me an answer worth listening to!_ Her eyes flash open and she hits Rey with a snarky look.

Rey rolls her eyes. "Perhaps, when you're old enough to be on your own, you'll decide to move here."

"I was on my own before I joined you." Or, more precisely, as the oldest of the slave children working in the Favier stables, she was basically taking care of the rest of them. Their owner made sure there was food, and a roof, and water, but that was primarily for the Faviers. She made sure that enough of it ended up in their bellies to keep them going.

"And I was under the impression that you didn't much enjoy it. I know I didn't enjoy being on my own at sixteen."

Magiit sighs, and looks out the window. "You think the Order might decide to put an embassy here?"

"Now that's an interesting question," Mirina says. "Before we leave, I'll have to see if our pilot can do a fly over of the embassy neighborhood. It doesn't quite look like the rest of Theed, most of the embassies try to match their own, local tastes, but that's an idea."

Savarah and Cassie glance at each other, and then Rose, almost seeking permission for what to say next. Rose smiles and nods. "Uh… What would matching local tastes look like?" Savarah says.

"Yeah, I mean, would Master Kylo want to plop a huge black triangle in the middle of Theed? That'd be awful!" Cassie says. "I mean… I'm part of the Order, and I don't want to see that!"

Rey giggles a bit at that idea. "The _Supremacy_ was built before Kylo joined the First Order, and Snoke and his designers had no interest in what Kylo might have thought about how it looked."

"Oh, right." Especially for Cassie, who's young enough that the time before Kylo ran the Order is vague, the idea that he's not always been powerful enough in it to have real control is something that isn't part of her worldview.

"He would like it here," Rey says, because he did. "And I'd imagine that if there were to be an Order embassy here, it would blend pretty well. Partially because this is beautiful, and partially because the Order wants people from everywhere to feel welcome there."

Savarah keeps looking out the windows as they pass tan and peach colored buildings with green copper roofs, long streets of fitted stone, and small planters filled with carefully sculpted bushes. _Will our own home look like this? When we get to Achc-To?_

Rey smiles at that. _That's a lot of building._

 _Jacen says you're going to Canto Bight soon._

Rey nods at that.

 _So… win an extra good hand or two, and get us some pretty sandstone buildings?_

Rey smiles. _We'll see. We've got to find an island to put them on, first. And I promise you, the dome to make sure we don't get blown off the map if a bad storm comes is going to eat up a_ lot _of our winnings._

Savarah looks skeptical about that, but she keeps her peace as they turn down another street, heading toward a huge, circular courtyard, surrounded by more greeny-copper domed roofed buildings.

"This is the courtyard of the Royal Palace," Mirina says, "The Hall of Royals is a side building here. We'll be there shortly."

* * *

And shortly, they are.

The Royal Palace of Theed is… astonishing. That's a pretty good word to describe how Rey feels walking through it. She's pretty sure she could spend hours just looking at the stonework on the walls, or the way the tiny panes of colored glass glint in the windows, or the little hand painted tiles set along the base of the walls, or…

It's… a lot.

Everyone around them just wanders around like all of this is no big deal. They've grown immune to it.

Rey, Rose, and the girls, _aren't._

Though Rose does say to her, "They'd probably gawk at the _Supremacy_ if they were on it."

"Probably faint at how ugly it is by comparison," Rey says.

Rose smirks at that. Magiit outright laughs. Then everyone gets quiet, because there's a sort of hush in this place, like no one laughs here.

* * *

"Neenee!"

"Mirina!" The two ladies hug and kiss each other's cheeks.

While going through the introductions Rey understands what Mirina was telling them. "Neenee" is warm, kind, easy to be with and… visually off-putting in a way that's hard to describe.

Any given feature is fine, but put together they're a bit… off. Too long legs, too short torso and arms, eyes that are pretty enough but too widely set and small for a face with too much forehead and jaw, but somehow not enough chin. Wide hands and stubby fingers. Too much bosom and not enough neck. She's just… off.

If she'd been male, she'd probably be within 'presentable' parameters, but Naboo isn't that forgiving of feminine looks. Especially for their Queens.

Ellie glances at her. She nods slightly. _Good. Understand, listen._

So, Rey does.

It's… small talk. She can't imagine it's that important. Mostly, as they walk through a few of the palace halls Neenee and Mirina update each other on a _massive_ list of friends and friends of friends. Who's doing well, who's poorly, what new updates have happened in their lives, where their children and husbands are…

She feels that's where Ellie's trying to aim her attention.

Ellie offers a tiny nod. _Listen._

She does again, harder, more intently. They're ten minutes into this, and still new people are being bandied about. Neenee knows… everyone. And so does Mirina. Jon's mentioned that. He felt like she'd been on board for nineteen seconds, and his mum knew _everyone._

 _Female power is kept hemmed in, and hidden._ Rey thinks to Ellie.

 _Indeed._

 _But between the two of them, they know the partner of every major player in the galaxy don't they?_

Ellie smiles. _Now she's met you, they do._

 _Oh._

 _Keep watching._

* * *

Rey does. Neenee is warm. She's kind. She takes immediate interest in everyone around her. She listens to the girls, talks directly to them, doesn't skim over their questions and never makes them feel silly or like hangers on.

They _matter_ to her. A moment in her presence, and… They're charmed.

 _Why doesn't she run this planet?_ Rey thinks to Ellie

 _Whoever said she didn't?_ Ellie's eyes sparkle. _Keep watching, keep thinking… How many hours a day do you think it takes to run this place?_

That's a good question. Rey doesn't get the sense that a lot of people come here. It's a museum, and right now they're in a long room filled with wax statues of what they think the first rulers of human Naboo looked like.

Apparently, long, long ago they emigrated here from… somewhere not here. The Gungans are the native species here, and they didn't even notice them for the first few decades because their two worlds didn't much overlap.

But eventually they did.

And that caused fighting, because back then the humans of Naboo were under the impression that just by showing up, they'd claimed the whole planet, and that was that. (Probably.)

And the fighting meant that just about all of the early records are gone. There are tiny bits and pieces that have survived, so they know the first humans on Naboo spoke a different language, and they came here from a place called Xrithnia, but what or where that is, or why they came, they don't know.

There are a few pictures of the early rulers, enough so they have some ideas of how they dressed, (maybe) they don't know if the images are ceremonial, or snapshots, or… Fiction, either. There's just not enough context in the fragments they've got.

So, the first room is statues, with names (maybe), and outfits (possibly) and bits of early history that are couched in lots of modifiers and 'probablies' and 'maybes' and 'as bests we can tells.'

And so is the next room, and the one after that, and the one…

But, it doesn't look like, beyond dusting things, that any of this would need something like extensive upkeep. _Do they do original research and archaeology here?_

 _Not here,_ Ellie thinks back. _This is for display. They do the research at a few of the Universities._

Rey nods. _And, just to be very clear, it's not like she's dusting these displays by herself._

Ellie doesn't snort a laugh out loud, but Rey very clearly feels it. Finally, she thinks back, _There are droids for that._

Rey nods.

* * *

More rooms, more generations (or in the case of the first rooms, centuries/millennia) of rulers. As they move through, Rey's getting more and more of a feel for what goes on here.

And the correct answer is, not all that much.

This is… a job to give someone so they've got a title. It's not a job that gets _done._ Or at least, not in the sense of official duties.

 _So, what does she actually_ do? Rey thinks to Ellie.

 _This._ Ellie thinks back. _She's warm, caring, good to be around. She knows everyone's name, birthday, family, interests. She writes letters and sends gifts. She keeps track of everyone, where they are, what they do, what they want, what they need._

Rey stares at a ruler who's been dead for two thousand years. By now they're in a section where they've got actual images of the person, and though the clothing on the statue is a replica, the real clothing is hovering behind the statue in a static field to preserve it. The version on the statue is a perfect replica, down to the molecular level, so people can touch it, see it, interact with it. The one in the static field is there just to be looked at.

"Living history," Neenee calls it.

The girls think the fabric is too thick and stiff and scratchy. Rey's worn worse. If you're out and about in a rough climate, you want something that thick because it'll wear well, and if you've got limited fiber production, you make do with what you have.

 _You do that, too?_ Rey thinks to Ellie. _Keep track of people like that._

Ellie cocks her head. _To a lesser degree. She's better at it, and has a wider web than I do._

 _But you know her._

Ellie nods to Mirina. _I know Mirina. Mirina knows her. Mirina knows that if I need a favor, that I_ need _the favor, and that I'll make it worth her while, so if needs be, she'll mention something to Neenee, and she'll put the right word in the right place at the right time, and maybe I'll see something shift without it ever coming directly back to me, or maybe I'll get an invite to tea, a friend of a friend looking for a bit of conversation. Just depends on who and how and where._

Rey nods. _I'm following. Here's the part I'm not following, if none of you are the… well… man._ She looks annoyed to put it that way, but… Well, when it comes down to it, Pat commands the armies, Ellie doesn't, and if she's understanding how this works, none of the rest of these ladies do, either. _How does you having tea with whomever… shift things?_

Ellie smiles at her, as they drift over to look at a statue of a man wearing a lot of tiny disks of copper all woven into a fabric of sorts. "Scale mail," Ellie says. "Old and primitive armor. I daresay our Jon could tell us all about it and how it works."

Rey nods. "He probably could. I think he'd use it mostly decoratively now."

"Yes, he would." _When you get to a place of real power, most of the 'men' as you put it, have a tight group of trusted allies. Usually, their wives among them. If I were to say to Pat, 'This is a thing that needs to happen,' he absolutely will pay attention. He may not agree with me, but if he doesn't, he'll have_ very _good reasons for it, and that's something I can send back across the line to whomever has asked me for the favor._

 _There will be cases where I won't have an in to one of the 'men' in question, but through friends and friends of friends, I will have an in to someone in his inner circle. Somehow an idea will pass from ear to ear, or eye to eye, and it will get to the right place._

Rey nods. _Even the Emperor had a mistress._

Ellie nods to one of the kings of Naboo. "See the blade at his hip? There was a time this was a warrior culture." _The Emperor was a bit more twisty than that. He… did not have that web. That's not true. He had a huge, far reaching web, but he was the center of it, pulling strings. We used our connection to anticipate and maneuver around him, instead of manipulate him._

Neenee smiles at her. "A time. That said all of our upper level political players are trained in military arts. We don't _need_ those skills right now, but we might, so we make sure we have them."

"Wise," Ellie says. "Better to be armed and not need it, than need it and not have it." _The Emperor was fond of complicated plans. And if we knew the plans ahead of time, we could… gently tip a little sand into the gears in the right place, move him from his primary plan to his secondary or tertiary one. He'd always claim that no matter what, everything was always going to plan, but he also always had a million plans._

Rey nods at that, too, and thinks to Ellie, _And ladies like Neenee keep the ideas flowing, or the plans in motion._

 _Exactly. And many times, she'll be the one with the idea in the first place. She remembers the first time someone tried that sort of plan._ Ellie glances around at the museum. _This is a job that doesn't take much doing, but it does take a lot of knowing, and if you know how humans behave, it's very easy to predict how they're going to behave in the future and present, which means she can generally keep her eyes open, and then occasionally nudge people as needed._

Rey looks at more statues. _So, I should study history?_

 _If not you personally, then one of your girls, perhaps. You don't have to master everything, and I think what you're studying with philosophy will fill the same bucket, but it's always good to have someone who knows the ins and outs of what has come before you, so you can have a better idea of what will come next._

And with that, they continue to walk through the halls as Neenee tells them the history of Naboo.

Eventually, Neenee understands the ladies want some 'alone time.' She tells them to go wander, and that she'll meet them for tea in two hours. Then they can talk about what they've seen.

* * *

They turn a corner to a long hall filled with statues made of wax of each of the Queens of Naboo, dressed in her royal raiments and jewels on the occasion of her coronation. These ladies are the last hundred years, each of them elected.

For a good twenty minutes Mirina lets the girls wander and _look._

And, of course, it's worth looking. Naboo is _fashionable._ It is _rich._ It is famous for good taste, elegant design, and _glamour._ And, because it is the original home of the Emperor, his policies here didn't encourage much to rebel against. And, because the local government was pacifistic and egalitarian, the Rebellion didn't have any reason to try and cause trouble here either. And in the years after… A stable, untouched, functional economy with a full manufacturing system up and running makes a place in a war-torn galaxy _very_ valuable.

Thus, they walk among splendor of the sort Rey's never really seen before, and the girls have never imagined. The gems, the headdresses, the gowns, everything in here _sparkles_ with glory and wealth.

It is _beautiful_ and it deserves at least a few moments of just _looking._

But it's important to not just look, but to _see._ And there is a lesson here, amid the piles of gems, and silk satin, and lace.

A lesson about power, and who has it, and how it works.

When the girls are done looking, Mirina draws them to the first of the ladies, Queen Reheena. There was a time when Naboo was a birth right absolute monarchy. A time when the King's word was law. And then a time when the King went bad, and people died, and the world suffered.

They've heard Neenee's version of this, told in vagaries and passive voice. Mirina doesn't tell the story that way, "And when enough people died, and enough homes burned, and enough gold was squandered, the King stopped being the law. Ten families managed to amass enough power between them to decide that Naboo would be theirs.

"They liked the idea of an elected monarchy. No longer could one man rule by the luck of forming in the right womb. And after a long and bloody war, they wanted the image of peace, so, while it is true that males _can_ be elected King, it only happens where there are no females of the right age. And that brings us to youth. The Queen of Naboo would be _young._ The claim is that they wanted the fresh perspectives that youth and innocence bring to throne. Now, look girls," and she taps the coronation picture of that first Queen, and gestures down the line to the other. "Look at the images, and tell me what you see."

The girls wander for a while. Rey thinks she sees it first, but she also has an edge of knowing what Mirina wanted them to look for. But it's only a minute later when Savarah says it, "The same men are in the backgrounds of the pictures. I mean, not the _same_ because the first picture is a hundred years older than the last one, but…"

"It's the same guys over and over. Old ones die, new ones pop up, and you keep looking, and you see them grow old. The girls change. New Queens ever few years, but the men stay the same," Cassie says. "Just like the bishops."

Mirina nods. "Exactly." She gestures to the finery around them. "Who had the power?"

"The men?" Magiit asks.

"Sometimes. Most of the time. But not always. That said, they _thought_ they had the power, and especially if you become skilled in the use of women's power, that's the best possible place to be. A man who thinks he's in charge, especially if he's not, is easy to manipulate."

"Why not just do it yourself?" Savarah asks. "I mean… Especially someplace like here?"

Mirina nods. "First of all, you won't always be someplace like here, and if you're not, you need to be able to get what you need done. And second of all, if you are someplace like here, the question is, do you want to be held to account for your actions?" She gestures to the images of those men. "They didn't. They watched the wars, and they wanted a figurehead they could pin failure on." She shrugs a bit. "History is not kind to bad rulers, or the people who get too close to them."

Ellie moves closer to one of the images, and sort of nudges Rey toward her. _What else do you see?_

So, Rey looks, and walks through the queens, and the photos, and looks.

 _Focus on the last twenty years._

Rey nods. She catches it after the third image. Just like the men who get older over the course of the photos, Neenee is in the background of all of them.

She may not be 'pretty.' She's not 'what they want a queen to look like.' But queens come and the queens go, but Neenee remains.

* * *

There's someone else Rey's looking for. Before she settles in on Padme, who she knows is there, but, for the time being she's avoiding, because she doesn't want to march right up and say, "Wow! Is she familiar or something?"

So, for now, she circles. She knows who has to be in these pictures. She doesn't know where, though. Which one is him.

Mirina sidles over, and looks down, and then lays her finger on a bland looking young man. "You'd never glance twice, not just to look at him."

Rey's got to agree with that. That's a face that could walk past her in the hallways of the _Supremacy_ any and every day, and she'd never notice.

"Who are we looking at?" Savarah asks.

Rey points him out. "That's the man who becomes Emperor Palpatine."

The other girls, and Rose, come over, very interested. And all of them have a similar reaction to Rey.

Rose is the one who says it, "He's so… normal looking. I… Where's the… _face._ "

"The _face,_ as you put it, is a long way off, Mistress Tico. This is," Mirina checks the image. "This is from before I was born. He's probably only a year or two out of his Jedi training."

"The Emperor was a Jedi?" Magiit all but whispers it, the idea shocks her so badly.

"Like your Kylo, he tried, and didn't find it suited his temperament."

" _Not_ like Kylo," Rey says, glaring at Mirina.

"Perhaps." Mirina can see a great deal of similarities between Palpatine and Kylo, starting at the failed Jedi training and assumed names, but hopefully not ending in exploding Death Stars. "I was on good terms with his second and third mistresses. Neither of them saw the monster."

"You supported the Empire," Rose shoots at her.

"So did literally trillions of other people. Supporting your legally elected government is not a rare position to hold," Mirina says, voice tight. It hasn't been illegal to support the Empire for a while now, but it makes her danger sense spike to talk about it. And her anger at having to defend it.

"He didn't step down when the senate voted to boot him out," Rose shoots back.

"That was nineteen years into his tenure, and only after—"

Rey holds up her hands. "We're not refighting the Rebellion, not here, not now."

Ellie smiles at that, and at her. "Perhaps in the ship, and on our own, we'll tell our stories, and let the girls understand them, in fullness. And they can contrast and compare on their own, later?"

That's probably the easiest way to do that, and not have it break out into fights.

"Still, though. The lesson is here. You see him, a junior senator from Naboo. This is…" Ellie checks the date, and runs the numbers. "I was six when this first image was taken. He's not all that much older than you girls are. Maybe twenty. Maybe this is where the scheme starts. Maybe this is his first real taste of power." She taps the picture. "It's not where it ends. And I don't know where the itch began. Maybe it was always there. But this is important, no one, no man, no woman, no person seeks out or gains great power because they like the status quo. He saw something, and it turned him toward a different path.

"I don't know enough about the Jedi to know if by then it was already starting to sour. I do know enough about the Republic to know that it wasn't all sunshine and roses, not even then. Something woke his dragon, and he chased it, hunted it down, tamed it, and rode it to glory, and death, and war.

"We all have a dragon, it's just a question of what you'll sacrifice to power yours, and how you'll turn it once you've tamed it," Ellie says, looking at the image of a content, milquetoast-faced man.

She steps to the next picture, and the next, and the next, pointing him out, telling them about how he went from Junior Senator, to Senator, to Leader of the Centrist faction, to Chancellor of the Republic, to The Emperor.

"See him in this one, standing behind Padme Amidala. This is when he began to let the cards land on the table. He'd set enough of his machine into motion, it was time to begin the game. And there she is. Young, hopeful, innocent. She's fourteen in that picture. Youngest queen of Naboo. Chosen because he assumed young and innocent meant easy to manipulate."

"Was she?" Magiit asks.

"More than she probably wanted to be, less than he hoped she'd be," Ellie replies.

* * *

"Look girls. We've got images of all the queens here, tell me what you see when you look at their formal portraits," Mirina says.

"They're beautiful," Savarah says it. And she blushes, feeling silly. "I…"

"No, that's a good observation. We talked about attractive before, but these ladies are, for the times and cultures, beautiful. If you look at birth monarchies, or, worse, ones that are keen to 'keep their bloodlines pure' you'll notice that the Kings and Queens are _not_ beautiful. But these are _elected_ monarchs. And they're gorgeous. They're how those men behind the girls wanted the rest of the galaxy to see Naboo. Pretty, sweet, innocent. A girl/woman just coming into the power of her body and beauty." Mirina gestures, and the girls follow as they go to a datapad beside one of the displays. It takes Mirina a moment to key in portraits of the Habsperg family. A moment later a collection of… Well, at first Rey's not entirely sure that they're standard humans. They look… mostly… like humans, but the jaws and foreheads are badly misshapen, eyes sunken deeply, and Rey hates to think it, but some of them just look… stupid. She never had a mental idea of what stupid looked like before, but she does now, and feels bad about it. "The Habspergs ran the Hrilla system for close to five hundred years, until interbreeding and pure bloodlines drove them so insane their people killed every member of the family they could find, and the ones who were carried off to other planets turned out to be sterile. Humans may approve of 'pure bloodlines' genetics do not.

"What else do you see?" Mirina asks. "Think about the clothing and makeup. Fashion tells us a story, one we can learn to read, and if we can read it, we can do a better job of understanding what is going on, and what the people around us want."

The girls look, and look, and Cassie says, tentatively, "They all wear the red dots, but… sometimes they've got heavy makeup on the rest of their faces, and sometimes it's just the dots."

"Good eyes, Cassie," Ellie replies. "Keep looking at the images. It's only the Queen and a few of her courtiers who wear the heavy makeup, and only at some times. What do you think the advantage of the makeup is?"

The girls look, and think, and Rey and Rose do, too, because they don't know, either.

It's Rose who gets it, likely because she knows the history of at least a few of the queens. "They… at least the later ones, wear the heavy makeup when Naboo is at war."

Mirina smiles. "Exactly. When Naboo feels safe, the face of the Queen is bare, save for the Scars of Remembrance. When it's in danger, she cakes the makeup on. Put flat, white makeup on a woman's face, a thick wig, and elaborate headdresses and robes, and anyone can be wearing the outfit. Here's a secret I know about Queen Amidala, it's likely only her in a third of these images. Over the course of her reign, four body doubles were killed. In peaceful times, the need for body doubles lessens, possibly even evaporates, and thus…" Mirina walks into the next room. "Yes, where I remember it. Come girls."

They walk into the room reserved for Padme Amidala. "You'll see this last exhibit, is the image of her funeral procession. You'll also see she was buried bare-faced. With so many rumors of Padme's demise, for for weeks after her death, until the procession, people proclaimed she'd been kidnapped, gone into hiding, was starting a rebellion."

That one amuses Rey. To an extent, in that she'd given birth to Leia and Luke, there's a degree where that was true.

"One of Palpatine's first acts as Emperor was a full, visible, state funeral for Padme Amidala. He's the one who set up this," she gestures to the holo of the parade, and the one next to it is of her mausoleum.

"Is she… pregnant?" Magiit asks as she looks at the holo of Padme moving to her final rest.

"She certainly had been," Mirina says. "That wasn't widely known. Naboo wasn't the kind of place that approved of ladies with babies and no husband, and they _really_ didn't approve of that for their ex-Queens/Senators."

"So, everyone could see it, but they just sort of… Ignored it?" Rose asks.

"More or less," Mirina nods to a few of the dresses Senator Amidala wore. "Granted, assuming she wasn't lying flat on her back, outfits like this will hide a pregnancy well into it. I should know, I built them to do just that."

"You knew she was pregnant?" Savarah asks, eyes wide.

"Of course, dear. That's why I knew her at all. Your General Threepio showed up one day, though back then he was just one of Senator Amidala's personal servants, in need of a discreet favor for his lady. I was in a good position to take care of that favor. She couldn't be seen to be pregnant, that wouldn't do at all. So," And Mirina gestures to several dresses built in such a way that you could likely stick someone Kylo-shaped in them, and as long as you applied enough makeup to him, he'd pass for female, let alone hide something as tiny as the first two trimesters of a pregnancy.

"Who was…" Savarah stops, not sure if she can ask, Rey mentally nods at her. "Who was the father of her child?"

Mirina smiles at that. "Now, that's a lot of rumors and gossip and no hard facts."

"Did you know?" Magiit asks.

"I had my suspicions. She never directly said, and I knew not to ask, but if you pay attention, and you are part of a lady's intimate helpers…" Mirina lets that trail off.

Ellie adds, "The gossip on Coruscant was that the child was Palpatine's. At least that was one of the rumors, set on fire when he held the funeral for her. Officially, it was a courtesy of one powerful Naboon to another, but he didn't hold state funerals at his own expense for any other senators or ex-queens of Naboo. She was also often seen in the company of Obi Wan Kenobi, one of the Jedi, and he went missing, assumed dead until nineteen years later, when she died."

Mirina smiles at that one. "I'd heard that one. That when Order 66 went through, he'd gone to his death to protect her as the Jedi fell. And that Palpatine, who had not intended her to die, felt guilty about it, and honored her after her death."

 _Are any of those stories true?_ Savarah thinks.

 _Only that Padme Amidala was pregnant when she died,_ Rey thinks back.

And they leave that, there.

* * *

Padme has her own room. Part of that is she was the youngest queen of Naboo. Part of it is the romance of Padme Amidala, who died young, somehow got the attention of the Emperor so much that she got her own special mausoleum, part of it is that unlike many of the other Queens, when she left the throne she didn't just wander off to be a figurehead and do good deeds. She stayed in the political arena and kept using her power to fight.

Part of it is just… She's a good story.

It works out well for Rey. After they look at the pictures from the funeral, she spends several moments looking at the different pictures, and then walks to the statue of Padme in the center of the room, really looking at it, and finally says, "Do I know her?"

Mirina flashes a discrete smile. "Perhaps. She was famous, on a wider scale than most of the Queens of Naboo."

Rey keeps gazing at her. She's shorter than Rey, and, in this sculpture, not covered in white makeup. It's her as a woman, not so much the queen. _She does._

There's a long quiet moment, and then a sort of confused, _Rey?_ from Kylo's mind.

 _Look through my eyes._

She feels Kylo in the back of her mind. It takes him a moment to figure out who she's looking at, and then another moment to figure out what 'she does' means. But when he does, he thinks, _Oh. She does. Or, I guess I do._

A quiet moment while they both look. _The picture of her in the book wasn't very good,_ Kylo thinks to Rey.

Rey absently nods. Padme does have Kylo's eyes, or the other way around, probably, and that's a lot easier to see on this statue. _Lips are similar, too. Hers are thinner and finer, but she's smaller than you are, and female, so…_ Or maybe they aren't similar so much as that Rey's seen Kylo hold his mouth in the same position that Padme's statue is.

She can feel him looking at his grandmother, studying the statue of the woman in front of her through her eyes.

 _Maybe she's where you get your wavy hair from, too?_ There are pictures of Padme with her hair back and severe, so Rey's not sure if those waves are natural, like Kylo's, or the byproduct of hours of work with a styling droid. Maybe, privately, she'll ask Mirina about that.

 _Is it really weird if I think she's beautiful?_

Rey smiles a little. _I don't think it's weird. She is beautiful._

She feels him nod. _It'd probably be different if I grew up cuddling against her as a child and calling her Gran or something, but… I can see why he took one look and became completely obsessed._

 _Kylo?_ She's not actually alarmed by that statement, but she is looking to poke him a little with it. She feels a sheepishness roll over him.

 _Not saying I want to overthrow a political regime for her. Just… I think I can see what he must have seen._

 _You telling me you've got a thing for fine-boned brunettes with Imperial accents._

She feels him laugh at that.

 _I'm not touching that comment, at all._

 _Really, and what are you touching?_

She feels him looking around wherever he is. There's… something in his hands, and she's not sure what it is, or why he's holding it. _Long story. I'll explain tonight or tomorrow._

 _Okay._

* * *

There is, deeper down, an ulterior motive for this trip.

It's not sinister, but it is necessary, and Mirina and Ellie were hoping they could keep their thoughts and goals deeply buried enough that Rey wouldn't twig to them.

And from the looks of things, they've succeeded. As Rey wanders about, with Ellie talking or thinking political philosophy and reality to her, Mirinia is watching.

The Order, if it's ever to become _The Order_ needs _style._ And Rey, whether she wants to be or not, is the Order's figurehead when it comes to _style._ So here they are, wandering about amid literally _hundreds_ of examples of how women in power, women picked not just to lead, but to _look good doing it_ went about the _look good doing it_ part of the job.

It's clear that Rey's not actively thinking about how the ladies look. At least, not much beyond the point where they are drawing her attention to it, but she is reacting. Mirina sees the long looks, the way she'll brush some of the fabrics with the tips of her fingers, but not others, or the way she just… lingers at some of the ladies.

In Padme's room, she's not sure how much of Rey _looking_ is about setting this up, and how much of it is genuine interest, and how much is just plain old curiosity. But she does know this, Rey goes back to the images of Padme in her casual surroundings over and over. To the places where she felt safe. Where she wore little makeup, and her clothing was soft and flowing, not structured to hide shield generators and recording devices and anti-poison stim darts if needs be.

She's standing before an image of Padme at a fundraiser for… something. Mirina doesn't bother to read the fine print. It's from before she knew the woman, and the dress is not one of hers, though she's fairly certain that it's a copy of a style she'd put out a few years earlier. Some of the details are wrong, but this dress has been modified to be worn in a place with gardens, and the version she made was for halls of stone and metal, not grass and dirt.

"Would you like something like that?" Mirina asks, quietly.

Rey doesn't blush. She's looking at the soft, flowing drape of pastels, the structured neck piece set to show off how long and elegant Padme's body was, the bare arms and wrists snugged amid falls of splendid silk.

"I…" It's clear she can't imagine herself in something like that. Mirina can. Different color palette, and slightly different cuts, but she'd look splendid in outfits like this, especially amid the reflecting pools and stars of the Order's main courtyard.

Mirina nods. "She's a senator in this image. A woman who was a queen in her own right. Much less the puppet that she'd been designed to be." The image is from a gracious house, made of stone, nestled among greenery, overlooking a lake. "She understands and owns her power here. And she understands her beauty as well. People will _listen_ to a beautiful woman, in a way they don't or won't otherwise. Even if it's only politeness. The first time a message hits a pair of ears, it'll usually fizzle, but again and again." She looks at Padme among the donors. "I understand it's much like a bombardment. The first hits just bounce off the shields, but they do weaken them. The next volley and the one after that, more damage. And eventually the missiles get through."

Rey doesn't roll her eyes. She's _understanding,_ though there is a bit of desire to do so. "And… looking like this is the equivalent of shield piercers?"

"Or a much larger weapon. Either metaphor will work." She nods and the younger girls come closer. "Look at the men in the background and the sides of this image. Senator Amidala is, as best they know, unmarried. What do they want?"

The girls blush a little, but Cassie's the one who screws up the courage to say it, "Sex. They want to have sex with her."

Mirina smiles at that. "True."

"They'll hate her for it, though," Cassie adds. "The Bishops always did. They wanted, and they hated wanting, so they hated the women who 'made them want.'"

That drains the smile off of Mirina's face. She spends a moment just looking at Cassie, and then nods. "Yes, some of them. Who do you think…"

Cassie points out two of the men in the background. "It's harder to tell with pictures, but I've seen those sorts of looks. That's a man who'll claim a woman is a witch and burn her, because he wanted."

Mirina nods slowly, as Ellie and Rose, who had been talking about the images of Padme rescuing two Jedi (at least that's how the story is told on Naboo, and the pictures are awfully impressive) head over to join this discussion.

Cassie looks up at Mirina. Her eyes are intense, burning with the sort of pure un-moderated hatred of a thirteen-year-old who feels morally right in her hate. "What do you do with them?"

Mirina doesn't blink, at all, as she says, "Phenylhydrilhexiquine, three to five mls depending on the mass of the man, or just do five just to be safe, administered in a drink. It's tasteless and odorless, so unless the beverage is scanned ahead of time, there's no way to know it's in there. Generally, a man like that will have servants, and generally, they won't be too fussed to turn a blind eye to something like that. If you know the one who does the scans and can prevail upon him or her, all the better. On most worlds it's completely untraceable, not the least because it metabolizes completely before death, and it takes about four days to kick in. Once it does, his heart will just… stop. It'll look like he had a heart attack."

Ellie also keeps her voice quiet as she says, "Poison is usually considered a 'woman's weapon,' as well it should be. All of you should know how to use, and if needs be, compound something that will drop a man in one dose. As my mum once said to me, 'A man gets one free hit, and a warning. You look him in the eye and tell him not to do it again. If he does it again, you drop him.'"

"But… if you get caught…" Magiit says.

Ellie's eyes are sharp. "Better to be caught destroying the enemy than live with his continued existence. If he's a problem for you, he'll be a problem for others, too. If anyone had had the good sense, and the access, to offer the Grand Moff a proper cup before he took out Alderaan, the entirety of the galaxy would look very different right now."

"The Grand Moff?" Rose asks. _This_ is not the version of the story she understands.

Ellie nods, also understanding that this is probably not the version of the story Rose knows. "Obviously, he had orders and permission to interrogate Leia Organa to get information from her. But those orders did not explicitly involve using the Death Star on a civilian target. But there she was, beautiful, pure, angry, spitting insults and fearless. She was utterly uncowed by him, and he could not let that abide. And he was a man who wanted, and hated wanting, and he despised the power she had over him by virtue of her sex, so he burned everything that mattered to her. And she was not the first, but she would be the last.

"And if someone had gotten close enough to him to dose him properly…

"The Emperor was many things, and by that point, insane was likely on the list, too, but it's unlikely he would have, on his own, given the order to use the Death Star on a civilian target, not when there were so many _military_ targets he could have aimed it at and used that to the same purpose.

"News of Jeddah was already getting out," Ellie says. "The survivors of the battle of Scarif Bay were also starting to let word be known. Another strike on a proper target would have had the same effect, without rallying everyone who'd sat there, peacefully talking about how the Empire had to be strong to deal with it's enemies. How a standing army and huge weapons made people think twice about attacking and kept them all safe.

"Once they'd burned Alderaan, the idea that _anyone_ could be a target set in. And once that idea is in place, people stop talking about how a regime needs to be _strong_ and start worry about where that strength will be used."

"So why didn't you?" Rose asks Ellie pointedly. "You claim you knew the problem was there. You were there, too. You had access. You claim to know this is how the game works. Where were _you_?"

Ellie looks like a harmless little old grandma. On one level. But her eyes are sharp, and the line of her lips makes it clear this is a woman who's put men to rest before, and may do it again should the desire take her. "At that point I was on Coruscant, and I can give you a list of names, but you won't know them, because they all had convenient heart attacks before they became big problems. Pat and I never shied away from taking people who didn't belong in the game out, especially if we had the connections for it, but it's a big galaxy out there, and we could not be everywhere." Ellie looks to the girls who all have very wide eyes. "Just because you're not wearing a uniform or holding a blaster doesn't mean you aren't a soldier. And it certainly doesn't mean you get a pass to shirk your duty." She nods to Rey's Order of the Maji pendent. "Sometimes, the balance is going to need help. There's as much a time to kill as there is a time to heal. And sometimes help comes in the form of a correctly prepared cocktail. Sometimes it comes with a smile, and fluttered eyelashes, and wearing a shorter skirt than strictly necessary. Sometimes it comes from telling a man exactly what he wants to hear, that his plan is brilliant, and you love it, and he's going to be so wonderfully successful because of it. The wrong idea can be just as powerful as the right one, assuming you drop the wrong one on the right man at the right time."

She nods to the picture again.

"Look at her, young and beautiful, telling the right people the right things, and the right people the wrong things. She's working that crowd for supposedly the purposes of the senate, because at this time she's one of Naboo's senators, but really its for her own ideal of the greater good." She touches the back of a man's head. "But he's there, too, working for his understanding of the greater good, too."

"Is that the Emperor?" Savarah asks.

Ellie nods. "The woman he's talking to, that's Selina Beau, one of my dear friends, and his mistress. That's why I can recognize him by the back of his head. Right now, both of them," She realizes that's vague. "Palpatine and Amidala are working together at this meeting. It's a 'good venue' with the right people. The official reason is to raise money for something like this," she gestures to the museum, "and they will raise that money. But the real reason is to get people together, to talk and learn and listen. I don't remember this specifically, but my guess is, if both of them were there, there was legislation going up that Naboo generally wasn't going to like, but the wider galaxy would, so they were going to make sure that the people who mattered would back them against the rising storm."

"The Emperor had a mistress?" Magiit's voice is soft as she asks, and Rose is also staring, the same wonder in her eyes.

"Of course. He was a man, and a rather cold and calculating one of that. He wanted the intelligence she could provide, and he also knew himself well enough to know that he'd be much less distractable by a pretty face and a soft body if he had regular access to sex with someone he liked. Over the course of his political life he had three mistresses, and he often indicated that there was a potential for the creation of political marriages, as well. He never did marry, but he used the potential for it to his advantage. Especially, once he became Emperor."

The girls are utterly horrified at that. They all have an image of the Emperor, and he's not _husband material._

Mirina smirks a little. "Many men will overlook the fact that another man is uglier than sin, older than dirt, and repulsive of manners if dangling a daughter or sister in front of him might make a politically advantageous match."

"And even more of them will then hand said sister or daughter the poison if her widowhood makes for an even better situation," Ellie adds. "Which, is, of course, why he didn't actually marry, or produce any children. That would just encourage people to rally behind the child or wife."

"And by making sure there were no options beyond him, he was able to maintain the mindset of, 'Well, maybe Palpatine isn't everything we could possibly want, after all, no leader is perfect, but he's better than anarchy." Mirina knows that one first hand. She'd had that conversation many times as the Emperor continued to do more and more questionable things.

"Until he blew up Alderaan," Rose says, seeing how the older women understand this.

They nod. "Vague threats to people other than you are easy to ignore. If the battle might touch you and yours, it focuses your mind and priorities," Mirina says.

Ellie adds, "Most people out there want today to be more or less like yesterday, and the promise that tomorrow will continue that trend. The idea of better is always nice, but very few of them are willing to trade stability for the possibility of better if there's a chance of worse." She smiles a little. "I think this may be one of the great strengths, and possible weaknesses of The Order, everyone we get is someone who was willing to toss aside the status quo to seek a better life."

"Weakness?" Savarah asks, but it's clear Rose is thinking it, too. Rey blinks. That's _why_ Savarah asked.

Ellie nods. "From," and she gestures to Rey, "the point of view of the Powers That Be. It's much harder to maintain control if your people aren't easily lulled into stasis. Again, think of it in terms of Rey's balance—"

"It's not really mine."

Ellie waves that aside. "If you have too many people willing to sit on their bums and let the galaxy spin around them, nothing happens. If you have too many ready to hop up and change things at the first sign of trouble, you don't successfully build things. You need a balanced collection of people who can do both for a society to flourish."

That makes sense to the rest of the group.

Neenee appears at the entrance to the Amidala room. "Ladies, tea is ready. Care to join me?"

And the girls are eager. No one's had lunch and tea sounds wonderful.

As they head to the door, Ellie pulls Rey back, and nods to an image. "That one. Rose and I were looking at it earlier."

Rey heads over to it. It's actually a collection of pictures. They surround a story about the time Padme Amidala rescued Obi Wan Kenobi and "Oh," she keeps it under her breath, but it does come out in a verbalization, 'Anakin Skywalker.'

 _Kylo_

 _?_ No words, but he's curious. _About to meet up with Jacen._

 _It can wait. Look through my eyes._

So he does, and… _Oh. Is that… It's… Oh…_

It's a shot of Padme and Anakin, riding something… big.

 _Well, if you ever wondered what I meant when I said there wasn't a man there…_

 _He's so young! They both are, but… Gods… Is he as old as Jacen in that shot?_

 _No idea._

Rey keeps looking. _She's got the blaster._

 _Yeah, just like Mom._

"Are you coming, Rey?" Savarah calls back. "They've got a tray of pastries as tall as you are!"

"Yeah, just…" _I've got to go._

She can feel his nod. _I want to come back here some day._

 _Soon, Prince Ben, soon._


	69. Coalescing

5/25/2

Technically speaking, today is one of Kylo's "days off."

Technically speaking. He's got… stuff… to do.

There's a formal gathering in a few days, and he's supposed to be getting fitted for his suit for that. He doesn't know _why_ he needs to be fitted for this. By this point, he's under the impression that Jon knows his body, style, and what looks good on him better than he knows himself, but…

Fitting, sure. Jon says show up and do clothing stuff, he shows up and does clothing stuff.

Training with Jacen in the late afternoon.

He does have a few hours in the middle of the day that are his own, and… He has this… need. And it feels stupid and weird and…

He calls Mitaka, Captain of the _Finalizer_ now, and he can feel the terror on the other side of the comm.

"You want to know… Sir… I…" He's completely flustered the man.

"Captain Phasma's rooms. Do you know where they are, and what happened to them?"

Dead silence on the other side of the comm. It stretches on and then snaps with a quick. "I… Am finding out, Sup—Master Ren."

He figures this makes sense. He hasn't had anything to do with the man personally since the Last Night party, and he thinks he said three words to him, along the lines of, "Good job, Mitaka." He thinks the time before that, he was Force choking the man, so…

"Her quarters are on the _Finalizer_ , and are, as best I can tell, untouched. Do you… Why did you want to know, sir?"

"Morbid curiosity." He can't begin to explain why he feels the need to go there. "Which room?"

Mitaka answers quickly, and that's one question down. Hux's quarters, too. He'd been in it twice, and somehow never thought or noticed, that anyone else lived there.

Granted, it's been… six years. Longer? Must have been longer. He was still new enough he didn't completely loathe Hux. Maybe Phasma didn't live there, then.

* * *

There's a second where he's feeling a little nervous at seeing Jon, but it melts fast. Poe's right, this is a thing, that happens, and if you let it fade, it will.

It doesn't take long before they're back to their normal interactions. Though, in the case normal means Kylo standing around while Jon watches him carefully.

"Jon, this is a black suit."

Jon's nodding, looking him up and down, making notes.

"With red detailing?" He's fairly sure he mentioned not exactly wanting to work red into his color scheme. Red has too many memories of Snoke attached to it. His saber is all the red he needs these days.

Jon waves that off and keeps making notes.

"It looks a lot like your first version of Emperor Ren."

Jon nods. It does, though this look has a "tie" (which Kylo not only doesn't understand, but didn't know how to tie) and no vest.

"Are the buttons on the jacket purple."

That gets Jon to look up. "Remind me to have C8 test you for colorblindness."

"I'm not colorblind."

"You are if you think those buttons are _purple._ "

Kylo rolls his eyes at that. "They're some sort of gem. I'm calling it _purple._ "

"It's midnight ruby, and that's _red._ " Jon moves closer, eyes the tie, and the pockets on the jacket, and then shakes his head. A moment later he's holding another piece of red fabric against Kylo's skin. "Better…"

"I can see that's a different color red than the first one, but not by much."

"Uh huh." Jon looks satisfied by that. The first red has a warm, orangy base that he knew was going to be borderline on Kylo, and he was right, it's not working. The second one is a deeper, bluer color. "Okay, maybe you aren't colorblind, but you're at least color myopic. What color do you think the shirt is?"

"It's black, with a slightly different sheen than the jacket and trousers."

Jon just shakes his head. "Do you like it?"

"It feels comfortable. I think I like the styling on my formal blacks, better."

"Your formal blacks look military. This doesn't."

"That's probably why I like them better."

"Yes, well this is for spaces you don't want or need to look military."

"Okay." A pause as he looks at the notes Jon's making. "Why red?"

"Because the gems on Rey's necklace are rubies, and that's the one thing on the outfit I can't shift."

Kylo decides that he'll wear some damn red if it's to match Rey. "Okay."

* * *

Kylo knows where he is, though he hadn't known that Phasma lived here. He presses his palm to the hand lock on the door, and like when he tested it with Rey on the I-Deck, his hand does open the door to what used to be Hux and Phasma's quarters.

He's been here a few times. Years and years ago. Back when he was new, and he and Hux didn't completely hate each other on every level they could hate each other. That didn't last though.

However many years it's been… nothing's changed. It's a gray, sterile space, though everything has the stale, slightly dusty feel of an unused space. Bed, still impeccably made, desk, table to eat at, two chairs, no art on the walls, no personal touches. There isn't even a sofa.

His first room on the _Finalizer_ looked like this the first time he set foot into it.

He steps in and looks around. There's literally nothing in his view to indicate anyone or thing ever lived here.

It feels… wrong, to open the wardrobe, but… Maybe the room has been cleaned out, and that didn't make it to the report Mitaka saw. Cleaned out, but not yet reassigned.

He opens the door. Clothing, Hux's uniforms, meet his gaze. So much for cleaned out, then. Hux apparently got dressed here, at least on occasion. Again, old, stale, slightly dusty, but nothing personal. Everything in there, from the perfectly pressed jackets, to the hanging trousers, and the gleaming boots looks like clothing in a store waiting for someone to come buy it.

He glances around. No socks, no underthings… Maybe in the table next to the bed… Maybe… Doesn't matter.

He doesn't know what he expected to find. Not like her armor would be in there. Not like the helmet would be sitting next to Hux's service caps. They just… lost Phasma. One day she was on the rolls, and then the _Supremacy_ was cut in half, and they never found her again.

There's no reason her armor would be sitting in here, waiting.

But he feels like there should be… something. You take Rey out of his life and there would be signs of her all over his home.

For how long? He sighs, that's a point. It was months between when they lost Phasma and when he killed Hux. Half a year, ten months? Something like that. How long would he keep things that reminded him of what he used to have… The only thing he took from Luke's, and kept, was the crystal from his saber. Everything else he burned…

But that was then… Now?

But was there anything about Hux that's like him… now?

He's reaching for one of the drawers, and feels his back prickle as, "No. You don't get to see that," hits his ears.

Kylo pulls his hands back as Hux steps into his view.

"Just because you've developed some sort of perverse interest in me doesn't mean I don't get a private life."

"You're dead. How much privacy can you need?"

Hux glares at him. "Why are you here?"

"I honestly don't really know." Kylo sits on the bed, and thinks about it. Hux paces, glancing at him from time to time. "You look nervous."

"You're in my quarters, Ren. You were going to go rifling through my personal things."

"Again, you're _dead._ What secrets do you need to keep? What reputation do you have to keep safe from me? I've already killed you, it's not like I can add blackmail to the list, now."

"Whatever secrets I have, they're mine. Not yours to be rifled through."

Kylo nods. "Sure, fine. Keep your secrets." He keeps looking around. "You didn't live here." He glances to the drawer. "That's what I'll find if I open that. Nothing. This is… on the books, on the records, so that if anyone traced you through the computers. Or, you'd meet people here because sometimes you needed a place to meet them, but… This isn't your home."

Hux snorts at that. "Sleep and food means your brain starts to work."

"But you're smart. Smart and careful. You're a survivor, above and beyond, until you ran into someone who just didn't give a shit any more. Can't adequately defend against the man who doesn't care if he comes out of the fight alive."

"I would have if I'd found your girl."

Kylo inclines his head. "Didn't work for Snoke…"

Hux's face is mild, but Kylo understands the hate in his eyes. He gets all the layers of _Snoke was an idiot, and I'm not._

Kylo nods, starting to understand. Snoke didn't know how attachment could motivate someone. He gets a deeper layer of it, feeling it off the shade, and it shocks him. Hux did. Hux _knew_ what a man might do for love. (Or obsession, or… Kylo's not sure he's comfortable with Hux and love in the same thought, but he doesn't have a better signifier for it.)

Hux nods back at him.

Kylo keeps looking around. "You know people watch where you go at night. So… There's a passage or something in here. This isn't home. This is for show. This is a place where an assassin can come and be disappointed. But you don't have ship access from here, so…" He's thinking his way through the specs of this part of the ship. Then he looks at the drawer. "There is something in there. It's something someone wouldn't touch. Not if they were rummaging through your stuff. But you're good with tech. It's not what it looks like." Kylo winces a bit. "You've got some sort of off-putting sex toy in there that opens a door to your actual rooms, don't you?"

Hux's face is disdainful. "The monk actually knows what a sex toy is. I see she's expanded your horizons. You're also wrong."

Kylo's eyes narrow as he really _looks_ at Hux. "I'm not wrong about the passage. I'm not wrong about you not living here. If I'm wrong about the thing, it's… what it is or where it is."

Hux rolls his eyes, crosses to his wardrobe, opens it, rifles around, on the top shelf, behind the service caps, and tosses him a ball gag. "You're not wrong about the device or what it is. You are wrong about what's in the drawer."

Kylo's staring at the gag in his lap.

He's… distracted… to say the least, when he feels Rey's mind on his, and sees Padme through her eyes.

* * *

There's a message here. Meaning. Padme, Hux's shade, this room, power… His own thoughts about… How much of it wasn't really him. He can feel that sooner or later these things will connect. The threads will become a tapestry. But he doesn't have them, not yet.

He thinks of Padme. Of how Anakin warped and shaped her. And he thinks of Snoke, and the way Hux is looking at him, and who the Jedi Killer was. "You ever wonder how much of yourself was actually Snoke?"

Hux looks appalled that he'd even ask.

"Seriously. I… guess that's why I'm here. Who were you when the monster wasn't pulling the strings? Who was she? We worked together for almost a decade and… Besides the fact that you or she liked stuff like this," and he holds up the gag, "I knew basically nothing about you."

Hux shakes his head. "You never knew, Ren. Not—"

"I saw the bite marks, Hux. Saw the bruises. I trained with her, remember?"

Hux is staring him in the eyes, leaning over him. "You never _knew_ , Ren. You cut him in half to safeguard your lady. I didn't ha—" He stops dead.

Kylo keeps watching the shade, maybe the start of something like understanding dawning. Poison tubes all throughout the ships ventilation systems… Would he do that for power? Yes. But why did Hux _want_ power? Who would be at his right hand? Who was he protecting?

Kylo swallows, so much for his great empathy. "I didn't know."

"You fucking well should have. He sent you in to do it often enough. Anything you'd love would die. Hate, anger, rage, passion, we were allowed those. Nothing soft, nothing kind, nothing sane. Mind readers," Hux scoffs at that. "Keep the right thoughts at the top of your head, keep the right images in front of their eyes. They'll only see what you want them to." He nods to the gag. "Magic makes you weak. It feeds you easy answers and lets your brain shut down. He was oh, so powerful, so secure, so… magic, and you just cut the fucker in half one day. There was video of it. Did you know that?"

Kylo blinks. He didn't know that.

"I sat there, later, and watched him go on and on and on. I could see the second you saw the opening, it was all over your face, but he couldn't feel it, so he just let you kill him. _Idiot._ " He looks at Kylo for a moment. "I was a little surprised to see you mastered the control to keep it out of your thoughts, though. Your body language was shit, but your brain must have been in the right place."

Kylo shrugs a bit at that. "He had shit vision. Probably didn't need it, could feel his way around, but… He let me see through his eyes once, wanted me to… Doesn't matter. He needed corrective lenses."

Hux barks a laugh at that. Kylo thinks it's possible that's the first time he's ever heard Hux laugh. "Oh… Fucker! I spent hours showing him graphs and plans, explaining in detail how… He couldn't read the damn things, could he?"

Kylo shakes his head. "Not unless they were right under his nose."

They share a look.

Hux shakes his head. "Don't give into nostalgia, Ren. You're better off hating me."

"I'm tired of it." And that's probably part of being here, too. The more and more he balances, the more his hate is draining away. It's not bubbling there, under the surface, all the time anymore.

Of course, that begs the question, was it ever really his in the first place?

"I killed billions of people and got off on it. You should hate me."

"It's not about you. It's about me."

"It always was." And the hate in those three words is staggering. "Billions of people." He snaps. "But it was always about _you._ Always about the _magic._ "

"It wasn't even about me, not really. Or Rey. He had some sort of magic hard-on for Luke. I was the closest he could get, so that was that. It was always all about Luke and crushing what was left of the Jedi. I was… a trophy, I guess. The biggest fuck you he could muster against Skywalker and the New Republic. He stole the golden child of the New Republic and the New Jedi. I was just..." He stops, watching Hux react.

Hux is _angry_. Kylo has the sense of a last piece sliding into place, one Hux _doesn't_ like. Hux looks at the shade of himself, and like always, he's in his perfect uniform. He looks at the open wardrobe, and the collection of other uniforms. He's thinking, balancing on his own, hate and rage on one side, the futility of what he can do as a ghost on another, and how little he likes Ren on the third.

Kylo sees the moment hate wins. "You know he was a clone of some sort."

Kylo blinks, flatfooted. "A… no? He… What?"

"The facial asymmetry, the size, the…" Hux gestures to his face and neck, but he means the aberrations on Snoke. "Before you joined us, I programmed the laundry droids to bring me his dirty clothing, got a hold of some of his DNA and ran some tests…" Kylo's about to ask _why,_ but then he remembers what happened to Brendol and the poison canisters, and how much easier it is to kill someone if you know literally _everything_ about them. "I don't know how old the mind or spirit or whatever was. The body was thirty-two years old, and whoever made it had done a bad job of it. Probably, didn't expect to need it when he did, and tried to get it to grow up too fast. The chemicals they used to speed maturation caused the deformities. That's what my DNA guys said."

Kylo winces. "He was… a meat puppet?"

"Colorful imagery. But, yes. A badly made meat puppet for…" Hux lets it hang, testing Kylo to see if he'll fill in the blanks.

Kylo's eyes narrow. He feels cold, and it would take exactly no effort on his part at all to get the idea right out of Hux, but that feels… not wrong, but… counter-productive. Hux _likes_ being smarter than Kylo. He likes the idea that intellect beats magic. A deep quiver in the back of his mind says, _let him._

"What aren't you saying, Hux?"

"Hard-on for Luke Skywalker. All about crushing the Jedi." He gestures to the uniforms, to the ship they're in. "Barely restyled Imperial garb. Clone body. Massively powerful dark Force user. Tactical skills of a turnip, wasting time and energy settling scores that didn't need to be settled, again Luke Skywalker. He called it the Rebellion and the Republic, not the Resistance, not the New Republic, a few times in my hearing. I'm sure he did it in yours, too."

Kylo now knows what Hux isn't saying. And suddenly it's making a lot of sense. And a lot of moments, of the voice in his head, of the scores Kylo was sent to settle, of… He doesn't think Hux is wrong. He doesn't want Hux to be right, either. "There are rumors of him being thousands of years old."

"Rumors. From the uncharted regions. How hard would they be to start? Who did we have there to tell us any differently? All old, loyal _Imperials._ "

Kylo hates that. He hates what comes next even more. Hux looks much too satisfied.

"You aren't scared enough, Ren. If his spirit could survive being tossed into the reactor of a Death Star, followed by the explosion of that Death Star, there's no reason to think you just cutting his body in half would have done it the second time. No reason to think there's not another, better clone, off somewhere, waiting, or maybe filled."

Kylo feels cold at that. And then colder, yet. "You aren't Force sensitive."

"Oh, please. Don't be an idiot, Ren. If he was the Emperor, he never saw the need to tell you then, he certainly wouldn't be pretending to be me to tell you now. He certainly wouldn't be doing anything to sow seeds of doubt. Or set you on guard."

Kylo's eyes narrow. "How are you here?"

"The same as any ghost, I suppose. Someone who can," he gives Kylo a long look, "needs me enough to conjure me."

Kylo doesn't like that answer, at all. And it doesn't matter much, because Hux fades away. For several moments, Kylo sits on Hux's bed, looking at the sterile shell of a room.

Holding the gag, he can feel the spot where a thumb should go. He can sense how a simple press will open a door somewhere in here. He puts the gag back, and closes the wardrobe door.

He looks at the drawer, debates, and then turns, and leaves.

* * *

A moment later, when the lock on the door has fully shifted into place, Hux reappears. He opens the drawer and looks at the two things in it. A lock of red hair, tied in a white ribbon, and a picture.

The picture is old. Yellowing around the edges, wrinkled in one corner, colors fading, a stain on the bottom third. It's not his. He'd never let anything of his get that worn.

The lock of hair… It's fifteen years old, maybe sixteen now. He's not entirely sure when 'now' is. (Of all the things that irk him about being dead, the inability to track time is the most annoying. He either _is_ or he's _not._ And when he _is_ time moves normally, and when he's _not_ it doesn't move at all. Unfortunately, months can go by with him in the _not_ stage. That bothers Stjerne, too. He'll ask about something that was very important the last time they talked, just to find that it was months ago and she's beyond bored with it, now.)

He wishes he could touch them. He can lift and move things. It took time and effort to figure that out, but as someone who already had almost full mastery of his mind, it wasn't _that_ difficult. But he can't _feel._ No body to feel with, and most of the time, no desire. He knows what the hair feels like, though. He held it, once, when it was new. And again when he found it after Phasma died and moved it, along with the picture, from their home to this room.

As best he knows, it's the softest thing he's ever touched. He snorts. _Sentiment._ Sentiment gets people killed, and he may be dead, but he's not all of the issue now, is he?

The photo… It's him and Phasma. Sixteen years ago? Seventeen? They'd killed his father earlier that week, and took the time to just… exist for a few days. They're lounging in a warm, shady place, the name of which he made himself forget. She's in a loose top, short sleeves, hair wild, head leaning against his shoulder. He's not wearing a shirt, or pants for that matter, cigarra between his fingers, no pomade in his hair, a day or two of stubble on his face. She's smiling; he's not glaring. It's possible that he looks slightly amused. Maybe content, even. If he was ever content, that week was it.

They aren't wearing their First Order regulation clothing, let alone tags. Nothing to mark who they were, beside a man and a woman keeping company together.

They're young. Early twenties. No bruises. No scratches. She's plump in that picture. Not quite as round as she'd get eventually, (or so she told him, once) but the soft curves of their child were on her by then. Mostly visible on her face, and the curve of breast and belly, though the way she's sitting, and the shirt, means they can't be seen in the photo. She'd leave soon. A month after that, she'd go on five-month-long extended mission. When she came back, she wasn't plump, and she had the small curl of hair. He touched it once, closed his eyes, held the lie close, and told her she should burn it.

She didn't.

She'd taken, and then kept, the picture, too. Had a droid that could do it. He still doesn't know why he agreed to it. Anyone finding it… It'd be ruin if anyone found it. They were allowed sex. Allowed pain and rage and…

But this picture isn't that. He could, and for a while, did, keep a library of rough, pornographic shots. Anyone finding them would just shrug. Men have needs, and General Hux was allowed his… proclivities.

But this is the only shot of its kind. He was able to convince her to put the shirt on, but that was as far as it went.

She'd set it up, and he didn't stop it, and… He looks at it again, remembering. A few long days of warm sunshine, cool shade, and nothing pressing from the outside world. He told her it was insane. Someone would find it, eventually. Use it against them. Her taking the time for the child was pushing the edge to the breaking point, and this on top of it…

She shoved his shoulder and told him to relax for ten fucking minutes. Reconditioning worked, and if needs be, they could remove the memories, shift them, and that was that. She'd looked down at him, and told him that if he could sell the lie of what happened to Brendol, he could bloody well keep the rest of this week a secret, too.

So, he did.

He told Snoke they were on… Hell, some bantha shit, and as long as he kept the right story in mind, the right details, made sure the reports were on the up and up… Snoke could only feel the lie if you allowed yourself to feel it.

"Magic users." Ren couldn't lie to Snoke until the bitter end, until he was pushed beyond his breaking point. All Hux had to do was believe his lies, put up a good face, make sure the people around them believed the lies, and keep the bastard distracted. Compared to his father, Snoke was distressingly easy to lie to.

In the end, the bitter end, the aching, bitter, hollow end, it didn't matter, because it was always about Ren, or Luke, or the Force, or the Magic, or some shit beyond Hux. He built the weapon that killed billions, fired it, destroyed their entire 'enemy' in one go, and it wasn't enough. He was still a slip of a boy, worthless, never amounting to anything.

He would have danced with her through the embers, because she was the universe that mattered, and when she was gone… All that was left was revenge on the man who fucked his chances of murdering every single person who killed her, every person who ever did him wrong, and everyone else because the universe didn't deserve them.

Nothing as cold and cruel and twisted as these worlds they dwelled in deserved them.

He replaces the photo and hair. She'll come. Eventually. Last they spoke, Calrissian was still faffing about with possibly adding a branch of the school on the _Supremacy_ and from there… The likelihood that his codes won't work are non-existent. There's no way Ren thought to scrub them.

She'll come. And she'll likely want to see what's in that drawer. That's why it's there, so she can see it. Not Ren.

He curses quietly under his breath, hoping that somehow she'll be able to get here, see this, _without_ Ren knowing about it. He's become such a sentimental sop, he'll… Try something stupid if he finds her.

Fuck it all up again.

* * *

"Sooo…" Magiit says, as soon as Rey, and the rest of the girls are back in the communal kitchen and away from the prying eyes of the rest of the Order.

"Sooo… what?" Elias asks as he's eyeing the huge pile of snacks they brought home. High Tea involved a LOT of pastries. (Apparently Neenee may have been under the impression that twenty-five or so kids were going to be coming to this, or maybe Mirina hinted that so that there'd be lots of extras to bring home. However it worked out, the children of the Magi are _enthusiastically_ eyeballing the treats as Rey and Rose unpack them.)

"We saw Kylo's gran," Cassie says.

"Wait, what?" Critt asks. "His family's dead, right?"

Cassie keeps talking. "Well, yeah, she's dead, but she's one of the queens. Padme" Everyone lights up at that, remembering that's the name Kylo used to go by. "Amidala. She was so pretty, and pretty kick ass, too. Did you know she rescued two Jedi? There was a display about the time Obi Wan Kenobi," They all know who Obi Wan is and they look deeply impressed, "And his Padawan…" And that's where the _name_ catches up to what Cassie knows, and suddenly things click. Her jaw drops.

"Come on, Cass," Opal says nudging her.

"His Padawan, Anakin Skywalker."

Everyone is suddenly _very_ interested in the story.

Rey nods to all of them, and the pile of pastries. "Grab your treats and settle in, okay? Then we'll do story time."

Critt smirks a little to himself, as he snags a brownie in one hand and a savory scone in the other. Okay, sure Jacen's off doing whatever with Chewie and Kylo, but he's getting the dirt on Padme, the real Padme, and Darth FUCKING VADER! This is going to be _excellent!_

* * *

"Okay, so, first off," Rey says, "I do not have the whole story. The only people who had the whole story are de-." And she stops there. "Wait."

She blips out of the kitchen to the _Supremacy_ and calls Threepio. He sounds startled when she, out of nowhere, asks, "Do you know where Artoo is?"

"Certainly Mistress. He's a meter and a half away."

"Good. Can he hear this?"

She hears an affirmative beep.

"Okay, great. I'm telling the kids the story of Anakin and Padme, and… I just said that everyone who knew the story is dead, but that's not true. Would you two be willing to come and tell it?"

There's probably a pause, but it's not in the sort of time frame a human can track. Then she hears a pleased beep that she translates into, "It's about fucking time one of you boogers asked," along with a "Hush, Artoo. Yes, Lady, we'd be thrilled. Will you come and fetch us?"

Rey's suddenly in Threepio's office. "Yes, I think that will work best."

* * *

And a moment later, she's back in the kitchen with the droids. "I was wrong. _Everyone_ isn't dead. And I realized I don't know much of the story, but they do. I'll kick in the bits Kylo told me, because Anakin told him."

Threepio looks as startled as he can. "Anakin… told Kylo…"

"Some. Not a whole lot. Not… what you know."

"No, I'd think not," Threepio says. He looks to Artoo. "They're your memories. Shall I translate?"

 _Probably,_ Artoo beeps back. _Just don't kill my voice. You always leave the good parts out._

"I do not!" Threepio looks horrified that his honor as a storyteller might be besmirched.

 _Uh huh… We'll see… Where to begin…_

"The beginning?" Magiit asks, as she snuggles back against Elias.

 _Sure, why the fuck not._

"That's not appropriate language for children," Threepio tells Artoo.

 _Told you you wouldn't translate it even._

"Well, tell it so that I don't have to."

 _Fine._

And so the story begins, as beeps and then the cultured, High Core/Imperial accent of Threepio's, and everyone munches and listens.

* * *

Droids don't remember the way humans do. So, some of the story is narrative. Artoo beeping and Threepio translating. Some of it is recorded sounds. She wishes Kylo were here for this, he'd probably like hearing Padme's voice. Some of it is recorded images.

She can feel the story hits her kids differently. The older girls especially.

Cassie's looking like if there was ever a man who was going to get a dram he'd not get up from, Anakin Skywalker would. (Granted, Artoo's occasional… editorial comments... about Anakin being something of a twerp, and Threepio being caught between being appalled by that, because Anakin made him, but Anakin also became Vader, add a certain less than appealing flavor to the story of the man.)

There's footage of the wedding, and Savarah's sighing at it. She's taken by the beauty, and by Anakin. But she has a darkling of her own she fancies, and his 'twerpishness' as Threepio says in his perfect core accent, doesn't seem to bother her. (Or maybe she just… empathizes with someone who doesn't really know how to handle all the whirl around him, never having been shown even the possibility of useful tools for it by the Jedi, and… Right… In a different life, Critt would have likely been very similar to Anakin.)

Magiit and Rose, and to an extent Rey, can't understand why she's given Anakin a second look with Obi Wan right over there. Rey knows why she gave him that second look, but Magiit and Rose don't, and even with Artoo and Threepio telling the story, the bits they can see played out as images or hear as recordings there's just… Well, according to Kylo, Anakin said Obi Wan was effortlessly charming, and he is.

The boys are… learning. A lot of them think Anakin is pretty cool. They're at the points in their lives where frustrations with people more powerful, who just don't _get it_ all sort of resonate. And they also all understand the idea of being an orphan left to the whims of fate.

(They all think Obi Wan is awesome and a lot of them want to be him. Rey understands that, too. It'd be… well, not easy, but satisfying to be Obi Wan.)

Yoda makes them laugh.

And the first hour of the story is just… interesting. It's a fairly standard forbidden romance. Rey has her own question, but she knows the answer, 'Why didn't Anakin leave the Jedi?' Most of the kids are too young, or too deep into the tale to ask that question, though.

And then things get _dark._ And not in the sense of active, passionate, rash and wild. In the sense of that gnawing, awful feeling in the pit of the stomach, and the desire to end it here, leave now. Back away. Don't watch, don't see, don't be a witness to how this ends, because if you witness it, it becomes real. Go back to the lake, back to the wedding, back to the happy people and droids...

When Padme drops, choked near to death… No one thinks Anakin is cool anymore.

And Rey knows she's going to make it worse. Because the story doesn't end there. It does for Padme, at least as well as Artoo knows the story. Obviously she lived long enough to give birth… But…

Padme crying and Anakin screaming, that's where they end. That's where the pretty wedding by the lake, and the secret vows, and the _romance_ Savarah was so entranced by, ends.

They're all quiet when Artoo beeps his last piece of the story. Threepio translates it as, "And that's when Bail said he'd been looking to adopt a child. He remembered Three… well me, because he could see me. Artoo was behind something, blocking his view, and he must have been distracted. He told them to wipe my memory, and he took Leia. Obi Wan must have taken Luke…"

No one's eating. Or moving really. They're all just thinking.

Finally, Rey says, "He... Anakin... came to Kylo last year. The first time we went to Naboo. We didn't know… Well, most of it. Didn't know about the hall of Queens or… Anything but the fact that she'd been a Queen of Naboo, so we went to Theed and looked her up in the library."

Threepio looks ready to die at that. The idea that Rey wouldn't just ask, but… What would he have known to answer back then? She nods at him. "Yeah, we didn't know to ask either of you. Our library only had a few paragraphs about her."

"What did he say?" Savarah asks, hoping for something… better… than how the story actually ended.

"He told Kylo about the part of the puzzle you can't see from the memories, or in the stories, though, you can almost, if you really look, feel some of the shape of what must be there."

"Like how gravity from stars and planets we can't see shift the movements of the planets and stars we can?" Marrok asks.

"Good comparison, Marrok." Rey replies. "Kylo asked if he loved her…" That's not true. "He asked if Vader had raped her. Like I said, we knew none of this then, and… Well, there was nothing about Vader to suggest a romance or a wife."

The kids think about that.

"But he… didn't…" Xanth, who's a sharp enough empath, if not exactly old enough to understand precisely what Rey's talking about, other than it's _bad,_ asks because he can feel… levels.

She shares a look with Rose.

"He wanted her. And he was madly Force powerful, more than Kylo and I combined likely. Certainly, more than either of us separately. And he was dark… You know how it works, how easy it is for darklings to set sights on things and just _need_ them."

That gets nodding. They know. Critt and Ostrae get set on things in ways they don't. It almost looks light, or would if it weren't for the fact that it's so easy to get them off of that thing as soon as they lose interest, but while they're on it, they're _on_ it.

"He says he wasn't doing it intentionally. He didn't set out to do anything, and was likely too young to even really know it was possible when they first met. Probably, given the Jedi education, didn't know what he could do with it the second. But he _wanted_ and his magic was so strong, his power, his passion so intense that he started to warp her just by being near.

"The more time they spent together, the more she'd match his feelings.

"He made her _want,_ too."

Artoo beeps, and Threepio translates, "They were together, all day, all night, for close to a week in the lake country…"

"That makes sense. Close proximity. She likely never even knew what was happening. He was… a black hole sitting next to her, and she began to change from his gravity," Rey says.

"But… he loved her, then?" Savarah asks.

"No. And that was his message for Kylo. He wanted her more than any man had ever wanted. Wanted her so badly he warped her. But he didn't love her. I was thinking about that as we watched the story. Why not leave the Jedi? Leaving obviously didn't do Palpatine any harm. Why not join her and make a life together? Why not use his powers along with hers and become a team with the power and politics to actually beat Palpatine?"

They all look at Rey, suddenly very aware of what she's doing with Kylo, and what love, active, attached love, looks like to her.

She doesn't blush, but she feels very open right now, as she says, "He knew the galaxy she wanted. He knew he was breaking her heart. He knew how love behaves, and what it does, because his mother did it for him, and he didn't do it for Padme or his children.

"He could have seen her on Mustafar, dropped his saber, and run off with her, hidden, and raised their children together. Palpatine never found Obi Wan or Yoda, one more Jedi, even a fallen one, especially at Vader's power level, could have hidden.

"He could have left the council long before Mustafar was even on the horizon.

"He had choices and options, other paths to take…

"But he didn't."

More quiet.

Then it's Rose who says, "He… told Kylo that?"

Rey nods. "Yeah. He's showed up a few times to talk."

"Did he… know that then?" Rose asks. "Or do you think that's years of regret putting things into place?"

"He absolutely claimed he loved her at the time. And… well, until the end, we didn't…" Threepio goes quiet. "I was going to say, we didn't see any reason to know differently, but… He was working with Palpatine the whole time, and she was working against him, and… You can talk about love all you want, but you can't be going out and trying to destroy everything your beloved is working for and still love them, can you?"

"I don't think that's love," Rey says. "Mirina and Ellie have… not exactly outright stated, but they've certainly hinted, that between the two of them and the Emperor's second mistress that, they were very aware of the fact that the Emperor had no heir and was not, in fact, immortal.

"They were working the angle that the eventual Empress Amidala, and her former Jedi Knight husband, they were imagining him looking like Anakin, and not Vader, would have made a wonderful second generation of Imperial rule.

"They thought that Padme would be… a lot of things. My guess is, that if they could have secured that position for Padme, a well-seasoned cocktail would have shown up at one of the Emperor's suppers. But they couldn't secure that place, and at the time, they were less than thrilled that when it all fell apart and everyone ended up dead."

"But she didn't want that," Magiit says.

"Not on her own. Mirina says that about her. Sometimes, and we assume that's when Anakin was near, she seemed to be going along, but then they'd be separated, and her own will would come out, and she'd be horrified by the way the Republic was dying." Rey feels cold as she says it. She knows that Kylo feels a kinship to Padme that's beyond blood. The bond of the abused and manipulated. But she's feeling… revolted. Snoke always claimed to be Vader in Kylo's mind, knew enough about Vader to make sure Kylo believed the lie, granted his family never talked about Vader, so how much did he need to know?

Enough. He knew enough to make sure that Kylo was never really alone.

Somehow that bastard knew enough about what happened with Anakin and Padme not to let it happen again.

She almost says something about that. About how Kylo loved and Vader wanted and that difference changed the entire story, but… That's private, at least for now. She'll talk to him, see if he wants that kind of intimacy exposed to a wider audience, and if the answer's yes, they'll talk more.


	70. Foundations

5/25/2

"You're distracted," Jacen says when Kylo appears before him.

"Distracting morning. So…" Normally, they meet up and Kylo takes Jacen for training with him, but this time Jacen's got a "surprise." So, for the moment, he's in the cottage that Jacen and Critt share. He wrinkles his nose. "You need to do laundry."

Jacen smirks at that, and nods to the door. "Let's go for a walk."

"It's bloody cold out there." And Kylo's not even remotely dressed for it. Usually, training with Jacen, these days means heading to the courtyard to sit and talk and feel. Or maybe go to the gym and make him run around and hit things a bit. So, he's in his casual clothing, not the thirty layers he'd need for walking around outside on Lirium.

"Fine. Pull the image from my head and port us there."

Kylo notices that Jacen's _also_ not dressed for outside, comes to the conclusion that he'd always intended Kylo to port them, rolls his eyes a bit as Jacen smirks at him, and starts to pull the idea from his mind.

He stops dead, right there, feeling it, knowing what he's seeing, the main seating area of the _Falcon_. "Jacen."

And Jacen of course knows that Kylo recognizes what he sees. "Look, he told me to bring you with me the next time we got a chance to train, so… Come on."

"Wait, he told you to bring… me?"

"Yeah."

Kylo's dead silent.

Jacen waits an extra moment before saying, "You're not thinking right now, so tell me what you're feeling, because I'm lost."

"I… He asked you to bring me?"

"Again, yes."

"Oh. Uh… Well… let's go then." Kylo takes Jacen's hand, and ports them to the _Falcon._ Because that's a lot easier than trying to figure out why Chewie's got Jacen bringing him… well… home.

* * *

He feels… welcome… when he gets them there. He doesn't specifically feel Han, and Jacen says to him, "Yeah. I'm not getting him either, right now, but he's usually lurking about somewhere. Sometimes I think _The Falcon_ remembers him, and it's a sort of echo, and sometimes he's actually here."

Before Kylo can really think about that, Chewie notices that they're there.

He ambles in from the cockpit and stares at both of them. It's clear that he's suddenly not sure if this was a great idea, because Kylo's just _staring_ at everything, feeling… Feeling like too damn much has already been shoved into today. Next weekend, he's taking a bloody day off, a real day off… He sighs; he's probably supposed to be at some stupid shindig instead of taking a day off.

Jacen smirks and elbows him, and says, "Come on, Master. I think the two of you are supposed to be training me," then he sets off for the cockpit.

Chewie laughs and says, _Maybe._ He nods to Kylo. _He's never flown before, so not sure who we're training up today._

And Kylo gets it. Chewie's offering to teach him how to fly. Here. He's… Kylo swallows, doing the thing he never did before, but at least in his own mind, should have.

"You've never flown _The_ _Falcon_ before?" Jacen asks, literally stunned, as he stops dead, standing next to the pilot's seat.

"I was never allowed to," Kylo replies, not sure where he's supposed to go. He's standing between the two rear seats, feeling Chewie behind him, really watching them. "And I've never flown _The Falcon_ before. I've flown _lots_ of other ships. I was a test pilot for the First Order."

Chewie looks surprised by that.

"Why not let him fly _The_ _Falcon_?" Jacen asks.

Kylo looks annoyed, but Chewie's the one who answers. " _Kid'd blow the power when he got upset, stressed, or too excited. Learning how to fly is stressful and exciting. Didn't think risking that in hyperdrive was a good plan._ Chewie moves past Kylo and gets into his co-pilot seat. At the very least, he knows where he goes.

Jacen just stares at Kylo.

Kylo shrugs. "He's underplaying stressed or upset. Frothing rage, but… It didn't take as much to get me into one as it should have back then."

Chewie nods at that. _You want an exciting afternoon? Try telling this kid that no, he can't have another cookie, he's had three already, and the boom, the whole fucking house is vibrating, the lights pop, and the power dies._

Kylo doesn't remember that, so he shrugs. It certainly could have happened, but…

Jacen's still staring, and for the first time, Chewie's got the sense that he's nervous. "You've, uh… got that under control now, right?"

Kylo can't help it, the memory of it _leaps_ into his head, and of course, Jacen just thinks his memory of the last time he accidentally blew the power is the funniest thing EVER, and he's cackling like a maniac.

Which of course means Chewie wants to know, after all, the _Falcon_ is his baby, and they're all going to die, fast, if Kylo blows the power at the wrong moment.

Kylo rolls his eyes again, steps forward, and gives Jacen a gentle whack upside the back of the head, which doesn't exactly stop the sniggering, though it does quiet it down some. Then he says to Chewie, "I can promise it won't happen here."

Chewie's look is a very elegant expression of _don't bantha shit a bantha shitter._

Another epic eye roll. "Rey's not here, and without her help, it doesn't happen, okay?"

There's a second of absolute dead silence, a heartbeat where Chewie's just _staring_ at him, not quite understanding, and then he does, and then that silence breaks with a roar of belly shaking laughter.

Kylo feels wrapped in it. Being next to a wookie is going to be an intense emotional experience for anyone, but Kylo gets it a lot deeper and more thorough than the average human. And that loud, gleeful laughter starts to peel away the worries about Snoke… Palpatine… Snalpatine… He doesn't like that thought at all. Or if the bastard was really a clone, is he actually dead, and if not, where the fucker's been the last two years, and…

Laughter peels that away. Chewie's genuinely pleased that… well… Kylo's apparently having emotional releases that don't involve hating himself and everyone else, and if he's going to blow the power, at least everyone had a very good time of it.

Kylo smirks a little, and then says, "Yeah… The hotel was pretty impressed when the entire grid went dead." He smirks a lot. "The second time that day."

That sets off more laughing. Jacen shoves his shoulder and grins brilliantly at him. Then he looks a little smug. He's got some experience Kylo doesn't. "I don't know, putting her into drive is awfully sweet. Your dad wasn't wrong about how it feels."

Kylo remembers thinking to Jacen what his dad didn't _say_ , but did _think_ about the feel of putting _The_ _Falcon_ through her paces. "Yeah, well, just like lips on a shaft, this isn't my first time putting a ship into hyperdrive, so I'm not going to blow my load, or the power, on the first thrust. Been through this a few times before."

Jacen's face is challenging.

Kylo turns his full attention on him. "Once I got somewhere someone would let me in a ship, because they didn't much care if I died, or if I wrecked a ship or… eighty…" He thinks that's how many he went through before the _Silencer._ Jacen misses the implications of that. Chewie doesn't and looks horrified. "I picked it up fast. I'm rated on every one-pilot ship the Order has, and got so good at it they let me test pilot new designs." Though "let" might not be exactly the right word. Once he got done breaking the ships he learned on, he explained what his ship needed to do. They gave him a new one. It… did not meet his specifications. He got a new one. This continued for quite a while. Some of the ones that weren't up to spec for him did go into production for other pilots, though. "My battleship is a TIE _Silencer_ , and I've got the only one of them. We never did put the line into production." He leans over Jacen, lays his hand on the throttle. "Let's see what this girl'll do when someone who knows how to fly has her."

Jacen raises a brow, stands up, gestures to the pilot seat, and says, "Well, then, show me some tricks, _Master._ "

* * *

There was a time, years ago, when he'd gone out, carousing, with the Knights. Sort of. He'd mostly tagged along and hated himself and everything near him. He'd wanted to enjoy the fight, and then enjoy the pleasure ladies after the fight, and maybe get roaring drunk after that, too.

He had enjoyed the fight. They'd… these days he doesn't like thinking about what they'd done, but at the time it felt good. At the time fighting was the only thing that ever felt good. And after…

He wanted to _feel good._ Keep feeling good. The fight was… his body fast and hard and tingling from excitement and adrenaline and just the thrill of his _power_ and the exhilaration of _death._ After, the Knights felt good. They were allowed to. He wasn't. And if good wasn't an option, he wanted to numb himself into feeling nothing, and as best he knew alcohol would do that if he let it.

He wasn't allowed that, either.

What he actually did was sit in the waiting area, looking at the girls, not touching, not talking to them, "waiting" for his Knights, sure that as soon as they got back Snoke was going to tear him several new assholes. (This did, indeed, happen. Mission parameters switched apparently _after_ the mission, and he failed to anticipate that Snoke would want prisoners to interrogate. He'd brought prisoners back the time before, and got a new asshole ripped for that, too… He makes himself stop thinking of that part.)

After the Knight's finished their night out, after he'd pulled them out of the pleasure palace because he'd gotten the call to return, he was in the communal showers on their transport with the Knights, and Ranal said something about the proverbial lady, "Needs a bag over her face to attract men, but she's on fire in the sack."

The only reason he really understood that comment was the whole mindreader thing.

That said, he's thinking that's a really good way to describe the _Falcon._ She's ugly as all get out. Impractically designed. Falls apart if you look at her wrong, but _HOLY MOTHER OF THE FORCE does she have it where it matters!_

Flying her is like… really good sex, or a religious experience, the way religious experiences are supposed to happen. He barely even needs to use his hands and feet, he just _thinks_ how she's supposed to go and she does it. She's the most nubile, responsive, _fast_ heap of junk he's ever had the privilege of handling and he loves her unreservedly and is suddenly getting a much better mental map of who his father was.

Flying her is… bliss. It's that quiet spot he has such a hard time finding on his own. He can just sink into the way she moves and _flow._

And at the same time, he tries not to feel sad. He's doing it now. He got to do this. There were a lot of possible versions of his life where he didn't get to sit here next to Chewie with Jacen behind him, zipping through the galaxy. Late is better than never, and it may be late, but it is _happening._

But… there were a lot of versions of his life where he'd have been doing this for twenty years. Where Han might be in the seat behind him. Where the three of them were off doing…

He doesn't close his eyes to think about that. Bad plan when you're the pilot.

He lets her take them away, and twists them through some really tight turns while imputing the coordinates for his favorite test run from back in the day.

Time to see if she'll hold together through the run he'd put his TIEs through.

* * *

When Kylo finally slows the _Falcon_ to a stop, Chewie's muttering about his hair going gray, there are likely not permanent grooves in the hand rest from where he was clutching it, and he's developing a certain sympathy for Finn when he's got to deal with Jacen on a tear, and Jacen, who was already kindly disposed toward Kylo, is getting near worshipful.

Though, he's still an eighteen-year-old man-kid, so worshipful is buried under a layer of sarcasm and genuine confusion, "Why the hell are you trying to teach me to use a lightsaber when you can do _that_?"

Kylo blinks. Jacen is a _pilot._ He _knows_ this. Why the bloody hell _was_ he trying to teach him how to use a lightsaber?

He blinks again. Because being a pilot isn't intrinsic to being a _Jedi._ Because Luke didn't train him how to fly, he learned it before he became a Jedi. Because Anakin learned to fly before he became a Jedi, too. Because Obi Wan never actually mastered it beyond the ability to get from point A to point B. Because no one has any memories of Yoda flying at all. Because…

"I didn't think of it."

Because you can decide to kill the old patterns, but if they're so deeply ingrained you don't even know they are patterns, they're really hard to dismantle.

"Yeah, well, get thinking. What the fuck were you doing, back…" He gestures behind them. "Sixty light years ago when you did that… Thing."

 _Flying like his dad._ Chewie's voice rumbles. He's quiet for a moment, and then adds, _When we were right on the edge. He'd fly like that when we were running away from something. When it_ really _mattered that we'd get away._

Kylo nods. "Time slows down, and your heart is beating fast, but you can feel the stretch between them, and you can make your brain go faster because time is going slower and…" He looks at Jacen, and then sighs. "You've got flash prescience. You'll be even better at it than I am."

 _Jedi flying._ Chewie says.

"Maji flying," Jacen replies, shaking his head. He more than followed Kylo's thoughts about patterns. "There was no Jedi flying. But there bloody well will be _Maji flying._ " Jacen grins at him, having more than read enough of Kylo's thoughts. "There's no reason why, at some point, the Knights of Ren couldn't be a flight group."

Kylo smirks at that. He touches his hip, where his saber would be if he were wearing it. "The Jedi spent so much time and attention on their sabers. Making them, finding the right crystal, building them to suit their fighting style. Each one a work of art in and of themselves… But it doesn't have to be a blade."

"It could be a ship," Jacen says.

 _Yeah, well, if it's going to be a ship, you need to do a ton more studying,_ Chewie adds. _Someone's got to learn a shit ton more math if he's going to design his own ship._

Kylo shrugs at that. "You can hire someone to build the damn ship. You just need to get enough of a feel for her… him… to arrange him for you." He feels a little silly at tripping on that.

Jacen smirks a bit at that. "It's okay. I know all of your ships are ladies. _The_ _Falcon_ is, too. You don't have to stutter over my ships being boys."

Kylo's eyes narrow. That was _just_ a feeling. He didn't put it into any sort of words or thought. _Empathy?_

Jacen shrugs a bit. "You blushed."

Kylo inclines his head.

Chewie looks curiously between them.

"I've got to train up my empathy before he'll help me learn to really _use_ my powers."

Now Chewie's looking at Kylo, still curious. He's also, very clearly, trying to get a map of who the adult version of Ben Solo became. How he thinks about things like… well, being an older brother/favorite uncle/father type thing to this other Force bright kid.

Kylo makes himself not shrug at this, not brush it off as indifferent or maybe lessening the importance so that it won't sting so much if Chewie doesn't approve. "It's vastly too easy to fuck people over if you can overpower them with a whim," he nods to Jacen, "or with a word. There's got to be some way to build in an ability to be aware of what you're doing and how it can hurt. I—we're throwing out the old Jedi's techniques for that, so… Best guess I've got is that if you've got genuine empathy, if you can feel how horrible everyone around you feels when you hurt them, that's a built in buffer against really hurting other people."

"Most people won't voluntarily shoot themselves in the hip to shoot someone else," Jacen says. "Assuming, I'm getting you right?"

Kylo nods at that. "Pretty much. The better you understand and empathize with the people around you, the easier it is to not be a flaming asshole to them. That's the goal at least," he eyes Jacen. "We'll see how it works out. M'Gll and I were sort of… Luke's experiments on how to raise up new Jedi. To a degree, I guess you're my main experiment on how to raise up a Maji."

"Not the little guys?"

"They are, too. But you're oldest, so you get to enjoy the various ideas first."

"As long as those ideas involve more time in a cockpit, I'll sign up for experirat duty."

 _Experirat?_

"They're… uh… little rodents that medical centers use to test drugs on. Don't they…" Jacen asks.

"We've got versions of them in the wider galaxy," Kylo says. (He's starting to get reports on where the Order spends its money, and, apparently, they go through fifty million credits of them per year. He's got no idea _why,_ after all the reports he's getting are just pure numbers, but the science wing is very conscientious on its bookkeeping, so their audits are coming in, first.)

 _All right, flyboy, let's see what you can do when you've got to go somewhere specific._ And Chewie sets specific coordinates. _Let's go._

Kylo doesn't know where they're going by the coordinates.

He's getting an inkling as he's moving through a very dense bit of nebula that's not exactly easy piloting, but nothing he needs to _really_ focus on. Not like it's a packed asteroid field with barely twenty meters between rocks.

(Jacen keeps looking at Chewie with a big _I told you so,_ on his face. Kylo decides not to poke into that.)

He does know by the feel of it when they break atmo.

He glances over to Chewie, who, having seen Kylo pilot in a more sedate and serious sort of way, is acting a lot more relaxed. "I was thinking I'd come with Rey."

Chewie shrugs. _Coming with me doesn't mean you can't come with her._

"Not exactly the point I was making," Kylo says.

Jacen's looking between them. "He thinks it's important to teach us to be proper adults… Men. Go find a home for our… your… woman."

 _Mate. Better?_

Jacen nods.

Kylo just raises a brow. He didn't have the sense he was falling down on the job according to wookie-style husbanding. Rey's fed, has a home, and Kylo's pretty damn attentive. Besides the lack of cubs, they're golden as well as he knows. But, he can feel what Chewie's focused on, _home._ And apparently, Lirium isn't passing muster. (And the _Supremacy_ just isn't part of Chewie's map of the landscape.)

Voice dry, Kylo responds to how Chewie's feeling. "I know wookies do it differently, but… Most human women like it when you include them in the whole finding-a-home thing."

Chewie waves that off. _If you don't know her well enough to make her the home she wants, what the fuck have you been up to these last few years?_

Kylo keeps his voice dry as he says, "Learning that she wants to be included in things like making a home?"

Jacen rolls his eyes a little. Kylo's going off of what Chewie's feeling. Chewie's trying to get a problem solved and is _thinking_ about how they still don't have a new place to live yet. He decides now's a prime time to leap into the conversation. "She keeps turning islands down. We've done three sweeps, and Rose and Finn and Chewie keep finding okay places, and Poe seems okay, but she's telling us to keep looking. She says she'll know it when she sees it, and…" It's clear from what Jacen's not saying that the older members of the crew are coming to the conclusion there's nowhere Rey's going to be okay with.

Kylo didn't know that. "Oh." He blinks. "I haven't asked."

"Yeah, well, it sounds like you've been busy lately."

 _And now you're not, so find your woman the home she wants and let's get moving before we all freeze._

* * *

"Nope."

Jacen rolls his eyes and Chewie growls.

"I know it's the tenth island. It's not right." Actually, Kylo's got no idea if it's the right bloody island or not. It's an island; it seems fine to him, but if it's not the right one according to Rey, it's not the right one.

And to ensure that stays the official line, he's got his thoughts so deeply buried, with a long, in depth layer of focus about _everything_ he's seeing on top, that Jacen can't follow them.

(Though it's clear that he knows something is up. It's not like he's unaware of how Kylo thinks, so he knows that an ongoing catalog of everything he's seeing is not how he usually thinks. What he doesn't know is if this is Kylo island shopping, making detailed lists of what he's seeing for comparison purposes, or if he's using one of his standard avoiding the deeper attention of mind readers techniques.)

Chewie just shoves his shoulder and says, _Fuck it. She won't pick, and you won't pick for her._ He rolls his eyes and shakes his head. _The point of having a mate is the idea that sooner or later at least one of you should be able to make a fucking decision._

"Yeah, 'cause that always worked so well for Mom and Dad, or you and Mallie."

Chewie's eyes narrow, and he looks about to snap at Kylo, but he doesn't. He makes himself _not_ snap or growl.

"We make decisions together. And I'm sorry this is slowing things down, but I'm not staking out an island for us without at least talking to her, and more likely without her express permission and consent."

 _Carry the damn load, Ben. That's what a mate_ does. _If she can't take it, you take it for her. She'd do it if she could. If she's not doing it, it's because she can't._

Kylo's turn to glare, but like Chewie, he doesn't snap, even if he'd like to. It'd be so much easier, and satisfying, to argue about _Ben._

 _Drop it, Kylo._ Jacen's mind in his. _Not gonna help the situation._

He lets out a slow breath. "We'll _talk_ about it."

Jacen's voice is a little on the quiet side as he says, "He's not steering you wrong on this on, Kylo. She looks at the maps and scans and… When we go, she stays home with the little ones. I didn't realize this was part of what he was thinking when he set this up, but…" He shakes his head a little. Why didn't he realize that? He should have known. Chewie looks absurdly pleased with himself at that, though. Jacen brings himself back to the bit that matters right now. "It feels like she's stuck. There's stuff going on in her head she'd probably prefer I didn't pick up on, but…"

"Then we'll _talk_. And if _she_ tells me she can't do it on her own, I'll carry her." He's looking up at Chewie, eyes intense. "That's part of the difference. Part of why fifty years from now, assuming we're both still breathing, we'll still be married. Part of why you and Dad made it, and Mom and Dad didn't."

Chewie's eyes narrow a bit at that, but he doesn't say anything. What he had with Han is, from what he can tell, a lot more like what his human family considers a marriage than what he had with his wife. That said, Han made a lot of snap decisions for them. Not always good ones. For that matter, he did, too. They just… backed each other's play if and when it came down to it. But it's not like they tended to sit around _talking_ about shit like this. They just did it, and hoped the dice came up in their favor.

Kylo looks around at the island they're standing on. "They pretty much all look like this, right?"

"In this area, yeah. Go north a few hundred klicks and the sand is black. Go south a thousand more, and the beaches are stone." Jacen says. "We came to the conclusion that we didn't want anywhere too cold, and we all liked the idea of being near the water, so…"

Kylo nods at that. "What about…" He gestures to the north-east. To an island he knows exists, where he could only see Rey. "You feel it, right?"

Jacen nods. "Yeah. Uh…" Jacen looks uncomfortable. "Don't want to go there, not alone, really don't want to live there."

Kylo understands, in his bones and guts, that sensation. It's not bad, or fear, per se, but it's certainly a warning and it definitely sets his danger senses off.

Chewie rolls his eyes at that. _It's fine. Covered in Porgs. And the nuns don't exactly love visitors, but it's not like there's monsters._

"Just ghosts," Kylo replies.

Jacen nods at that. Then he raises a brow at Kylo. "You have had a distracting day, haven't you? Who's… Dead Guy?"

Kylo shakes his head a bit. "Something I'm still working on." He looks around some more. "This isn't your favorite of the bunch, right?"

Jacen shakes his head. "Nah, it's good, but…" He gestures to the coastline, "it's curved the wrong way. Get one that's convex, and the other two sides of the island will protect the part of the coast we're hoping to live on."

Chewie nods.

"Great. Show me the one everyone else likes best."

Chewie looks surprised.

"I said we'd _talk._ Talking will work better if I know what I'm supposed to be talking about. Plus, I'll have a much easier time getting there if I've been there before."

Chewie nods, slowly, at that. Kylo's got the sense that he's passed some sort of test. It makes him feel happy, and a bit irked to be that happy from a nod.

* * *

Jacen's the one flying now, and he puts _The_ _Falcon_ down neatly on a wide stretch of sand that feels familiar to Kylo.

"I… haven't been here, right?"

"I can't imagine you have," Jacen replies, as they get up to head out and set foot on sand.

Once on the beach, and looking around, Kylo figures out what he's seeing. This is Finn's picnic island. Okay, not specifically Finn's picnic island. He's pretty sure the picnic island is the curvy one at the far side of the bay he's standing next to.

But, yeah, he's, in some sense, been here before.

 _Bay's three klicks across. Ten islands make a half circle around it. This,_ Chewie gestures to the flat, treeless sands around them, _is the one that'd likely make the best landing pad. Wouldn't take a miracle to get a hardtop on this._

Jacen nods to what looks like a bigger island, at least one with more greenery, and some hills, "That's probably the main island people live on. It's got freshwater springs. There's a sand spit between here and there, so building some sort of walking bridge would be easy enough. End to end it's a klick and a half long, and it sort of curls around the bay and a few of the other islands."

Kylo gestures to picnic island. "And that's the one Finn and Rose want?"

Jacen nods. "Yeah. It's a good setup from what we can tell. The water is warm. The islands curl around each other and offer some protection from the weather."

 _They're tight enough in that we can set a field generator around the perimeter for protection from weather or anything else that might come our way._

"And there's room to be close enough to keep an eye on each other, but not be right on top of one another, too."

"Big critters? Sentients?" Kylo asks.

"No sign of either, as of yet." Jacen says. "But we're watching, and trying to get a better feel for what's here. A month of weather data, so that's iffy. But from the shape of the plants and trees, these islands should be safe for things like us."

Kylo watches the trees swaying on the island across the bay from them. Whatever the climate does here, it allows for trees that are twenty to thirty meters tall, so it can't be _that_ bad. "Certainly nothing like that back home."

Chewie nods, pointing toward where Luke's island is, thousands of klicks from here. _Obviously, sentients can and do live on this planet, with an extremely low tech level, so we know it's not a flat out death trap._

"There is that." Kylo keeps looking around. "And this is the place you guys like best?"

"Finn and Rose are planning on putting their place over there," Jacen gestures at the island across from them. "Whether we're coming here or not."

Kylo's a little surprised by that, and then isn't. "Right. They've got a tighter and more urgent time frame than we do, don't they?"

 _Exactly._ Chewie replies. _They already moved heavily pregnant once, and aren't looking forward to doing it again, let alone with a toddler. Once you sweep Canto, and they've got their cut, they're going to start getting set up. They and the medbay are moving sooner than later, and that's that._

"Good point," Kylo says, trying to imagine how soon he'd be looking to get Rey out if she were in the process of cooking their baby. Yesterday. He'd likely be looking to have gotten them out, yesterday. If not last month. Or… even with the ability to teleport to immediate medical care, and Rey's light side healing skills, there's still a sense in his mind that, should Rey happen to be pregnant, he's likely going to want her no further than three steps from a fully staffed medical bay at all times.

He's also fairly sure that, should any sentiments along those lines manage to get out of his head and anywhere near hers, she will be _less than optimally pleased with him_ and it's a good plan to work on strangling them now, before it's really an issue.

"Good plan," Jacen says.

Kylo rolls his eyes.

Jacen's looking at him expectantly, and gestures to the islands.

Kylo shrugs. "It's nice." He shrugs again. "They're all nice. With the exception of the poles, probably every centimeter of this planet is currently preferable to Lirium, including Luke's island, so… We'll _talk._ "

Chewie's eyes narrow at that, but he nods, and both Kylo and Jacen can feel that he's maybe not thrilled by this turn of events, but he's at least satisfied. Chewie waves to the islands around them. _Go explore. If you're going to talk, you better well know what you're talking about, right?_

Kylo smirks a little at him, and then vanishes, reappearing almost exactly the same moment as a tiny black dot on the far side of the bay.

Jacen shakes his head. "That is bloody unsettling, isn't it?"

 _Convenient_ _though. I wouldn't mind being able to do it._

"Yeah, well, me, too. Still looks like something that shouldn't be. It's… squicky."

Chewie laughs. _Good word for it, kid. You think he'll get her moving?_

"I think it's more likely than if we keep dangling new islands in front of her."

 _Good enough._

* * *

When it comes down to it, all Kylo needs to be "home" is to have a somewhat horizontal place to sleep, next to Rey. Access to food would likely be nice, too. And he'd rather prefer that there be some sort of refresher within easy walking distance.

The rest of it is optional.

And, especially with their home on the _Supremacy,_ he hasn't exactly been feeling a sense of any sort of real urgency to get them off of Lirium. (Though, it's likely because Rey is not feeling any sense of urgency to get off of Lirium.)

He nudges the sand with the toe of his boot. It's a creamy white color on this island. He'll admit a certain level in interest in the idea of black sand, but… This is probably good enough.

Looking around further, across the bay, he can see the smallish brown lump that's Chewie, and the smaller ginger lump that's Jacen. He looks down at the ground under his feet.

 _Carry the load, Ben…_

He's not just a husband here, looking for a way to make his wife happy. He's supposedly a third (Sixth? Seventh? An important part) of the "adult" population of the Maji, and he supposes that means he's got some responsibility toward all these small people who are also Maji.

They're not just _Rey's kids,_ who he _helps out with._ They're his, too, and… So, a new home.

* * *

He feels Jacen and Chewie getting antsy on the far side of the bay. He's been 'exploring' for a while. _Head home. I know how to get myself back._

 _You sure?_ Jacen thinks back.

 _Yeah, I think I'm going to be at this longer than anticipated._

He feels Jacen nod, and sees _The Falcon_ take off a minute later.

* * *

It feels like an island. Neither right nor wrong. It's just some sea around a blob of land under a pretty blue sky.

He likes staring up at that sky from under the shade of the trees. It feels good. Both air that's warm enough to touch his skin without burning cold, and the feel of a breeze that just wafts his hair a bit. It's a very nice contrast to air so cold it'll freeze the moisture in your breath to your skin, except the wind's so hard and fast it doesn't get the chance to stick around long enough for that to happen.

Mostly, he likes that it's blue.

The sky was blue on Chandrilla, where he was born. It was blue on Onieros, The Dreamer, Poe called it, where Luke made their home. Blue here, too. That's his… default setting of what a sky is supposed to be. Blue sky, blue water, sand and trees.

It probably has pinky-orange sunrises and sunsets, not the greeny-brown of Lirium.

To the extent that it feels 'right' to him, it's that sort of right. It's… aesthetics he appreciates and an ingrained familiarity.

He sits at the base of a tall tree, feeling it solid and a bit rough at his back. It's alive and (as much as a plant can be) happy here. That's good.

He lets his mind wander through today. Through Padme, and meaning, and an Emperor who might still be lurking in the shadows, and the feel of… He doesn't know what it's called, the Jedi Sanctuary maybe, pulling at his mind.

He's probably five to ten thousand klicks away from where he touched Rey… well, no… From where Rey touched him, voluntarily, for the first time. He touched Rey for the first time on Takodana. Carried her in his arms, emotions a whirl, mostly focused on the fact that his father and mother were both there, or coming, and the tumult of what that could mean.

There's… a similar thread right now, something that feels reminiscent of that moment.

Things like this, all falling on top of each other at one time. There's likely meaning here. There's… omens and portents and the Force arranging things to give subtle messages and whatnot.

So, he sits, and waits, watches the sun glint off the ocean, and the small waves lapping at the shore.

Enlightenment is not forthcoming.

Because… well maybe today's not the day for that. Maybe today's a day for… Sand under his hands, under his bum, wood against his back…

Foundations.

Maybe today is a day for foundations. A day for building the buttresses and fortresses they're going to need to withstand the coming storm.

Kylo stands up, and starts to walk around the island, getting more of a feel for it.

His home with Rey, that's his foundation, so… get that good and solid, and then be ready for what comes next.

* * *

He visits all of the islands in this cove. Takes the time to wander about, see how they feel, let his senses open outward. Just because they've got scan saying there are no sentients or big critters…

He didn't do that on Lirium, and it bit them. He's doing it here.

But, unless they're migratory and not here right now, he's not catching any other sentients, and the only big things he's feeling live in the water, and don't feel like they're going to come out to visit. (That said, he's thinking this might not be a great planet for deep water swimming. He's planning on telling the kids not to go out much past two meters deep. Big things can't swim in water that shallow.)

He's on a beach. Not Finn and Rose's beach, though he can see it from here. He's on the far side of the bay from them. Probably about 700 meters away. Close enough to yell, far enough away not to be tripping on each other. Probably an ideal amount of space between him and Finn.

Close enough for their kids to play together. Far enough away for them to safely ignore each other most of the time.

Kids.

He has the feel of children here. How much of that is 'real,' how much of it is fantasy, he doesn't know. But he can imagine it. Here, on the sand, teaching some dark-haired children how to swim. (Two brown ones, because unless Rose knows how to swim he'll be in charge of that, and two pale ones. Baby Tico-Rens spending an afternoon with Uncle Kylo/Dad.)

The image feels 'real' enough… Ish. The Tico kids are Paige and a little boy. The Rens are… potential. Undefined as of yet. Real, but unshaped.

His eyes close on the image, and he tucks it close, keeping it near his heart.

Sand under his feet, grass and trees behind him.

There could be a house here. It could be theirs.

Sand before him. Water beyond.

Bonfires, sunset, sand and water. There could be a wedding here. A celebration of family, with family.

Another image hits, him kneeling before Rey, wind in their hair, his arms around her hips, as he says his vows to her. Jon and Kinear slightly behind him. Finn and Rose a little beyond Rey. Poe… smiling. A little behind them.

Setting sun, glimmers on the water, standing, Poe holding a torch, live flame flickering, lighting their own flames, passing it to the rest of the party, the flame spreading out from them, lighting the beach as the sun vanishes.

There could, indeed, be a wedding here.

There could be dancing here, and reveling, and a home, and living, and…

There could be a life here.

And he _wants_ it.

* * *

There could be a house here. A home. In his mind it's tucked back from the water a bit, snugged in between the tall trees. Maybe five meters past the treeline. Close enough to see the water framed through the trunks.

It's got clean lines, and big windows. And most of the time, those windows are open. Maybe screened, because there does appear to be a collection of insects that live here, along with at least a few species of bird, and he's seen three different types of little lizards. He rather they didn't sleep in his room, so they'd need something to keep them out, but…

Details…

Breakfast coffee on a porch, in the shade, sipping the bitter brew, watching the waves.

Hell, maybe they'll get a hammock.

A big one.

One he and Rey and baby can lay around in, nap in the shade of the afternoon.

He rolls his eyes. In their copious free time.

Still, it's a good dream.

* * *

It's not an ideal island for landing a ship on, but it doesn't need to be. The one _The Falcon_ landed on would do for that. Stick some bridges or something like that between the islands… But this one… They could have their home here, and there's room for the kids to put their cottages. Maybe stick the communal kitchen a bit further behind the treeline.

There could be classrooms here, and a full gym. It's a big enough island they could probably fit a good thirty cottages without everyone feeling like they're going to be tripping on each other.

Jacen and the older kids would probably want to be on a different island.

There's one at the far end of his view, and he's got a sense it'd be a place for Jon and Poe one day. Though he doesn't think they'll actually live here so much as have a place they come to relax from time to time. This won't be home for them the way it'll be home for him and Rey and Finn and Rose.

Would Chewie want a cottage? He didn't build one on Lirium, just like Poe didn't. But maybe here, where there are trees…

Maybe this would be home for Chewie, not just a place home lands…

Maybe, eventually, it'll be home for a lot of people who need a place, a foundation, to ride out the storm.

He likes that idea, too. Likes the idea of being the person he needed when he was a kid. Loves the idea of being the man who can build the place he needed when he was a kid.

He thinks of Critt and Ostrae, and helping them build homes for themselves. Thinks of a place for other, unknown, but he knows, _real_ darklings out there, looking for a home and someone who doesn't loathe them for being themselves.

* * *

He's on the beach, looking at the water, feeling an urge to take his boots, and likely the rest of his clothing, off, go splash around, wade some…

He checks his chrono. Not too late, but his stomach is telling him that food in the not wildly distant future would be good.

Food… a blanket, maybe some pillows… do this up properly, not his cloak on the ground…

He grins, the idea of cribbing off of Finn's date night springing to mind. A moment later, he's gone, back in their room on the _Supremacy,_ fetching things for tonight.

* * *

Blanket, pillows, the candles that they had when the Organas showed up… This is starting to look good.

He's shoving the candles into the sand, building up little wind blocks for them, as he thinks to Rey, _Dinner thoughts?_

He feels the groan. _High tea! Do you know what high tea is?_

 _Not just liquid refreshment?_

 _There is a tower of pastries taller than I am. They've been feeding us for more than an hour now. The girls are in heaven, because most of it's mostly sugar, but I'm about to explode._

 _So, I'll take that as get whatever I like, and if you somehow get peckish you'll have a bite._

 _Yeah, sounds good. Uh… whatever it is, not sweet. If I have any more sugar, I'm going to get sick._

 _Noted. Savory whatever it is for me._

 _Thanks._

He doesn't want to break contact with her, not right now, but he also doesn't have anything else to add. He looks at the blanket. Well, maybe something. _Once you get the girls settled, just port to me, okay?_

He feels her interest across their bond. _You've got something planned, don't you?_

He smirks at that. _Maybe._

 _Good. See you in a few hours._

 _Great!_

* * *

He's on the beach, sitting on the blanket, next to a plate with several kabobs on it and some flat breads, a pitcher of juice next to it, staring at where their home might be.

He's got a good image of the porch, and the windows, but… what goes inside… is fuzzier.

He supposes it could be their place in Lirium… They'll have time, they can pack it up and move it, but… He doesn't exactly _love_ it. He loves that it's Rey's home, but it's kind of flat for his tastes. (Especially, after he was in Finn and Rose's place which is filled with colors and textures and things and… Rey's workbench looks real, like that's something someone loved and cared for, but… There's not a lot of personality in the rest of their Lirium home.)

He and Rey can start from scratch and do it together. Doing his room was fun, if a little frustrating at some points, but… A home. That'd be good.

He still… doesn't have an image of what the inside of the house looks like.

It's a really cold feeling that sprawls through him when he thinks of Chewie's " _If you don't know her well enough to make her the home she wants, what the fuck have you been up to these last few years?_ "

He tamps that down. He knows… Right? She likes the warm coral colors and rusts and bright blues and greens and… She's in Theed, or probably coming home from Theed now, so his mental image of their place shifts from a square to a cylinder. Rey loves the way Theed looks. They could have a round house. No reason why not. She likes the buildings in Theed with their copper roofs and the sandstone, and the cobbled streets, and…

And when they looked at paintings, she liked bright and colorful and abstract. (He, of course, preferred black and white photographs.)

So, their house could be round, and it could have a big porch, and the hammock, and copper is expensive as fuck, so probably not a copper roof, but he doesn't see any reason why their place couldn't be a creamy peachy color, with a green dome on top of it, and…

Flowers. She likes flowers. She brought the flowers home from Alderaan. So, things grow here, so they can bloody well figure out a way to make some fucking flowers grow around their house, and…

And…

Inside…

Uh…

"Shit."

It's been two bloody years now. More. He should damn well know what his woman likes in a house.

What the fuck has he been doing? (Well, yes, learning that she wants to be involved in the whole deciding things like this but… Shit.)

* * *

Okay, so what the fuck goes in a house?

Workbench. Rey wants a workbench, and thinking about it, if they're starting from scratch, there's no reason why she can't have her own work room. He could move his tools (since he basically uses them never these days) and her bench and tools, and they could have an actual _room…_ (He gets a flash of a mental image… His porch, with the hammock, and near it, a shed/outbuilding, open on one side, where Rey can keep her tools and the projects she likes to fiddle with. He could be laying about, reading one of his billion and a half reports, and she could be there, several meters away, fixing or breaking or building or taking apart, whatever it is.)

Or maybe they'd have a full mechanical bay on the landing island. Between Poe and Chewie, and likely, eventually Jacen, and the idea of Maji flying… A mechanical bay would be a good thing.

That's a satisfying thought. Rey'd probably like a mechanical bay.

He feels decent about that for a moment, and then some niggly little voice that sounds a bit like Chewie (though it's speaking Galactic Standard and not Shariwook) says to him, "Would she _want_ a bay, or if a bay were to happen, would she _like_ it?"

Kylo glares at the universe at large, because that's not a question he's ever contemplated before, and he… is starting to feel cold… because… shit.

He said it Poe, Rey doesn't want… well, things, he was talking about sex, but… things, situations… She…

"Fuck!"

He knows what want is. He's more or less constantly wanting things, people, situations, all the bloody time. Rey _likes_ things. But she almost never _wants._

He looks at the place where this imaginary home could be, and he takes the time to quiet himself down, takes the time to _feel_ the answer, not just project his own.

What does Rey _want?_

He hates the answers when they come to him. Rey doesn't want. She doesn't let herself want. Not really.

Because the things Rey _wants_ are the things she can't have. She can't have her parents back. She can't have the family they refused to give her. She can't have the deeply rooted, stable, in one place in one time in one way home and life she wanted.

He looks at the imaginary home.

She can't have her place in Lirium. Reality is stealing that way.

Rey doesn't let herself want. She likes things. She has preferences. But whatever reality is, is something she'll make-do with.

She got herself sucked into the war, and she went along with it, made some friends, found some family, and made-do with what she had. But she didn't _want_ to get into the fight. She didn't join the Resistance out of some need to fight the First Order. She didn't go after Luke because she wanted to learn to be a Jedi, between the Force just showing up one day, and the Resistance needing him, off on a mission she went, and she did it, made-do with what she had. But it's not like she spent any appreciable time desiring any of those things.

Hell, she didn't fucking choose him at first either. She just got dropped in his lap, and… Later, after… Now is a choice, but… Then… Then she was making the best she could out of a situation where an emotionally volatile manic kept showing up in her space trying to get her attention.

He winces at that. Kylo wanted. As soon as he saw her, and had the chance to quiet down enough of the other stuff going on in his head he _wanted._ It wasn't even sexual, at least not on any level he deals with sexual these days, it was just… pure need, like the way he wants water or oxygen. She was the… thing… (another wince, he doesn't like thinking of Rey as a thing, but back then…) he needed to survive, so he _wanted and needed and…_ She made-do.

Chewie found and brought her stuff to make a home with. And she made-do with it. Cobbled it together, arranged it as best she could, but it's not like she was _wanting_ a home like that, let alone on fucking Lirium. First bloody planet that looked reasonable, so she made-do with it.

This life, here and now, her off on Theed… "Fuck!" It's a situation, things that needed to be done, things _he wants_ and she's… Going along. Making-do.

He's had two fucking years with this woman, two bloody years, where he's touched every centimeter of her skin, wrapped himself around her every night he could, lit up like a firecracker when she smiles at him, devoted (or so he thought) himself to making a world she'd like, but…

Well, that's it, isn't it? He has found things she _likes._ He's not a completely useless toad when it comes to husbanding.

Still… Two fucking years. Two fucking years, and he's just now noticing that _Rey doesn't want stuff._ She's never been in a situation where wanting, really, truly feeling it in her guts and bones, setting her desires on a thing and craving it, ever got her the thing.

* * *

He sits on the sand, and looks where there home could be, and sighs so hard it hurts. She's not moving on Lirium because she doesn't want to go. She didn't want to admit who he was, because she didn't want her family to think badly of her, or her situation to change. She didn't want to leave Jakku because… A lot of because there…

When Rey wants, she wants stability. She wants things to stay the same. She wants her one thing (or maybe a few things) and she wants them to be, with her, in this moment, and future moments, and she wants…

Foundations. Today, apparently, is a day for foundations.

* * *

He's sitting on the edge of the blanket, feet dug into the sand, shirt off, watching the moon rising up from the ocean when Rey blips into existence a few meters away.

She blinks, looks around, sees him, and smiles heading toward him. "A surprise, huh?"

He inclines his head a bit. The candles are lit, flickering around the blanket, and he'd taken some time to find some pretty stones and shells to put around them. (He'd gone looking for flowers, but if flowers grow on this island, they don't do it now. Pinky-coral, silvery-gray shells, on the other hand, were available in abundance.)

She's smiling, but she can feel he's not as… light… of heart if not temperament, as she'd expect for something like this, as she sits next to him, pulling off her shoes, and burrowing her feet in the sand next to his. "Is something wrong?"

"I… probably not. But maybe not right, either. Chewie and Jacen and the rest are a bit concerned—"

Her eyes narrow. He can feel she's less than perfectly thrilled by the idea that they'd have concerns and they'd go to _him_ instead of straight to her, about them.

He shifts direction. "I was thinking about a lot of stuff today…"

Her brow raises. She's also got the image of Hux from this morning.

"We'll get to that, too. This one's more… important. You've always been very kind to me about my wants." (He'd been working on that line for a bit.)

"Sounds like you rehearsed that."

He shrugs. "Well, I did. But… Getting it right mattered. I want things. A lot of things. All sorts of things, and experiences, and places, and… well, people, and… Just a swirly dark pile of wants and needs and desires held together with some skin and attitude. And you've never told me they were bad or wrong or I shouldn't have them or I needed to do something about them or shut them down… You've always been kind about them. And, that matters to me. I love it. I've needed it. I'll probably always need that." He leans over a bit, and kisses her shoulder. "Talked with Chewie, and got thinking, and… I realized I don't know what you want."

She shoves his shoulder with hers. "You know what I want."

"I know what you like. And I know some things you want, but… I got thinking about it, and okay, yes, I know what you want, but I know what you want because you basically don't _want_ anything. There are a few things, and I'm not completely unaware, so I've noticed them, but…" He gestures to the ocean and the islands and the sky above and sand below. "It's beautiful. We can have it. I think you might like it, but, do you _want_ this?"

Rey lifts the corner of her lips, looking around at the moon lit island and sea. "Not really."

He nods. "Yeah." His arm curls around her. "You like it, I can feel that. You wouldn't mind being here. It's… pretty, and you'd make a home here if you had to, but you don't _want_ it."

She nods. "Yeah."

He waits, leaving it open, hoping she'll… maybe develop some wants.

Wants are not forthcoming.

So, he tries a bit more. "You want to stay on Lirium… Or you don't, not really. It's more you don't want to leave, and you don't want to upend everything, and you don't want to have to re-do all of it, but it's not like you ever sat down and thought, 'I'd really love to live on a frozen bit of tundra in the middle of nowhere that's so bloody cold your skin will stick to anything you touch outside.'"

"That's never been on my list of desires."

He nods at that, too. He kisses her shoulder again. "So, speaking of wants. I want to be the kind of person who finds your wants, hunts them down, digs them out, if needs be, and gives them to you. Or at least gives you the sort of life where you can get them for yourself. I… It matters to me that that's part of what we do for each other. That it's not just you support my wants and needs, and make-do with whatever's left around that. It shouldn't just be that I've got all these drives, so you fit yourself in around them."

Her head is leaning against his shoulder. "Maybe that's where the balance point is."

He shrugs. "Maybe it is, but if it is, that's all the more reason for me to go all out if you ever do want something."

Again, he stops, waits, sees if any wants might be forthcoming.

And they can both feel it. There just… aren't. Not here, not now, and not about this. It's not an on-off toggle that can be flipped at a moment's notice.

"I told you I wanted just you and I," Rey says.

He nods, kisses her, and smiles. "And I'm going to do everything in my power to give you that, every day of our lives, unless, at some point, you change your mind about that." Stable, steady, one and one only, his lightling needs things like that, especially when they're hard to get in the real world, she certainly likes things like that, and maybe, possibly, she might want some, too. "But I can't change Lirium's orbit. I can't give you just being there."

"I know."

"I would if I could."

"I know that, too."

He pats the ground under them. "This could be home. If you'd like it…"

She shrugs a little. "It'd be… fine."

"They tell me that none of the islands feel right to you."

"They don't."

"But you haven't actually visited any of them besides here and" he points across the bay, "over there at Finn's island."

"Finn's island?"

"Tico Beach?" he says with a little smirk.

She grins a bit, liking that idea. "Sure."

"Would you like to visit them?"

She shakes her head. "Not really."

He's not surprised by that. "Uh… Did Lirium feel 'right?'"

She doesn't shrug, but he can feel the ghost of it. "It felt like a place I needed to be for a while."

"Do you need to be here?"

"I don't know. Maybe it's not a here or there or anywhere else thing."

"I've heard worse ideas. Get the right people, and the location doesn't matter that much."

"Could be."

"Probably need a location though. It'll be a lot easier to keep the people around if they've got some ground under their feet."

She looks at the sand bunched over her feet. "People like turf."

"Yeah." He squeezes her hand. "I… uh… What if this was our last home? If I could promise that? They'll have to pry us out of here with a tractor beam, and whatever remains we have, they'll stay here? This'll be home, for us, forever. Would you want that? Could you?"

He's holding her close, both of them looking out at the sea, and he lets today's images flow from his mind to hers, a wedding, a home, children, and he ends it with one he didn't see while he was thinking, but having said it, it's flaring bright and steady in his mind, it's them, on this beach, decades from now, bent, wrinkly, old. White of hair, somewhat blotchy of skin, saggy in the places humans get saggy as time goes by. He's gone thin, muscles wandered off, and she's gone plump, which means she's less wrinkly than he is. They're both tanner than they are now, years of sunshine will do that.

And this will be a place that has people. Lots of them. Children and grandchildren, and probably some great grandchildren. They'll be by and through, spending days and months here. Maybe for some of them it will be home, maybe it'll just be a resting place.

Though the day he's seeing right now is just them.

There will be a time, when the sun will go down on them, and in the morning it will rise again, but they won't. That this will be their ground, their home, from this day until that one.

There are tears in Rey's eyes as she says, "I can want that."

And he nods, also crying a bit, as he says, "And I can give it."


	71. History Lesson

5/26/2

Kylo and Schiff have a standing weekly debrief. It's tomorrow, in the morning, and to say that Schiff is worried when he has Kylo on his comm asking for an earlier meeting is an understatement. What can't wait until _tomorrow?_

As of this point in time, _nothing_ good has come from Kylo deciding he needed to chat ahead of schedule.

"You can bring Thea, if you like," Kylo adds, hoping to ease the worry, and also get an idea of what she might know about this stuff. After all, if she's the 'bright boys' who finds the gold in the data, it might be useful to have her looking through what's likely to be _reams_ of information.

It's true Kylo doesn't know absolutely everything about the Empire, but he does know they kept records about _everything._ And apparently, she's the one who's good with records, so...

"Is this… a social call?" Schiff asks, completely off foot, and not even remotely relaxed by that. Now he's starting to wonder if Kylo's getting some idiot idea about easing him out with a quiet dinner and dropping hints about retirement.

Kylo, taking a moment to answer that, very aware of the fact that everything he says outside the bubble of his own rooms, is likely recorded and heard, says, "It's a history lesson, and maybe some advice."

Schiff gets that whatever it is, Kylo doesn't want to talk about it on an open comm. Which makes him more nervous, but history lesson at least tells him it's not about sending him onto greener pastures, so it's nervous that he's less worried about. "We are available at your pleasure, Master."

"Thank you, Grand Admiral. Tonight, supper time?"

"Certainly. I'll let Thea know."

* * *

Just a nice dinner between a leader and his second-in-command. Officially, that's Schiff's rank. Kylo's fairly sure that if something were to actually knock him out for good, Schiff and Kinear would split it between them, and probably install Jon and or Rey to be the young, attractive, presentable face of the Order.

But, on the org chart, it's him, and then Schiff.

So, they might have dinner together, with their wives. Why not? (Actually, why the fuck not? They probably _should_ do things like this.) Rey smirks at him as he's thinking that, feeling like they should be doing something, but… He told C8 that he'd like to have dinner with the Schiffs and now there's a very nicely laid table, with food on it, overlooking the courtyard, so…

Nothing for them to do but stand around and wait. "We should cook next time," Kylo says.

"You want to cook for other people?"

He shrugs a bit. He might like that. "It'd be something to do while we wait." He definitely wants that.

She nods at that. "True…" He's sort of just walking around the table. "You're nervous."

"I know."

"Maybe… figuring out why?" She gives him a look, indicating that that's probably why he's feeling so off, and cooking would only be a distraction.

"I know why, too." _I want to be distracted._

She looks at him. _Talk about it. It'll probably help._

He stops pacing, and says, "Okay. Possibility one: Hux is just wrong. Fine. That can happen. Anyone can be legitimately wrong when given a collection of facts. Sometimes you put two and two together and you honestly think the answer is five. Possibility two: Hux is wrong, but he's lying. Why? What is he trying to set up? What's in his rooms that he'd throw that at me to keep me off of it?"

"Well, that you can find the answer to fairly easily," Rey says with a knowing look.

Kylo sighs. Because he can. It'd take him all of a minute and a half to get back there and start tearing through everything. "Except for possibility three: Hux is right. In which case he gave me something valuable, and I don't want to burn the exceedingly fragile bridge that we might have, because…"

"Because…"

"Because if he's right then… I don't… It just feels like if he's right, then he also _matters_ to this somehow."

Rey inclines her head. "Fair enough. Takes a ghost to fight a ghost, maybe?"

That gets another sigh. "You'd think I'd have enough of the boogers I wouldn't need Hux, but… If there's one thing Sno—patine wouldn't expect, it's a fucking shade of Hux to pop up." _If he's out there, he's probably trying to line up another go at Luke._

 _Maybe. You want me to seek out Luke, see what he knows._

Kylo blinks at that. _Not yet._

"There is that." Rey says out loud. "And… well, if there's such a thing as a weapon you could use against a ghost…"

He inclines his head a bit. "Maybe. I don't know how much of the tech he handled himself versus how much of the tech he understood and was able to say, 'Make it do whatever,' and had other people make it do whatever. Sort of what I did with ships. I couldn't design one from scratch, but I certainly knew what it needed to do to work better. I know Hux had the idea for Starkiller, I know he knew enough about the Death Stars to see ways to make them better and more dangerous, but I don't think he engineered any of the main pieces of it."

She rests her hands on his. "Good reasons to be nervous."

"Yeah, that's the Hux side of it. And if he's right… So, where has the bastard been the last two years? Is he really dead? How'd he survive the first time? Is there a lab somewhere with a bunch of other clones in it? Two labs? A thousand labs? And if he's not dead, how do you get rid of something that keeps coming back from the beyond? How is he… possessing bodies? I mean, that was not in any of the 'how to use the Force' books I remember."

"You weren't reading Sith books."

"Yeah… Oh, here's more fun, what happened to Palpatine's things? Were they on the Death Star? Where was his library? Gods alone knows what might be in it, if it could be found."

"Ellie and Mirina might have an angle on that."

Kylo looks interested.

"Palpatine's second mistress. They helped her fake her death, and I think she's been quietly off living under the scanners ever since."

He blinks. "C8—"

This whole time the droid has been unobtrusively standing near the table, waiting for someone to need something he could fetch. "Already on your list of notes, sir. I've also sent private communiques to Ladies Kinear and Frakes to get them working on that angle."

"Thank you. Probably a good idea to hunt her down to chat at some point, no matter what."

Rey's got the sense that that might end up being her job.

They both hear the lift settle, and then open, and for a moment Kylo's struck by something being off, that he can't immediately place.

And then he can. Schiff and Thea are in their casual, at home, just being people clothing. He's never seen Schiff out of his uniform, never so much as guessed that such a thing could happen. But… Right. These are people, with lives, and interests, and… worlds outside the reaches of the Order.

Thea's got a wide smile on her face, and she looks to her husband while she says, "I think you just melted their minds, dear."

Kylo looks a little sheepish at that.

Rey smiles. "Are you hungry?"

"Enough," Thea replies. "Dinner can be… variable, so lunch is always our main meal. But I have a feeling we're here more for company than because you wanted two extra mouths to feed."

Kylo snaps into action. "The company is especially welcome, yes." He sort of looks around at the table, realizing he still doesn't exactly know how to handle dinner with company. "Uh… We don't do this much. Normally we just sit down and eat."

"Then we'll sit down and eat, too," Josh says.

He and Thea join Kylo and Rey at the table, and Josh pulls out the chair for his wife. Kylo follows along, because that appears to be polite behavior here.

"Well," Josh asks, once everyone has a drink, and food on plates. "I have the feeling you had something specific in mind, and now that we're here in the part of the ship where you know you control who listens…"

Kylo nods at that. He takes a sip of his drink, and commits to letting the secret out. "When you joined us at the high command, you were backing Hux for Supreme Leader."

Schiff looks disturbed by that sentence. Not that Kylo knew it. He's said it to him before. He's disturbed because Kylo's apparently bringing it up after visiting Hux's chambers.

"Is there a question there," Schiff hedges, taking a sip of his drink.

"What did you think of him?"

He's definitely got Josh off foot, and Thea's certainly wondering where this is going, too. It doesn't feel bad or dangerous, but it's decidedly _off._

"Didn't you work with him for almost a decade?" Thea asks.

"Yes, and I know what I thought of him. I want to know what someone who's actual professional military thought of him."

Schiff considers that. Kylo's fishing for something, but he doesn't know what. "What do you really want to know?"

Kylo feels Rey's hand on his knee, just a little touch, and it does help to diffuse the part of him that's annoyed that Schiff isn't just _answering his questions._ It's clear Schiff's trying to find the angles, so he can package his answers and… Manage the situation. He's trying to get himself into proper officer position, in charge and making the decisions. He doesn't like being the underling, in the dark.

"I'm asking what I really want to know, right now. You want me to make it make sense for you, and I will, but I want your opinion on Hux, first."

Schiff's not enjoying the game, but he'll play. "In Snoke's position, I'd have made him the next Orson Krennic."

Kylo doesn't know that name. He feels like he might have heard it once, but it's such a faint memory it's barely there. Rey knows she's never run across it.

"Galen Erso?" Thea asks, knowing Kylo mentioned him in their interview.

"I know who he is."

"Just about everyone did," Thea says.

"Krennic ran the Death Star project," Josh continues. "He had basically unlimited funding, and answered directly to Darth Vader or the Emperor in how he ran the weapons development department. He wasn't the tech genius Erso was, but he had the big picture, and enough tech to understand how to put the big picture together. If you'd put me in charge and dropped Lt. Hux into my lap, the first thing I'd have done is shot his father, and the second thing would have been to put him in my research and development department."

"Why shoot his father?" Rey asks.

"Because the man was filth. In the days of the Empire, he wasn't high enough up to notice, but by the time Lt. Hux was on the rise, his father was a pet of Snoke. If Josh gets to pick where Armitage went, he likely has discretion over Brendol, as well," Thea says.

"We've talked about this before," Josh adds. "Hux Sr. _broke_ men. Like… animals. You hurt an animal enough and it'll eventually obey whatever you tell it to do, or it'll die rebelling. That's what he did to people, too. The reports on Hux Jr. indicate that Senior used him to test out some of his more advanced techniques and… There was obviously a brilliant mind there, one with great will power, exceptional organizational skills, rigid determination, and between Hux Sr. and Snoke, they probably wasted the best weapons designer this galaxy has ever seen."

Kylo and Rey think about that, and Kylo adds in his head to Rey, _This is the sort of thing he was talking about how good officers work. They understand their men and use them properly._

Schiff continues, "Given proper funding and resources Hux could have armed more than just one mega weapon. You know, Kylo, you inherited the mess, we had Starkiller, we had _The Supremacy_ and the rest of our fleet was in fairly sad condition. He certainly sent out the reports for how and why to spiff things, up, but… He could get Snoke to go along with Starkiller, because he loved massively fucking stupid weapons-"

"And massively fucking stupid ships…" Thea adds, clearly thinking of _The Supremacy._

"And massively fucking stupid ships. That man never understood the idea of _smaller._ But Hux found any possible way to kill people interesting, and if you know how to harness a man like that, he's _immensely_ valuable."

"But not a tactical command?" Rey asks. "If he was good at…" she gestures, meaning all of Armitage Hux's strengths.

"No, not tactical. Armitage may have always been… off. It's… likely, having known his father, that he was just born… wrong. Some people just… no empathy at all. Probably the best way to put it. Other sentients are tools to be used or toys to play with. But, if he wasn't always off, his time with Brendol certainly shaped him in that direction. There might have been a time when he was a good tactical thinker, at least in battle terms… He…" Josh is picking his words carefully, mostly because these are a collection of feelings he's never tried to put into words. After all, this isn't the sort of thing you'd put into a report, so he's never tried to verbalize them.

"Part of why we backed him was that he'd be predictable and we were fairly sure we could kill him, especially with Phasma out of the equation. We didn't have those advantages with you. That said, he was enough of a tactical thinker to take _a lot_ of me and mine out, and we are not bad at this game."

"So, by tactics you don't mean bad at strategy," Rey says.

"Bad at seeing the how and why we fight," Josh takes a sip of his drink, and a bite of supper. "This is good," it almost looks like he's not really aware that he's said that, that it's just part of talking with people who are feeding you. However it worked, he's back on Hux, fast, "He enjoyed killing people too much. The whole has to survive, which means there's got to be a whole _left_ to survive. That was the part of being an officer he didn't seem to understand. The other part is, why are we fighting in the first place? If the answer is: to kill all the fuckers who aren't us, you've got no business being an officer, either. Unfortunately, he had both of those issues."

"Have you heard of a Tyrrich victory?" Thea asks. She waits a beat while both Rey and Kylo shake their head.

"No reason why you would have, neither of you were formally trained military thinkers," Josh adds.

"General Jamie Tyrrich of Grandlaia Prime, he got himself embroiled in a war that no one remembers except for this bit: He won the battles, but he won useless battles and lost so many of his own men and material, he lost the damn war because there were no forces left after the last battle. A third party swooped in and took him and his opponent out," Thea says.

"Hux and Snoke take out the New Republic and the Resistance, and lose everything when Kylo pops up and takes over?" Rey asks.

"A lot like that," Josh says. "Though, technically, that's a coup."

"Why did the First Order conquer all of those planets?" It's a rhetorical question, from Kylo, and they understand that. "Snoke didn't do much of anything with them. Beat them to a pulp, and then took anything valuable, and moved on, used the valuable stuff to blow up more planets, and…"

"Right," Thea replies. "There was no reason, no good reason, to blow up the New Republic. They weren't even officially at war with us, and our people in the senate—"

"You had people in the Senate?" Rey asks.

"Of course. Not officially," Josh says. "But we had close to a thousand working the different angles, making sure the right people voted the right ways. There's a reason why we weren't officially at war. Why your mum couldn't get enough to go along to arm against us."

Neither Rey nor Kylo had known that.

"So, there was no real point to firing on them. There was time to build up, solidify, and actually rule our territory. Do like you are now, trade, grow strong, make people actually _benefit_ from our rule, _then_ if Snoke was going to be so hot to fight, go after the New Republic," Thea says.

"And then Hux is there, with his weapon, quivering to use it, and… To a degree, it's worked out. We're able to be here and be doing this because what's left of the New Republic isn't in a position to go after us. But, if you'd taken out Snoke with the New Republic in place, we likely could have gotten a functional peace agreement up and running if we kept to our territory," Josh says. "A weapon like Starkiller sitting in the background makes sure no one attacks you. You have time and freedom to do your own thing, because the reprisal you can bring is so strong no one in their right mind will hit you."

"And that's the kind of deal Hux couldn't understand or desire?" Rey says.

Josh nods. "Yeah. It didn't seem like he could stand leaving anything he considered an enemy alive. Probably because anything that might have been an enemy bit him, and hard. Hell, from what we know, everyone who was his friend bit him, too."

Thea smirks a bit at that. "Literally, if not figuratively."

Kylo remembers Hux saying to him _You didn't know._ And he wonders, how much of the image of those bruises was just for show, or was it something they liked that also worked well for building an image…

"But he was a good planner, good tactician if what you wanted was a pile of dead people, good… bureaucrat?" Kylo says, instead of his deeper musings.

"Yes. I mean, I assume you killed him because he was going to murder you, not because he was bad at his job," Josh says, like they're discussing the potatoes on his plate and not Kylo running a man through with his lightsaber.

"Yes. And I didn't like him, and…" Kylo fiddles with his cup for a moment. He can feel the shape of something, but… It's… like seeing a black hole too far away to focus on. Something is there, something shifting things, something… "Did he have cyanide tubes in _The Finalizer?_ "

"Gods, that fucking maniac." Josh still feels cold when he thinks of what they found in the air processing systems. "No. Just the _Supremacy._ Trust me, after we found them, I immediately ordered a full audit of every system we've got. So far, no new surprises have turned up, but who knows what else the fucker may have hidden."

"There's something," Kylo says. He knows that's important. He doesn't know why, not yet, though. He can feel Rey turning ideas over in her mind, aware of the same shape he's feeling.

"You want to tell me why you're asking?" Josh asks.

"You absolutely won't like it," Kylo replies.

"I run into things I don't like every day. What's one more?"

"You know I visited his rooms?"

Schiff nods.

Kylo rolls his eyes. He almost asks how he was tracked, and then realizes that his handprint will open any door in this fleet. And his handprint likely sends a report to Schiff and Kinear and anyone else bright enough to hack the system to get that information.

"What did you find," Schiff asks.

He could lie, or hedge, leave out the whole ghost aspect, but… Hux wouldn't just leave information like that out to be found, so… "Him."

Schiff looks horrified. Thea doesn't. But she comes from a world where ghosts are real, and Schiff, for all his years of working for and by Force users… He doesn't. "He's… you killed him."

"Oh, I killed him, all right. That's done very little to get rid of him though. I've been seeing his ghost since… A week? Two? Not long after he died."

Schiff blinks very slowly. He takes a deep sip of his drink, but it's just fizzy juice. Not what he's hoping for.

"Hux has been haunting you?" Thea asks.

"Well, I'll admit that for quite a while I wasn't sure if he was real or if I was just imagining him."

He sees Schiff shift a bit, press something on his cuff, and shift again.

"Did you just turn off your personal recording device?" Rey asks.

"Yes, and erased the last twenty minutes. So… Ghost Hux has you… wondering… something?" His voice is strained, and he looks very much like he wants to dump at least three shots of whatever lives in that little flask inside his jacket into his cup of juice. "You're right. I don't like this on an entirely new and more intense level of not liking than I usually do."

Kylo nods. "And, I'm fully aware of how insane this sounds, but… I mean… Death isn't… exactly the same for me as it is for everyone else."

"I know, but… I thought… Don't you have to be a Jedi or something to leave a ghost?" Though he's looking at his wife as he says it.

Rey shrugs.

Thea's shaking her head, no. "Just a lot of tenacity. And that was Hux."

"I always thought it worked that way," Kylo says. "I mean… We'd sometimes get ghosts at Luke's school, so it's… normal for me. But they were all Jedi masters, so… That's part of why I wasn't sure about Hux, at first."

 _And then you saw your father?_ Rey thinks. Kylo hadn't mentioned that he thought he might have been imagining Hux at first.

 _Yeah. I figure if he's back, Hux could be, too._

"And what's Ghost Hux saying that's got you talking to us?" Thea asks.

"Something you're going to like even less than Ghost Hux."

Schiff does take his flask out and doctors his juice, and pours a shot into Thea's as well. He tilts the silver ovoid toward Kylo, who shakes his head, and Rey, who likewise declines.

Then both Schiffs stare at Kylo, waiting for him to go on.

"We were talking about Snoke—"

"What had you thinking about him?" Thea asks.

"Personal stuff," Kylo shakes his head. He's not about to get into his current musing of how much of himself is _him_ versus everyone around him. Let alone how he sometimes… misses… that's probably the word, Phasma, and he just wondered what had happened to her.

"You discuss _personal stuff_ with Hux?" Schiff's still trying to get a feel for this relationship.

"Rarely, but…" _He understood… understands… what it was to be Snoke's toy in a way you don't._ And again Rey squeezes his knee. There are some experiences that can only be shared, not talked about. "We were. He told me that at one point he'd gotten a hold of some of Snoke's DNA, and that he was a clone."

Schiff's lips press into a thin, white, bloodless line. Thea's eyes go wide. They've got the implications of that a _lot_ faster than Kylo did. He nods, once. "Why ask me what I thought of Hux, then? Shouldn't you be asking about the Emperor?"

"I intend to do that, too. But, unless I've deeply misunderstood what we do with bodies here, I'm in a situation where I can't verify what Hux told me. I could possibly locate his reports, but… They're his. If he's lying to me about it—"

"Yes, he's enough of a tactician to have made sure that he'll have the backup documents, and then some." Schiff rubs his forehead. "I guess, on Hux, the first two questions are what are the upside of him lying, or telling the truth?"

"If it's any help, he didn't mention it until I had told him something about Snoke. That Snoke wasn't interested in me, not as me, but as a way to get revenge on Luke Skywalker. That… slipped the last piece of the puzzle into place for him, and he told me his theory that Snoke was some sort of meat puppet for Palpatine."

Schiff sighs long and deep. "Fuck," he says it quietly. He drums his fingers a bit, thinking. "I'll admit, I don't immediately see an up or downside to him lying about this. Can't see a reason to make this up. Especially since he's not exactly, well… In a position to do much. I can see reasons for him to not mention it if it's true… I mean… He still doesn't like you, correct?"

"He still hates me. It's not like we… parted on good terms," Kylo's voice is dry, but there's enough of a joke there to get a smile out of Thea.

Schiff's still thinking through the angles. "I can completely see how, if he thinks this is true, that he wouldn't mention it. Just let the bastard pop back up again and take us all out, but… Oh. He hates Snoke even more than he hates you, correct?"

"And likely thinks he needs another Force user to fight him appropriately," Rey adds.

"That works. He'd turn anything into a weapon if he needed one, so he'd have no compunction against turning you into one if he could," Schiff says.

"Not much turning needed there. Not exactly like I'm some soft, gentle pacifist who's never held a weapon," Kylo says.

"Good point." Another deep drink as Schiff thinks. "If the bastard was Palpatine… How'd he do it in the first place, and is he still out there, or did you somehow manage to actually kill him?"

"That was the crux of it. How did you find him in the first place?" Rey asks.

Why the Schiffs are here is now _very_ apparent. He's the first of the Imperials who went in with Snoke on any major scale. If anyone knows…

"When the second Death Star went, I knew we were fucked. Getting that thing up and moving was… fucking stupid. Again, big, stupid weapon. We were stripping systems right and left to get the material up to build it, and putting _way too many_ men and hours into it. The Navy of the Empire was hurting by that point. We'd been shorting men and material for years and that's… Well, exactly what you ran into here.

"I mean, what the fuck were we going to fight with a Death Star? The Rebellion _won_ every bloody time we fired the damn thing, and it wasn't like we could take them out with it. But we could have gotten a five-billion-person army up with those kind of resources. Could have had people on every bloody planet we wanted to control. Could have…

"Again, you're seeing it with what you're doing now. You win against a fucking _rebellion_ by being good enough at the job of running things that people don't want to rebel. If we'd had people on the ground and in the skies, keeping goods running and food in mouths and crime down…"

"People like security and order," Thea says. "They may not love the idea of being _ruled_ but if you do it right, you keep rebels to the edges, and use them to make yourself more secure. But instead of doing that, we ended up with a _second_ DeathStar." She shakes her head at the idiocy.

Josh adds, "Tying up those sorts of resources is a logistical nightmare.

"And them, boom! Number two is gone, the old bat was last seen on it, and I got me and mine _out._ At first, I was thinking we'd regroup, and then go after the Rebellion. Name myself Emperor. If anyone was in position to do it, I was… but… wiser heads prevailed."

"Thea told you not to be a twit?" Kylo asks.

Thea's smiling at him, looking very pleased with him, and Schiff, who gives her an affectionate pat, says, "In almost those exact words. She was still planet side and could see how fast things were changing. It was convenient to blame every bad thing of the last twenty years on the Empire, and the blame was flying, fast."

"You obviously don't remember the first few years after the Death Star, and you weren't born, yet, and my guess is no one told either of you too much about it, but… Outside of Coruscant and a scattering of other core worlds, there weren't enough Imperial troops to really matter. But, when the Empire was at its height, they didn't need people on every planet every day. Get an insurrection somewhere, and two days later ten thousand troopers could land, crush it flat, stick around for a bit, and then move again.

"But once the Second Death Star went, the Imperial Command that was in charge of moving troops around to do stuff like that went, too. So, all of these tiny outposts of maybe two hundred men were left to their own devices. A lot of them _did not_ make it out. A mob can take out a military fortification if reinforcements aren't coming," Thea finishes.

"I got as many of them out as I could," Schiff says. "For six months we hopped around grabbing people, including Thea and our family. And once she and more of what was left of the Empire joined me, and we scooted for the uncharted regions. I got my start in the Republic's Exploration and Cartography division as a navigator, so I had some tricks up my sleeve, and used them."

"Didn't hurt that you knew which charts to delete from the official records," Thea adds.

"Really didn't. Once I had my my kit up and going, what was left of the Empire had extremely _edited_ charts. And it also didn't hurt that most of the people who'd been part of the exploration division were with me on the trip, not tracking me."

"My Dad said he couldn't catch you guys because you knew the territory better, and didn't care if you paid for supplies."

"That was the idea," Schiff nods. "The man who can live off the land more efficiently wins the chase. I was going to win and that was that. We were still getting news. We saw what was happening to Imperials…" He takes another sip. "I had four million men under my command at that point. A lot of whom followed orders. The kind of orders that got you killed if you didn't follow them. And then the New Republic was killing people for following them and… Not on my watch. They were good soldiers, and they weren't going to die for doing their jobs, not just because the regime changed."

Kylo can feel Finn's words. _You bought your life for too high a price._ He decides _not_ to think about that right now. "How long were you out there before you found Snoke?"

"Three years. It's called _The Uncharted Region,_ but that's not strictly true. That's part of what I was doing for the Republic, charting away. But there are charts and there are charts, and this was… 'The not-very-well-charted region.'"

"The, 'You can't use hyperspeed because that planet's right in your path and no one noticed it, yet,' region," Thea adds.

Schiff nods. "Exactly. I know the terrain better, and I have faster ships, and I can carry more fuel, and I have enough navigators to keep moving 'round the clock."

"Did you have a destination?" Rey asks.

Kylo didn't think of that question, but he can see how important it is, and he can also see how it's got Schiff thinking.

"Yes. But as I was getting closer, I began to notice that everywhere I intended to gather supplies was cleaned out." Another sigh. Kylo can feel Schiff realizing how much this would make sense if the Emperor were running things.

"Like someone who had access to your charts was moving around?" Kylo asks.

"Or like someone who had access to my charts had been using that area for a while. We began to run into ships that looked a lot like our own. A few times I was hailing what I thought were parts of my own navy before they started shooting at us."

Kylo sighs. "When you were charting, did you know about Snoke?"

"Not then. I don't remember mentions of him. But we also weren't exactly chatting up the locals. We were mostly just flying by, marking what we were finding and where it was. Too much territory, not enough resources. We didn't have the ability to really stop anywhere and get the feel of the place."

Kylo can understand that.

"So, you first learned about Snoke when you were in the Uncharted Regions after the war," Rey asks.

"I feel like that has to be true, but it also isn't. I…" Schiff looks angry. "But I would, wouldn't I? He could just wave his fucking hand, 'You've heard rumors of me before. I've been around forever' and boom, I'd believe it, wouldn't I? Wouldn't even have to be me, just do it to some underlings and let it spread…"

"Concretely, the first time I can remember us talking about Snoke, was when he'd actually gotten into a fire fight with a few ships that looked so much like Imperial cruisers that he had to call off the attack because he didn't know who he was hitting," Thea says.

"The first few times, I legitimately thought I was going against another Admiral, but best I knew we were all accounted for, one way or another. Still, not like faking dead is that hard, not in a war. Not when the entire high command blew up one day," Schiff says.

He eats another bite. "I guess it was two years in, and the same playbook I was using against your Dad and the rest of the New Republic hunting me was being turned on me. Suddenly, I'm the one who doesn't know the territory as well, and I can't live off of it, and… We did it for a year."

Thea squeezes his hand. "We hit the point of either go back to New Republic space and take the war criminal labels, or see if Snoke would ally. We had more ships than he did, but he had the resources to keep them flying."

Schiff looks from Kylo to Rey, very aware that both of them were raised on the New Republic side of things. "The whole has to survive. That's the job. Right or wrong, you keep your people alive. My enlisted were looking at, at best, years on Caldonia for war crimes. My officers were looking at execution for war crimes. We followed orders. And maybe we shouldn't have, but…

"They were my men, and I was going to get them through. So, I sought terms with Snoke, and bought our lives with an alliance."

"Pat went to the Republic," Rey half says, and half asks.

"Pat was a regional governor at that point," Thea says. "The hottest thing he got involved in was offering support when Tarkin's command came in looking for your General Threepio. Even the New Republic wouldn't convict a man for following the orders of a duly elected government he was sworn to uphold if those orders didn't involve 'war crimes.' Which isn't to say they didn't _try._ Jury of two hundred and one, and one hundred and three voted to acquit."

"That was part of his plan, get as far away as possible, and then send in glowing reports. As soon as the First Order began creeping back into the charted regions, I ripped that play right out of his book and began using it. There's a reason, beyond the fact that Snoke never really wanted me too damn close, that I made sure I was out in the middle of nowhere."

Kylo nods. "You were… fourteen days out when you rejoined the high command?"

"Something like that," Schiff says.

"So, Snoke didn't want you too close?" Rey asks.

"We met a few times in person, but after that, he was content to keep me away and send me the occasional order. I was happy to move away from him, too. There was a good decade there where I wasn't so much part of his command as more near it."

"We didn't attack them, they didn't attack us, and Josh basically carved out his own territory in the Uncharted Region," Thea says.

"Why not just stay there?" Rey says.

"Four million men was getting close to five million at that point, and a lot of them wanted to go _home._ As much home as home was left by that point. And the Uncharted Regions weren't home. We couldn't blend there. Humans are not the dominant species out there."

"We were surviving, but not really living," Schiff says. "So, when Snoke began to make his moves on the Rim, we went for it. It was time to retake what was ours."

"Did you wonder why he wanted… well… New Republic territory?" Rey asks.

Thea and Josh share a look. Thea's the one who says it, "If you've ever been in the Uncharted regions, you very quickly come to the conclusion that there's a reason why no one's ever bothered to spend much time there. It's… Oh… You're from Jakku."

Rey nods.

"Jakku would have been an industrial paradise compared to a lot of the places in the Uncharted Regions. There had to be… Well, more… out there. Obviously Snoke got someone to build him ships, too. But we never found it."

"A big part of why it's uncharted is that a lot of the local populations are not space-going, yet. Part of why fuel is so important out there. If you can't condense your own crystals, and you fuck your hyperspeed calculation, it's possible to find yourself literally a million light years from the nearest person who could have sold you fuel."

"One-way trip," Thea says.

"Did you know the Emperor?" Rey asks.

"Not the way Ellie did," Josh replies.

"I think that's a fair answer for pretty much anyone who wasn't whispering secrets with his lover," Kylo replies. "You know what Rey was asking."

"I wasn't part of his intimate circle. I hit flag rank after the First Death Star, and only had a few years of reporting directly to him. I don't think he much liked me, but after the First Death Star he was low on men who could take an Admiral's command and not fuck it up, so that was that."

"Did Snoke… feel like him? Act like him?" Kylo asks.

Schiff takes a deep breath, and another drink, before saying, "Kylo, I don't know what… other Force users feel like to you. I know both the Emperor and Snoke made me feel nauseous and jittery. They set off my run/fight reaction. I assumed at the time that that was just being near someone with immense power I couldn't defend against or understand."

"Do you feel that way around me?" Rey asks.

"No," Schiff replies. "But I used to feel that way around him," he nods to Kylo.

"When did it stop?" Kylo asks.

Schiff takes a moment trying to figure that out. "I think it was gradual. I don't remember it just switching off. I do remember Pat saying that if we approached you like we were genuinely interested in you succeeding and that we were here to make that happen, that you'd take it well. I know I tried that. I actively shifted how I was thinking and feeling at our next meeting, and the one after that you were telling me that I could start looking for planets we might be able to get alliances with."

Kylo nods. He remembers that. The claws of Snoke… Palpatine… didn't all release from his mind at once. He had to… rebalance himself.

 _Shit._

 _Kylo?_

 _What was the first thing you said to me after Crait?_

Rey thinks, remembers, and almost says out loud, _Shit._

 _Yeah._

 _Snoke is dead. You shouldn't be here._ They're both hearing her words to Kylo after the battle of Crait when he'd appeared before her. If he hadn't been lying about bridging their minds, the bridge not collapsing might be a very good sign the bastard is still out there somewhere.

Thea can see them thinking to each other, and takes a few bites, waiting for them to get done, and then says, "They used language in very similar ways." She gestures to the ship. "Obviously, very similar aesthetic sense."

"Different goals?" Rey asks. "I mean… The Emperor wanted… something, right? An Empire. Mirina and Ellie talk about him going insane."

Thea and Schiff think about that for a few moments.

"It's a good question, Rey," Thea says. "If Palpatine became Snoke… Then Snoke would be starting off a few years past where Palpatine had gone 'round the bend."

"Do you think the physical body would effect the mind?" Schiff asks. "Given what was going on with Snoke's body, it's likely the brain may not have been in excellent shape."

"What was going on with his body?" Kylo asks. "Hux's best bet was he was a clone forced to mature too fast, and that caused the mutations."

Thea's the one really thinking about that. "That's… an intriguing possibility. Pat's the one who knows more about clones. He was a trainer for the Clone Army, so he actually worked with a lot of them."

"Why did the Empire stop using clones?" Rey asks.

"Expensive," Schiff says. "Regular humans are fairly easy to get. It takes twenty years to get them properly grown and trained, but you can generally find them all over the place. The clones took ten years to mature, but they were _very_ expensive, and… look, you give Pat a legion of Clones, and he'll take over the bloody galaxy. They were exceptional warriors. But without a good leader, they were just extremely expensive cannon fodder, and they got used for cannon fodder a lot."

"Hux Senior," Thea says. "He found a much less expensive way to turn humans into clones. Cannon fodder clones. Kidnapping babies is a lot cheaper than splicing DNA into empty egg cells and culturing them into zygotes and from there into babies and people. With the clones, maybe one out of hundred was defective, and with the Hux method it was closer to 20%, but children are cheap, and clones aren't, so…"

"He was just starting to put his methods into play when the Empire fell, and by the time I was fully on board with Snoke, he was a General in charge of 'recruitment and trainee development.'"

"That should have been a hint," Thea says. "Who else was there? A few of the designers… Some of the weapon's men…"

Schiff is nodding. "The ones who weren't stationed on the Second Death Star. He liked big, stupid weapons, but he always had some people in reserve. There were a few munition dumps and ship yards, off the official books. I raided them on the way out. Most people, even of my rank, didn't know about them, but Thea could read the numbers, and knew credits were seeping out in big enough numbers that _something_ else had to be out there."

"Just had to follow the accounts, and there they were," she says.

"Could you do that again? Go looking through the numbers, find what might be hidden in the Uncharted Regions?" Rey asks.

"I'd need new numbers. I had access to everything that the Emperor put down, and he kept _a lot_ of records."

"Off-the-books," Kylo says. "But he liked records. Would he have really had off-the-books stuff?"

Schiff sighs. "It'd be out of character, but not impossible. But it doesn't matter if he had it on-the-books if the books were physical and the only copies went with him to the Death Star. He might have somehow gotten out with his magic, I doubt his record keeping did."

"Well…" Thea says, thinking… staring at Kylo. "You'd also want to know how he survived, how he got out of his body, the Force stuff, right?"

"Among other things," Kylo says.

Schiff knows where Thea's going with this. "He wasn't much of a record keeper."

"I know, but… Do you have a better idea?"

"No."

Before Kylo can ask, he says, "Mustafar. Vader's home. Gods alone know what you'll find there."

"That's part of it. The other part, and you'll have to forgive the fact that this feels like the universe trying to spite you, but New Alderaan," Thea says. "Before it was New Alderaan, it was Glendivia IV, and it was the Emperor's pleasure palace. For all I know, they razed his home and lands, but…"

"Naboo," Schiff adds. "He had a home on Naboo and one on Coruscant. I know the Coruscant building was raised. Nothing is left of it. I don't know about the Naboo one."

Kylo doesn't know what to do with that. It's so much, all at once, and he's just… whirling.

Rey has his hand, and she slows herself down, pulling him with her.

"What's Mustafar?" Kylo's finally able to answer.

"Hell," Thea replies.

"It's a collection of volcanoes barely held together by a thin crust. It used to be a mining planet, but when Vader all but died there…" Schiff stops mid sentence. "Did you not…"

"I didn't know," Kylo says with a swallow. Because he hadn't known _Vader._ He'd known Snoke/Palpatine's ideal of Vader, designed for him to know. "I… Obi Wan maimed him, I knew that, but…" Only after Snoke 'died.' Only after he set his mind to trying to figure out who his grandparents had been.

 _I've been blocked from you your whole life…_ He can remember Anakin saying that. That would lean toward Palpatine being dead. The person who benefited from Anakin not being near was gone.

A deeper, colder feeling settles in Kylo's guts, _Or he found someone else. Or I've been moved from the asset to enemy category, and he's got another one he's playing with._

Rey's fingernails bite into the palm of his hand.

"Mustafar is where Anakin became Vader," Thea says. "He fought Obi Wan, lost, horribly. The Emperor 'rescued' him, and then resurrected him, I guess. After, he made his home there."

"None of us were brave enough to ask why," Schiff says.

But Kylo knows. "Hate, rage, shame, pain, they're fuel. Where better to steep in them than where he lost his wife, his children, his brother, his body, and his life?"

Rey's voice in his head. _You aren't going there._

 _I—_

 _No. I'll go. You don't need to be there. I'll go where the dark is overpowering, and you can go where the light leads to stagnation._

He kisses her hand.

Thea and Schiff don't comment on the silent conversation.

Thea does take another bite, and then says, "You know, Snoke had/has records, and the one thing I haven't done is gone through them with a fine-tooth comb, looking for what he might have been hiding."

"Why not?" Rey asks.

"The logistics of it. Keeping track of where all the bodies were buried in the Empire was about making sure we had an escape plan."

"When the Emperor fell our youngest three were still at home," Josh adds.

"But now, our kids are off, taken care of, same with the grandkids, and we're both well past the age, and for that matter, most of the good commanders are gone, to make running worth it."

"The same reason why I didn't run when Snoke died," Schiff says. "When the Emperor went, I had a full command I could trust. In ten years, Hashmir, my second-in-command, will have that kind of set up again, but I don't, and for that matter, haven't really had, for close to fifteen years, that sort of set up."

"There's a point where you resign yourself to going down with the ship, and we're well past that, so there wasn't much point to finding the treasure that'll let you run. But, I could do that. I've got the access, I just haven't used it. If he was making records of where the money was going, I'll find it. And maybe there'll be answers there."

 _Maybe,_ Rey's voice in Kylo's mind. _If he didn't learn from his mistakes the first time._

 _If he didn't think he made them,_ Kylo thinks.

"Kylo," Schiff says.

"Hmm," He's thinking about the Emperor, who might have been, probably was, Snoke.

"Let's talk tactics. You can't drop everything to go after this. She can't, either," Schiff adds. "If he's out there… He's got an image of you that's a few years out of date, and subtle and crafty aren't part of that image. Patient and strategic also aren't part of it. So, right now, your major tactical advantage is that you've got better intel than he does. So, you need to _use it._ "

"Which means?" Rey says.

"Which means you're still on Handsome Princing duty. This gets shunted to your off time. He'd expect you to do what you want to do, drop everything and go after him. He expects your anger and hate to drive you, brain checked out.

"So, if you want him to not know you're onto him, this has to go to the background. When you visit New Alderaan, get an unscheduled day to go explore, and go looking _then._ Same with Naboo. It's on the list of places you're going, so… Let your handlers know that you're hoping to have some time to just _be_ and go under the scanners. That you're looking to have some down time, and then slip your handlers and have some down time."

"Mustafar… That's got to be an unofficial trip, or…" Thea's not sure if she should say it, but she does, "Or call your grandfather and talk directly to him. If anyone could be recruited to your side against Palpatine, he's likely at the top of the list. He threw him in the reactor the first time, I can't imagine his opinion has improved."

"And if it takes a ghost to fight a ghost…" Schiff says. "I guess that's the long-term issue. If he is out there, how do you get rid of someone you've killed twice if they refuse to die?"

That's the question none of them like.


End file.
